Ireland, 1770s. Barry - a young, underprivileged Esquire - falls in love with his cousin Nora. But after the cousin gives preference to the English captain, he finds nothing better than to call an officer to a duel. Almost upset by Nora's advantageous marriage with reckless tricks, Barry hastily retreats to Dublin, where, due to lack of livelihood, she enrolls in the militia and goes to the front to take part in the Napoleonic campaign.
However, the recruit soon realizes that the war is too dangerous for his life and deserts from the battlefield. So begins the story of a brilliant career ascent into the high society of an ambitious young man, who through a prudent marriage to a rich widow, achieves financial well-being, but at the same time turns from a simple-minded optimist into a cynic and a hypocrite.
Having made an excursion into the near future in “A Clockwork Orange”, Stanley Kubrick this time decided to go back 200 years. It is difficult to fully understand the motivations by which he was guided when he took on the first significant novel of the English classic William MacKep Thackeray. And although it was not the director’s first appeal to historical material (“Paths of Glory”, “Spartacus”), it’s still necessary to admit that futuristic plots, which in no way constrained his imagination, managed to Kubrick much better.
In the epic fresco about the vicissitudes of fate and its relationship with the Kubrick era, according to tradition, significantly shifted the emphasis. The novel "Career of Barry Lyndon" (1844), written by Thackeray at 33, became for the author that book, after which they began to seriously consider him. But this by no means obliged the director to follow him literally. Kubrick everywhere avoids comic conventions, diligently ignores the writer's satirical view of the degenerating nobility, and instead significantly strengthens the tragic notes.
Having inscribed a biography of an uncompromising Irishman in the cycle of turbulent military events, he leads his hero to absolute spiritual devastation in a peaceful life. Lyndon’s biographical paradox is that while he was drifting and remained a toy in the hands of fate, his career was rapidly moving upwards, but as soon as he began to give her exceptional attention, one tangible defeat immediately followed another.
After Burgess' "lively" film adaptation, "Barry Lyndon" looks like an overly academic creation: from the signature Kubrikov's mannerism for the first time, it blows ecumenical cold. However, this parable of the obedience looks incredible, even excessively beautiful, striking both the exquisiteness of the scenery and costumes, and the colors of the landscape, as if illustrating classical painting (actually, special optics were even developed for this purpose by the operator John Olcott).
It could not have been otherwise: Kubrick, being a pronounced perfectionist, spent nine months on shooting alone. As a result, for the umpteenth time, he brought to white heat producers who were seriously frightened not only by the “gestation periods”, but also by the “size of the newborn”, since the duration of the film, even after all the editing cuts, was exactly three hours.
But the fate of the villain once again left not the fate of the “father of the child”, noting the efforts of numerous “uncles and aunts, godfathers and grand-nephews”. The Oscars went to the operator, decorators, costume designers, and for the first time (besides just music), Leonard Rosenman, a musical adaptation of the 19th century classic, was awarded the prize. Actually, directorial efforts were encouraged only by the British, who gave Kubrick their main BAFTA award.
