Barry Lyndon [Blu-ray]

Format : NTSC, Widescreen
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Company : Warner Brothers
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Product Description

One of the most beautiful films ever made, and the winner of four Academy Awardsr including Best Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design, "Barry Lyndon" features Ryan O'Neal ("Love Story," TV's "Small Sacrifices") as a rags-to-riches Irish gambler and hero-rogue who moves from innocence to self-destructive arrogance in this masterpiece by director Stanley Kubrick ("2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange," "Full Metal Jacket"). Rich in drama and decadence, this is a stunning, visually opulent adaptation of the classic Thackeray novel set in 18th century England, that Leonard Maltin praises as "exquisite." Boasting meticulous period details, down to the breathtaking cinematography using what would have been the only artificial light source in the era -- candlelight -- on ultra-sensitive film stock developed specially for Kubrick. Co-starring model-turned-actress Marisa Berenson ("Cabaret").

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In 1975 the world was at Stanley Kubrick's feet. His films Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, released in the previous dozen years, had provoked rapture and consternation--not merely in the film community, but in the culture at large. On the basis of that smashing hat trick, Kubrick was almost certainly the most famous film director of his generation, and absolutely the one most likely to rewire the collective mind of the movie audience. And what did this radical, at-least-20-years-ahead-of-his-time filmmaker give the world in 1975? A stately, three-hour costume drama based on an obscure Thackeray novel from 1844. A picaresque story about an Irish lad (Ryan O'Neal, then a major star) who climbs his way into high society, Barry Lyndon bewildered some critics (Pauline Kael called it "an ice-pack of a movie") and did only middling business with patient audiences. The film was clearly a technical advance, with its unique camerawork (incorporating the use of prototype Zeiss lenses capable of filming by actual candlelight) and sumptuous production design. But its hero is a distinctly underwhelming, even unsympathetic fellow, and Kubrick does not try to engage the audience's emotions in anything like the usual way.

Why, then, is Barry Lyndon a masterpiece? Because it uncannily captures the shape and rhythm of a human life in a way few other films have; because Kubrick's command of design and landscape is never decorative but always apiece with his hero's journey; and because every last detail counts. Even the film's chilly style is thawed by the warm narration of the great English actor Michael Hordern and the Irish songs of the Chieftains. Poor Barry's life doesn't matter much in the end, yet the care Kubrick brings to the telling of it is perhaps the director's most compassionate gesture toward that most peculiar species of animal called man. And the final, wry title card provides the perfect Kubrickian sendoff--a sentiment that is even more poignant since Kubrick's premature death. --Robert Horton

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