KUBRICK MOVIE REVIEW, by Irene Costanzo
Title: Barry Lyndon
Space & Time: UK-France-Germany, 1750s-1789
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Genre: Historical Drama
Main Cast: Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson
Secondary Cast: Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger, Leonard Rossiter
Plot: An Irish boy shoots a man in duel, and is forced to leave the country. He joins the army, and after various adventures, he manages to get a reputation and become Lord, but the downfall is always behind the door.
My review (contains minor spoilers):
I would like to start this paragraph in a more elegant way, but I have the urge to get immediately to the point: this movie is an absolute masterpiece. The lights, the dialogues, the costumes, the acting: everything is brilliant yet simple. The plot itself is very simple and used in many other movies, the usual “from rugs to riches”: the poor man who becomes rich, yet also greedy, and the downfall begins; but here, in this film, what is majestic it’s the way the story is portrayed. We grow up with Redmond (O’Neal), from a middle class Irish teenager, to a young soldier, to a rich married man, to finally, an old man without a leg and without the glory he once had. Another great detail of this movie it’s how Kubrick decided to shoot it: natural lights, natural sounds; candles and the sun were the only source of light on the set. He decided to give the most realistic experience to the viewers, making every single shot look like a painting belonging to that time. We see a beautiful scene of the duels, and the battle against the French, or the last shot where Marisa Berenson and other actors are sitting at a table counting the debts they still have to pay; the camera slowly zooms out of the table, showing the entire, big room. The music is also one of the best soundtracks that has ever been composed; the main theme “Sarabande”, is extremely powerful: only listening to it, you can picture the entire movie. I really recommend it!
