Barry Lyndon Review

The photography is the reason this endures and the reason it was dismissed on release. Kubrick acquired Zeiss lenses built for NASA at an aperture fast enough to shoot interiors by candlelight alone, and the resulting scenes have a soft, guttering, unelectric quality that no other film possesses. He composes exteriors after Gainsborough and Constable and pulls the camera slowly back from a face until the person is a detail in a landscape, which is the film's thesis stated visually about two hundred times.

The duel that closes it, conducted in a barn over an agonising stretch of missed shots and vomiting, is among his finest sequences. It is also cold on purpose and three hours long. Ryan O'Neal is a limited actor playing a limited man, and the film offers him nowhere to go. The narrator announces outcomes in advance, including the death of a child, which drains suspense deliberately and builds a wall between viewer and story. Admire it before you love it, and many never get past the first part.