By Matt Zoller Seitz
Stanley Kubrick's 1975 epic "Barry Lyndon," which plays tonight and tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art, is perhaps his most uncompromising work, in the sense that of all Kubrick's films, it offers the least of what we'd call "entertainment value." It's not as raucous and cruelly funny as "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Clockwork Orange," or awesomely chaotic as "Full Metal Jacket" or as cleverly structured as "The Killing." It has a sense of humor, but it's so slyly sharp -- like a needle made of ice -- that the film's jokes register as tremors of discomfort. It's the hardest of hardcore Kubrick, so hermetic that it makes "2001: A Space Odyssey" seem embracing. At least "2001" offered audiences spectacular sci-fi vistas they had never seen before; the main innovations of "Lyndon," besides John Alcott's justly praised, candlelit interiors, lie in the way the story is told.
The director's methods are so precise, so intelligent, and to this day, so necessary, that I consider the film his greatest achievement -- a Kubrick film that takes a more cosmic view of humankind's folly than any other, including "2001"; a clinical epic which deliberately puts a vast chasm of identification between the characters and the viewer, a chasm which must then be bridged through sheer willpower and empathy. But if you stick with the movie, if you make the effort to cross that chasm, the effort is well worth it. If you adapt to Kubrick's particular storytelling syntax and give yourself over to his detached tone, you find yourself thinking about the human race in a different way, not as a collection of individuals or nations, but as a species -- as animals in clothes, animals who are mainly interested in survival and the accumulation of resources, animals who have the capacity to reason but don't use it as often as they should, but who feel the loss of loved ones and the dashing of their own hopes as acutely as any creature, perhaps more so. Once you've hit that stage of perception, suddenly the film stops seeming cold and becomes intensely moving, because the tragedy of Sir Redmond Barry and his wife and their immediately family has become everyone's tragedy in microcosm.
I've been evangelizing about this movie since I saw it in high school. In college I even organized a "Barry Lyndon"-watching party, dragooning several classmates who had announced themselves to me as Kubrick fans (based mainly on having seen "A Clockwork Orange" and "Full Metal Jacket," the Kubrick films that seem to attract the greatest number of new initiates). I loaded up the movie on VHS -- not ideal viewing conditions, admittedly, but the best I could do at the time -- and was distressed when the audience (about six people) immediately began to stir. But nobody left, and after 45 minutes, they were riveted, and by the time the film's saddest moment occured, the viewer I'd initially thought would have ducked out much earlier -- my biggest, toughest, most deep-voiced friend -- cried out, hoarsely, "Goddamn it! That's just not fair!"
Here's a link to my New York Press appreciation of "Barry Lyndon," originally published during the movie's 25th anniversary Film Forum run in 2000. I also suggest Mark Crispin Miller's "Barry Lyndon Reconsidered," originally published in 1976 in the Georgia Review, and Jim Emerson's marvelous Cinepad appreciation, which is written in a cool, lofty, fragmented style that honors both Kubrick and Thackeray. The latter includes a line I wish I'd written, describing how Kubrick and Alcott's compositions create "a world clamped tightly inside a rectangle."
Friday, January 06, 2006
"They are all equal now."
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Some fun cinematograpy trivia about Barry Lyndon: John Alcott (who got an oscar for this picture) used a special wide-angle lens that was originally built for NASA. It had the biggest aperture ever used in film (f 0,7) -- which made the candle lit scenes possible. And yes, there were no artifical lights used in those shots!
Matt, what do you think of Eyes Wide Shut? For me, that and Lyndon are Kubrick's great accomplishments, though obviously with someone like Kubrick this is a difficult call.
I love EYES WIDE SHUT, for reasons too complicated and effusive to go into right now because it's really late and I should go to bed. For now I'd point you to Lee Siegel's 1999 appreciation in HARPER'S, which answered Kubrick's pettier and more clueless critics just as Mark Crispin Miller (one of my critic heroes) answered similar objections to LYNDON way back when. (Read that Miller piece I linked to, if you haven't already. It's stunning and nearly definitive.)
Siegel based much of his essay around some very basic, clearly deliberate parallels between EYES WIDE SHUT and Homer's ODYSSEY (a work that was obviously dear to Kubrick's heart). The gist was that it's not a literal film, but a dream film, a domestic epic poem in which Cruise's character, like Odysseus, is blown off course by a massive life disruption, displaced to a testing ground far from home, then forced to find his way back to his Penelope. Kubrick's hero, like Homer's, encounters women who represent some aspect of his wife and is given the opportunity to fuck each one, but doesn't. It's only at the end, when he's reunited with his true wife, the representation of all those facets put together, the non-abstract, flesh-and-blood mate, that he can truly unite with her. It takes a living dream to make his wife real. (The film's last spoken word is "Fuck," and that word never sounded more tender.)
I saw the movie very late at night on a weekday, and after it was over, I couldn't go home. It really shook me up. I felt compelled to walk around the city for 90 minutes thinking about what I'd seen. It was one of the most profound moviegoing experiences of my life. I later found out that my wife, who saw the film solo on a different night, had, unbeknowst to me, also walked around the city afterward thinking about what Kubrick had shown her. I married well.
That said, is it Kubrick's best? I don't know. As you say, it's hard to make such judgments with a filmmaker who did so much meaningful work, so many movies that reward close, repeat viewings. I might be misremembering, but Siegel (or maybe another critic? said that almost every Kubrick film was misunderstood or misappreciated by most critics when it first came out, but eventually outlasted them and made their gripes seem kind of silly.
That's an occupational hazard of this job, which is all about making snap judgments in print -- I've delivered some totally stupid first impression reviews of movies I later realized were good or even great -- but at least people like Siegel and Miller are capable of stepping up and nudging the thousand-car freight train of American criticism in the vicinity of the right track.
Sorry, I just realized that link is no good, and none of the others I found are any good, either. Does anyone reading this know where to find Siegel's piece?
I've read the Harper's piece you're talking about and in fact made copies because it was so well thought out I had to share it with friends. My experience with EWS was somewhat different from yours. Initially, I was disappointed with it but it stayed with me and nagged at me in ways few other films ever do. Over the course of time I collected quite a bit of writing on the film and have developed my own thoughts on it much more thoroughly. I now see it as a profound and inexhaustible work, open to so many different avenues of interpretation as to make its potential revelatory power almost limitless. But as you say, that goes for everything Stanley touched.
http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/films/ews/
reviews/harpers.html
Matt: here's that Siegel piece...
Thanks, Sean!
I am a film school graduate turned financial analyst who, for many years, has drifted through mass quantities of film buffs, art lovers, and Kubrick enthusiasts in search of someone who will hold this film in the same regard as me. BARRY LYNDON is, for me, probably Kubrick's most mesmerizing and brilliant film. For years, it has shifted through my top 5 of my forever morphing favorite films of all times list. It is hypnotic and works so many levels. Yet, many lovers of Kubrick refuse to consider BL his best film or in the same category of 2001, etc. I know it has been a few years since you wrote this but better late than never. Finally, Matt, I have found someone else who admires this film as much as me. So, thank you. I look forward to your other articles.
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