Barry Lyndon review

 Number 228 on the top 1000 films of all time is Stanley Kubrick's 1975 epic historical drama 'Barry Lyndon.'

Based on William Makepeace Thackery's novel 'the Luck of Barry Lyndon,' Barry Lyndon (Ryan O'Neal) follows the eponymous Irish rogue as he wiles his way into the upper echelons of society through marrying the rich widow Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) and ingratiating himself into her family and life.

Barry Lyndon really surprised me. As you may have gathered from some of my other reviews, I neither care for epics or period dramas of which Barry Lyndon was both. They're vague, overly-long and tedious. They're so boring. Yet I found Barry Lyndon to be very watchable. 

Did it need to be three hours long? Absolutely not. The pacing was incredibly slow, which was hardly helped by how the accompanying musical score was slow, serene and happy. That hardly helped to ratchet up the tension. Plus there were lots of shots of the characters sitting around doing very little.

But despite all that I thoroughly enjoyed Barry Lyndon. As a character, Lyndon is pretty despicable. He is charming on the surface, but he also has a darker side which regularly comes out when he doesn't get his way. However, he is still interesting to watch. I was intrigued to keep watching just to see whether he gets his just desserts or not, which *spoiler alert* he inevitably does. O'Neal made him a charismatic and three-dimensional character. It worked well enough to stop him from becoming a cliched cartoon villain.

Another reason period-dramas don't work for me is either the lack of stakes or stakes being so artificially produced that they become over-blown and contrived. Neither of these was the case with Barry Lyndon. There was plenty of drama. It was presented in a natural and authentic way, as we see Lyndon navigate obstacle after obstacle. He goes from duelling a rival to fighting for the English in the Seven-Year war to fighting for the Prussians in the Seven-Year war to becoming a gambler and hustler to marrying the widowed Lady Lyndon and then coming full-circle by duelling his stepson Lord Bullingdon. It is quite a journey.

Barry Lyndon really surprised me. I went into the film absolutely dreading it, but it was thoroughly entertaining. I guess you can't judge a film by its genre classification.