Barry Lyndon

Of all the films in the Kubrick canon, it is perhaps Barry Lyndon that is in most need of re-examination and rehabilitation. In the 'Sight and Sound' retrospective following the director's death in 1999, the film was barely mentioned; critics and cultural commentators preferring instead to concentrate on his great baroque misfire Eyes Wide Shut or the Grand Guignol hysterics of The Shining. The recently screened TV documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures eschewed any real discussion of Barry Lyndon's cinematic influence, style or content; instead it was left to the suitably staccato pronouncements of Martin Scorsese to lend an air of gravitas to a sadly neglected, yet technically brilliant film. But technical brilliance goes hand in hand with Kubrick - his mastery of framing and pacing, of actors directed to within an inch of their lives, of a mise-en-scène so totally co-ordinated by a director whose pathological perfectionism accounts for the sheer majestic formality of his films. Dubbed "Kubrick's costume drama", the film has come under attack for being too long, too self-indulgent, and in Ryan O'Neal, a somnabulatory performance that alienates the audience.

Yet the evidence suggests otherwise. With seven Academy Award nominations (winning four awards), the film set the trend for the Merchant-Ivory invasion of 1990s American cinema. And Malick's Days of Heaven (1978) notwithstanding, it is the most beautiful film ever made. Filmed amidst a Constable landscape, its fabulous photography, particularly in the indoor scenes, leave a searing impression on our conscience. Wanting to use only natural lighting and candlelight, Kubrick fashioned an exceptionally smooth and rich look (right down to the colours of the fabrics, which rather than being bleached out by artificial illumination, look and feel intuitively real). Windows assume a fluorescent character and contrast with the gloom of the unlit room corners. The score, always so integral to Kubrick's vision is also reminiscent of the period, a subtle combination of Irish folk tunes by The Chieftains and Schubert's E-minor Trio. Indeed, the whole film is a tour de force of 18th century decor - few can fail to marvel at John Alcott's verdant cinematography or Ken Adam's intricate production design, and watching the film on the newly released DVD version (also included as part of a seven part Kubrick box set) is a testament to the film's overarching painterly qualities.

But of course Barry Lyndon isn't just a costume drama (just in the way that Full Metal Jacket is not just a war film, nor The Shining a horror film); instead it is a film working on many extra-narrative and significant levels. Kubrick seems to be illustrating, I think, the difficulty of man trying to become ruler of his own world. The characters are all striving for greatness, but can never escape fate. Literally crushed by the totalising frames of the film, the people of Barry Lyndon can never gravitate outside of the world that has been designed and framed for them. Full of ascerbic social critique, the audience, who were presumably expecting some kind of picaresque adventure along the lines of Tony Richardson's Tom Jones (1963), were bound to be disappointed by Kubrick's clinical distancing style, that demands total immersion into a rigidly designed world and prevent the kind of anodyne spectator involvement that costume dramas frequently invoke. I recall in particular the scene where Barry breaks up his wife's harpsichord recital - a stark Kubrickian motif that foreshadows the domestic breakdowns in The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.

And as a literary adaptation, Kubrick doesn't perhaps pay full homage to Thackeray's source novel (predating his authorial struggles with Stephen King). Kubrick's Lyndon is a watered down version of the swaggering rogue of the original, all introspection and insipidness instead of braggadocio and bullishness. Maybe Ryan O'Neal is too softly spoken and introverted to convince as the great bon viveur of 18th century Arcadia, but as Scorsese recognised in the aforementioned documentary, O'Neal's performance is a masterful example of less-as-more; his litheness in the duelling scenes juxtaposed to the robotic, dysfunctional movements as he seduces Marisa Berenson. Indeed, the casting of these two caused a storm back in 1975 - he the sallow TV heartthrob fresh from the success of Love Story (1970), she voted by Elle as 'the most beautiful girl in the world'. And yet their blank beauty perfectly complements the narrative arc and reinforces Kubrick's legendary stripping-down of his actors' outer shell. Kubrick's 'heroes' may tend to be stars (from Douglas and Mason in the 50s right up to Nicholson and Cruise) but he always recognised that once he had contracted them to the film, he could strip away their star persona and examine their crises of masculinity within the crucible of a claustrophobic, highly artificial environment.

And as with any Kubrick film, the legends and anecdotes survive - that he researched the type of lice that would be found in the wigs, or the varieties of condoms and toothbrushes that would have been available. As for the tell-all narration that annoyed so many at the time (including the late, great Pauline Kael), that's the whole point - Michael Hordern's mellifluous tones reminding us of the inexorable concertina patterns of fate, unfolding Sphinx-like before us.

Kubrick's cult casting remains a strong residing motif of his films (Leonard Rossiter and Steven Berkoff rubbing shoulders with Patrick Magee and Hardy Kruger), and in the final duelling scene, he takes a single sentence from his own screenplay and fashions a ten-minute scene that intermingles fantasy, intensity and pathos. Yet it is that candlelight scene that will remain etched forever on the memory of Kubrick completists, movie technicians and costume drama aficionados - rouged alabaster skin illuminated by dancing fingers of light, and all the while Kubrick's omniscient camera-eye pulling back to point zero.

Reviewed by Ben McCann