Spotlight on Barry Lyndon: Stanley Kubrick’s masterful visual ambition

Adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel, Barry Lyndon charts the rise and subsequent fall of Redmond Barry, a young 18th century opportunistic Irishman, accepted into aristocracy under the name of Barry Lyndon. Portraying duels, treason, and demise, Kubrick paints a cynical and cruel picture of blue-blooded society. After the cutting-edge visceral nature of A Clockwork Orange (1971), the filmmaker makes an audacious foray into costume drama, going against the conventions of the genre and instead imposing his own hitherto unseen esthetic imagination onto the screen.

The film’s most astonishing feature remains the lighting; Kubrick wanted Barry Lyndon to be reminiscent of paintings by 18th century masters such as Vermeer or Watteau. To achieve this feat, certain scenes were filmed by candlelight using special lenses initially developed for NASA. “I wanted to create an image that would never betray its era,” the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey explains. “The light had to seem natural, as if it were coming from a tableau vivant.”

Several anecdotes illustrating the filmmaker’s obsessive attention to detail have become part of movie lore, most famously the notion that the costumes were being sewn solely with period fabrics, without any contemporary alterations. And the technical team had to watch its step at every turn; the cameras set up with these special lenses were so sensitive that the slightest movement could ruin a shot.

With Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick delivers an esthetic masterpiece, expanding the technical boundaries of cinema. Long underappreciated, this film, created to be like a moving work of art, is today renowned as the height of visual artistry and formal innovation.