Stanley Kubrick's screenplay adaptation and direction of Thackeray's Barry Lyndon (1975) is VERY POOR, in my opinion.
The two main characters, Barry Lyndon and Lady Lyndon are portrayed as deadpan through the whole film. This is particularly weird for the Barry character since his life story, the topic of the film, undergoes great transformations from start to finish. Yet, Ryan O'Neal, as Barry, looks like a lifeless, emotionless mannequin just reciting his script lines for almost the entire film. Marissa Berenson, as Lady Lyndon, is also a lifeless, emotionless mannequin just reciting script lines, although she is portrayed as being seduced by Barry while still being married to her elderly husband, although the narrator says that she falls in love with Barry before her husband suddenly dies, and although Barry is blowing her fortune and openly cheating in front of her after their marriage. It is true that the film is set in 18th Century England, when we would expect "propriety and decorum" to dominate more than today, but the flat, emotionless portrayal of the two main characters in such a tumultuous storyline is just unreal and just indicates a VERY POOR directing job by Stanley Kubrick.
I was even more amazed when I read a Wikipedia summary of William Thackeray's The Luck Of Barry Lyndon (1844). In the original novel, Thackeray definitely sets up Barry Lyndon as a hot tempered young man at the start of the novel, using this as his motivation for his duel over his cousin Nora. In the novel, Barry is not the victim of highway robbers, but makes it all the way to Dublin, where he immediately begins hanging around with low lifes and accrues so much gambling debt that he joins the British Army just to escape. Wiki says Barry seduces and bullies Lady Lyndon into marrying him. The novel not only has Barry's stepson Lord Bullington join the British Army to fight in the American Revolution, but has Barry plotting long distance to have Lord Bullington deliberately killed in battle in America.
Although I'm the first to say that an auteur should have the creative freedom to revise a screen adaptation of a novel however much he wants, it is VERY STRANGE to me that Kubrick BOTH revised the storyline of the original novel and focused his direction of the main characters in a way that turned his main characters into such lifeless, emotionless, script reciting mannequins. What kills me is that Wiki's plot summary of the novel reveals Barry Lyndon to be a truly colorful and adventuresome guy, a character who already would be a wonderful film character. So what the hell was Kubrick thinking here?? I don't know, but he FAILED BADLY as far as I'm concerned.
The elaborate and obviously expensive costumes, period settings, and period accessories such as the horse drawn coaches in this film make it even more puzzling to me what Kubrick was thinking in his production of this film, that is, if he was thinking at all. In any case, elaborate and obviously expensive costumes, period settings, and period accessories do not compensate for a POOR screen adaptation of a novel, and for POOR direction, and that's all I can see in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1972).
Anyone who thinks that this is a great film must first start with the assumption that Kubrick is a great filmmaker and then work his way backward from that assumption to justify the "greatness" of this film. I just don't see it any other way.
The two main characters, Barry Lyndon and Lady Lyndon are portrayed as deadpan through the whole film. This is particularly weird for the Barry character since his life story, the topic of the film, undergoes great transformations from start to finish. Yet, Ryan O'Neal, as Barry, looks like a lifeless, emotionless mannequin just reciting his script lines for almost the entire film. Marissa Berenson, as Lady Lyndon, is also a lifeless, emotionless mannequin just reciting script lines, although she is portrayed as being seduced by Barry while still being married to her elderly husband, although the narrator says that she falls in love with Barry before her husband suddenly dies, and although Barry is blowing her fortune and openly cheating in front of her after their marriage. It is true that the film is set in 18th Century England, when we would expect "propriety and decorum" to dominate more than today, but the flat, emotionless portrayal of the two main characters in such a tumultuous storyline is just unreal and just indicates a VERY POOR directing job by Stanley Kubrick.
I was even more amazed when I read a Wikipedia summary of William Thackeray's The Luck Of Barry Lyndon (1844). In the original novel, Thackeray definitely sets up Barry Lyndon as a hot tempered young man at the start of the novel, using this as his motivation for his duel over his cousin Nora. In the novel, Barry is not the victim of highway robbers, but makes it all the way to Dublin, where he immediately begins hanging around with low lifes and accrues so much gambling debt that he joins the British Army just to escape. Wiki says Barry seduces and bullies Lady Lyndon into marrying him. The novel not only has Barry's stepson Lord Bullington join the British Army to fight in the American Revolution, but has Barry plotting long distance to have Lord Bullington deliberately killed in battle in America.
Although I'm the first to say that an auteur should have the creative freedom to revise a screen adaptation of a novel however much he wants, it is VERY STRANGE to me that Kubrick BOTH revised the storyline of the original novel and focused his direction of the main characters in a way that turned his main characters into such lifeless, emotionless, script reciting mannequins. What kills me is that Wiki's plot summary of the novel reveals Barry Lyndon to be a truly colorful and adventuresome guy, a character who already would be a wonderful film character. So what the hell was Kubrick thinking here?? I don't know, but he FAILED BADLY as far as I'm concerned.
The elaborate and obviously expensive costumes, period settings, and period accessories such as the horse drawn coaches in this film make it even more puzzling to me what Kubrick was thinking in his production of this film, that is, if he was thinking at all. In any case, elaborate and obviously expensive costumes, period settings, and period accessories do not compensate for a POOR screen adaptation of a novel, and for POOR direction, and that's all I can see in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1972).
Anyone who thinks that this is a great film must first start with the assumption that Kubrick is a great filmmaker and then work his way backward from that assumption to justify the "greatness" of this film. I just don't see it any other way.