Word: kubrick
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...cannot go on indefinitely faulting Kubrick for the emotional content of the film. His last few films have been primarily intellectual. Unfortunately the field of the intellect here is as barren as the emotional landscape. Those of us who look to Kubrick as one of the few major directors capable of dealing with important issues on a grand scale must be disappointed. The film bypasses all the historical and social issues of the period in which it ostensibly takes place. The eighteenth century functions as a backdrop and no more. George III puts in a cameo appearance and speaks...
...remembered that Thackeray's Barry Lyndon is, unlike Kubrick's adaptation, an eminently comprehensible book. Kubrick's problems can be seen in that he had to go outside Thackeray and invent the only scene with real suspense, the final duel. Kubrick has always altered the material he films--but in the past he has enriched it; in this case he has imposed an artificial anemia...
WHEN CRITICS dislike a work they don't want to pan publicly, they shower superlatives on its technique. Barry Lyndon, critic after critic has written, is an extraordinarily beautiful film. Unwilling to admit they saw Barry Lyndon as a failure (because they know Kubrick is smarter than they are and may have one more trick up his sleeve), they tell us how "beautiful", how "visually stunning" this clunker is. Up to a point, they are right. Barry Lyndon is an unusually beautiful film. But $11 million still buys an awful lot of beauty in almost any art form and Barry...
...only way to argue that Kubrick's film is not a failure is to claim that it is a parody. Take a flawed novel no one's read, put a god-awful actor in the title role, put some second-rate music on the soundtrack instead of Beethoven or Strauss, and shoot an expensive glittering movie. Laugh as critics try to find meaning in vacuity...
...this was the film for which Hollywood gave Kubrick carte blanche. They won't want to do it again very soon. Movie audiences should be more forgiving, for we owe Kubrick more than we can ever repay. But this time around you'd be better off watching Masterpiece Theater...