Finally watching the Criterion Blu-Ray of Barry Lyndon I got for Christmas. I’m not sure if it’s the new restoration or the fact that it’s in the proper 1.66:1 aspect ratio, or maybe the fact that I haven’t watched it since I reviewed it for Anglotopia, but it’s almost like watching a new film.
It may be unusually slow and mannered, even for Kubrick, but it’s still really fascinating how much more I can pick up, from the racial politics (yes, at the time, the Irish were seen as so different from the British that, well, they may as well have been Black, up to and including monkey/ape comparisons), that Ryan O’Neal actually does try to do an Irish accent (it might not ring true, but at least he’s trying more than I remembered), the unnerving Tympani version of Händel’s Sarabande that plays at the duel scenes, or the occasional scenes where you can really see that, yes, the same director who made A Clockwork Orange really did also make this movie, for instance, the poisoning scene, the flashback to Bryan getting thrown off his horse, and this scene:
Also, apparently, Thackeray based Barry on an actual rake who married into nobility, cheated on his wife, and was a generally execrable human being.
It may be unusually slow and mannered, even for Kubrick, but it’s still really fascinating how much more I can pick up, from the racial politics (yes, at the time, the Irish were seen as so different from the British that, well, they may as well have been Black, up to and including monkey/ape comparisons), that Ryan O’Neal actually does try to do an Irish accent (it might not ring true, but at least he’s trying more than I remembered), the unnerving Tympani version of Händel’s Sarabande that plays at the duel scenes, or the occasional scenes where you can really see that, yes, the same director who made A Clockwork Orange really did also make this movie, for instance, the poisoning scene, the flashback to Bryan getting thrown off his horse, and this scene:
Also, apparently, Thackeray based Barry on an actual rake who married into nobility, cheated on his wife, and was a generally execrable human being.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.