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In
Defense of Barry Lyndon
This was written
in a thread discussing Kubrick's much-maligned masterpiece
BARRY LYNDON, which I consider to be quite possibly the greatest
of all his films. The original message text to which I responded
to is in italics:
May 21, 2003
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In the actual
presentation of the duel scene, there's nothing to interpret
in O'Neal void of a performance or in Kubrick's cold presentation.
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I have a lot of
trouble accepting this assertion, and you are certainly not
the first to make it, that O'Neal's performance is a void.
That's just not true. He may not be the most charismatic screen
presence in cinematic history but that doesn't necessarily
make him an empty character. MY TAKE (or do you want me to
assume the voice of God?), and it IS consistent with how one
sees Kubrick handling his actors from 2001 onward, in how
their off-kilter, not-quite-human, not-quite-automaton performances
share the same fence-straddling of his themes, in analyzing
how much of man is animal and how much is machine. I think
O'Neal's performance is an exemplar of this mode -- he is
a man who is perpetually caught in a tug of war between expressing
his true feelings and desires vs. restraining them in the
face of society, leading to a persona of incessant awkwardness.
If you feel like it's making too much of an apology for Kubrick,
i.e. it's awkward because it's supposed to be awkward, well,
I'm not sure how we can get past that impasse. But I do think
it speaks to a tension and a discomfort that cuts to the heart
of the movie's meaning, and for me it works.
And Kubrick's presentation
is NOT cold -- there's a lot going on in that scene, tonally
as well as thematically. Kubrick does so many things to give
that scene a certain feeling -- he chooses to stage the duel
indoors, giving the moment an intimacy and an immediacy that
exceeds anything that preceded it, he cranks the Handel up
to fever intensity, and in the midst of a highly structured
ritual he has a flock of cooing pigeons in the rafters to
wreak havoc on not only the duellists' concentration but the
solemnity of the proceedings. I think it's perfectly legitimate,
if not essential, to consider this film, not to mention all
of Kubrick's major works, as studies of the eternal war between
cool order vs. raging disorder, civilization vs. chaos, machine
vs. animal, and this duel scene explores these issues beautifully.
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I saw no shock
of recognition, unless we read such a moment into the scene
because of the story's plot. And that gets back to my claim
that there's a major disconnect between Thackeray's plot and
Kubrick's approach.
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Well is it written
in the Homeric handbook for filmmaking that we can't assume
that a viewer may be reminded of an earlier instance, or does
every scene have to stand alone in giving off it's own meaning?
This film is crowded with rhymes and with a pattern of recurring
history that seems to ripple into the world we live in today;
I don't know if that quality is attributable to the original
story or to Kubrick's adaptation; this rhyming and recurrence
is something you see, but in a more thickly drawn way, in
the three Kubrick films that preceded this one. I do know
that the climactic duel was not in the novel, and Kubrick
was brilliant in devising it to rhyme with the earlier duels.
In fact the whole movie can be seen as a series of duels --
almost every key scene involves Barry faced with one individual
who challenges him in some way or another, and his corresponding
responses lead him to his fate.
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I don't understand
this point of your's. When he fires into the ground, Lyndon
makes a choice -- possibly even a moral choice -- that has
a tremendous effect upon his future. Why do you think it's
not a choice? Why deny the poor guy the benefit of one of
his few decent moments?
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Ever heard of the
conflicting theories of free will vs. predestination? I remember
a while back when A CLOCKWORK ORANGE was touted by some as
being a supreme example of a film that studied the issue of
free will, but as far as I'm concerned this movie takes that
idea light years further, because it dives deep into the heart
of the paradox: how much of our lives are really in our control,
and how much are our decisions merely the products of circumstance?
You cannot simply dismiss my interpretation of the social
logic of that duel, as explained in my previous post, as over-interpretation,
because then you will have to do the same for pretty much
every other social interaction in every other scene between
Barry and whoever he is faced with. Now I'm not saying that
Kubrick is reducing all of these human interactions to a series
of mathematical equations -- because as Kubrick shows there
is something innately human about the way things keep getting
messed up due to moments of inexplicable behavior or sudden
outbursts of emotion.
Perhaps Barry's
firing away can be argued both ways. In terms of the algebra
of social etiquette, if he shoots at Bullingdon, he loses;
if he doesn't he might have a chance but either way it is
clear that he is at the mercy of a social milieu that despises
him; Bullingdon's misfiring has played him out. In terms of
human morality, it's more difficult to determine -- throughout
the film we have seen Barry give way to his emotions whenever
confronted with a deeply intimate moment. Maybe we can attribute
his "choice" to an altruistic compassion that "redeems" him
in our eyes, but I don't think it's that simple. Perhaps it's
best to leave this scene for a while and start off with an
earlier one, that might be more helpful in warming up to a
certain way of seeing this movie. Consider the romantic interlude
between Barry and the farm lady. there is so much going on
in their interactions: are they sincere when they speak to
each other? How much of this is emotional honesty and how
much is conniving to get what they want? Or is it even possible
to separate the two? Again, the paradoxical relationship between
human desire and social code.
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On the contrary,
the narrator never pretends to be objective. It's a pretty
wild idea that anyone would take a 19th century novel as objective
history. Kubrick's distanced presentation is the aspect of
the movie that seems to lay claim to a questionable objectivity.
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The narrator certainly
asserts an authoritative view, with his generalizations and
self-assured musings on humanity. People take movies about
the 19th century as being objective representations of that
world all the time! That's what I meant by historical representation.
In any case Thackeray's novel featured an unreliable narrator
-- Lyndon narrates the novel in a swaggering voice similar
to Alex in Clockwork Orange that calls question to his authoritative
representation of events. Kubrick wanted to do the same for
the screen adaptation, but he didn't want to go the same route
as his previous film (which in my view was an abject failure
in asserting unreliability in the narrator anyway). So he
went with the off-kilter voice-over narration, as well as
the continually backward-pulling camerawork, which repeatedly
seems to throw Barry's situation into relief and shift the
way we see. It creates a visual ambivalence -- NOT to be confused
with detachement -- that reminds us of the space between audience
and story (as well as the screen upon which it is projected),
not to have us feel alienated but quite the contrary: to provoke
the audience towards a more active level of engagement.
At least remain
open to the possibility that just because the film uses a
restrained approach doesn't mean it is completely devoid of
feeling or nuance or life -- it may just require an adjustment
of one's way of watching and interpreting the movie. It's
a different idiom, a Kubrickian idiom. I'm not even Kubrick's
biggest supporter (I have problems with his early work) but
I have no reservation in calling BARRY LYNDON his most heartfelt
take on humanity and perhaps even his most personal film,
despite what incredulous looks I might draw from its detractors
for those assertions. Sort of like Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE,
there's a facade of seemingly bemused nonchalant irony barely
concealing a world of heartache, but for me, the heartache
is most definitely there.
It's always a
challenge to argue on behalf of paradoxes without coming off
as self-contradicting, especially with someone like Kubrick.
But those are the tornadoes I choose to chase, and they are
what make films like EYES WIDE SHUT, FULL METAL JACKET and
BARRY LYNDON more fascinating for me at this moment than the
more obviously "meaningful" movies like CLOCKWORK ORANGE,
DR. STRANGELOVE and 2001. i don't think the first set of films
are "you can make anything you want out of them" movies, and
even if they were they'd still sustain my interest more than
the earlier more transparent work.
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