About

Based on the William Makepeace Thackeray novel of 1844, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon tells of the rise and fall of Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal), a roguish Irishman attempting to make his own luck, and to be accepted into high society. From fighting in the Seven Years’ War, to gambling his way out of Prussia and seducing a beautiful aristocratic widow (Marisa Berenson), the events of a life dictated by fate are told on an epic scale.

Set in the eighteenth century, Kubrick’s attention to historical detail in the film remains one of the great feats of cinema. Drawing on paintings of the era, particularly those of William Hogarth (1697-1764) and John Constable (1776-1837), Kubrick committed to depicting a world without electricity, where people were reliant on sunlight and flame for illumination. The intimate scenes shot inside stately homes, lit by candles, capture the huddle and glow of the pre-industrial world as never before seen on film. To achieve this, Kubrick and his cinematographer, John Alcott, reengineered a Zeiss lens which had been developed for NASA, allowing them to shoot in extremely low light. The entire film was then radically push-developed one stop. This extraordinary process resulted in one of the most visually resplendent films of all time, earning it four Academy Awards upon its release.

PG | Adult themes, Sexual references, Medium level violence