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Cynical, ironic, and suffused with seductive natural lighting, Barry Lyndon is a complex character piece of a hapless man doomed by Georgian society.
All Critics (67) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (63) | Rotten (4) | DVD (6)
The wonderfully dry and witty narration is from Thackeray, delivered by Michael Horder. Feb 4, 2019 | Rating: 4/4 | Full Review…
The wonderfully dry and witty narration is from Thackeray, delivered by Michael Horder.
Michael Wilmington
There are few films so sumptuous that you almost require fabric swatches while watching -- peachy moiré silks, red brocades, eau de nil satins, lilac-grey velvets -- and that's just the menswear and the furniture. Jul 29, 2016 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
There are few films so sumptuous that you almost require fabric swatches while watching -- peachy moiré silks, red brocades, eau de nil satins, lilac-grey velvets -- and that's just the menswear and the furniture.
Kate Muir
The great director's least satisfying, most disconcerting film - and that's what makes it extraordinary. Jul 25, 2016 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
The great director's least satisfying, most disconcerting film - and that's what makes it extraordinary.
Tom Huddleston
Its story of an 18th-century social climber, adapted from Thackeray, unfolds in Gainsborough-esque landscapes and in rooms lit either by milky-white sunshine or shimmering candle flames. Feb 5, 2009 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
Its story of an 18th-century social climber, adapted from Thackeray, unfolds in Gainsborough-esque landscapes and in rooms lit either by milky-white sunshine or shimmering candle flames.
Edward Porter
One of cinema's most heartfelt and sustained (it runs over three hours), if cynical, visions of an individual's powerlessness. Jan 30, 2009 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
One of cinema's most heartfelt and sustained (it runs over three hours), if cynical, visions of an individual's powerlessness.
Wally Hammond
It's a work of technical brilliance and considerable beauty; the slow and deliberate pacing only serves to make Barry's adventures more fascinating. Jan 30, 2009 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
It's a work of technical brilliance and considerable beauty; the slow and deliberate pacing only serves to make Barry's adventures more fascinating.
Wendy Ide
Barry Lyndon is a deeply felt, sometimes brutally ironic, and always visually gorgeous summation of the wide breadth of human experience. Mar 20, 2019 | Rating: 4/4 | Full Review…
Barry Lyndon is a deeply felt, sometimes brutally ironic, and always visually gorgeous summation of the wide breadth of human experience.
James Kendrick
It's a stunning, sumptuous and sustained meditation on man's ultimate powerlessness. Mar 20, 2019 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
It's a stunning, sumptuous and sustained meditation on man's ultimate powerlessness.
List Staff
Barry Lyndon is, despite its rigorous construction, also among Kubrick's more emotionally engaged films. Mar 20, 2019 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
Barry Lyndon is, despite its rigorous construction, also among Kubrick's more emotionally engaged films.
Donald Clarke
...a maddeningly hit-and-miss drama that's all-too-often far more miss than it is hit. Apr 30, 2018 | Rating: 2/4 | Full Review…
...a maddeningly hit-and-miss drama that's all-too-often far more miss than it is hit.
David Nusair
It just hangs there on the screen for three hours, a monument to Kubrick's patience and pedantry and rather laborious good taste, but signifying very little else. Apr 4, 2018 | Full Review…
It just hangs there on the screen for three hours, a monument to Kubrick's patience and pedantry and rather laborious good taste, but signifying very little else.
Michael Wood
The expressive authority of Kubrick's direction is breathtaking. Jan 1, 2017 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
The expressive authority of Kubrick's direction is breathtaking.
Kevin Harley
Visually as close as you'll get to seeing an masterpiece oil painting brought to vivid realization, the story concerns an impressionable young man who desires a better social class for himself which, as we all know, is easier said than done. Class struggle then, in spades, that boasts a pace and music score keeping with the era portrayed (If classical music makes you fidgety this may not be for you!). But the minute observations into societal pretense are a refreshing relevation. Enjoyable.
Super Reviewer
A fabulous picaresque tale - satirical and tragic - in which we see Kubrick make every splendid shot look like an authentic 18th-century painting while using a cynical and essentially cold approach to recount a long series of barely connected episodes in our anti-hero's ill-fated life.
My favorite Kubrick film by far. Epic story with fine costumes and sets -- and a soundtrack to die for.
Barry Lyndon is a fantastic epic helmed by Stanley Kubrick that boasts great performances and revolutionary and beautiful direction.
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