In the scene where the step son walks in and confronts Barry with a walking stick, the people sitting in the background barely moved, if at all. It almost looked like a painting. Did anyone catch that? Is that a Kubrikesque film thing?
"Loves turned to lust and bloods turned to dust in my heart"
Yes, much of the film was photographed to look like a 'moving painting' from the mid-to-late 18th century, the historical period in which the film is set, and many of the scenes directly or indirectly recreate the painterly compositions of numerous 18th century painters, from Hogarth and Gainsborough to Fragonard, painters who painted in the style and movements of late-Baroque and Rococo. The scene you refer to above, of Bullingdon approaching Barry as he is slumped in a chair, as with some other scenes in the film, emulates a number of paintings of the British painter, William Hogarth, whose work was largely a satirical social commentary on the society of the 18th century. See, for instance, these Hogarth paintings, their striking similarity to shots in the film:
http://www.artribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/1Hogarth-Matrimonio-alla-moda-La-mattina-480x363.jpg
Or compare this Gainsborough painting with Barry and Lady Lyndon:
http://www.wikiart.org/en/thomas-gainsborough/mr-and-mrs-william-hallett-the-morning-walk-1785
Or compare this painting by Henri Fuseli with Lady Lyndon's writhing on the bed after her suicide attempt:
http://www.artribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2Johann-Heinrich-Füssli-480x383.jpg
There are hundreds of others. These two short Youtube videos make numerous comparisons between shots and scenes in the film and 18th century paintings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRAHI2kvz-c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rti_nDcnTPw
Yes, of course I completely agree, but aren't you actually completely wrong?
So what's the point of using 18th century English paintings? All I see is indolent colonialists. I guess I have to be British to see it. Downton Abby with better pedigree. It's really weird for NY guy to make this film.
share""Telling a story realistically is such a slowpoke and ponderous way to proceed, and it doesn’t fulfill the psychic needs that people have. We sense that there’s more to life and to the universe than realism can possibly deal with."----SK
"So what's the point of using 18th century English paintings?"
Not just English, but also Italian, French, Danish, Dutch etc. The dominant cultural and arts movement in mid-to-late (ie up to the French Revolution) Europe was late-Baroque and Rococo, which originated primarily in Italy and France, quickly spreading elsewhere, including England.
Why emulate 18th century paintings in a film that is set in the 18th century? They are the only direct visual record, the only spectral historical traces, of that era. But he's not doing this in order to be 'realistic', but to reveal the fictions, fantasies and lies underlying that reality, to reveal the truths that such a reality represses: the Real in the reality itself. For it is by means of fiction that we can glimpse the Real.
This was Kubrick's basic aesthetic strategy in most all of his films, from "2001" to "Eyes Wide Shut" ... Of creating an ostensible, detailed 'realism', a credible context and backdrop. And then exploding it, undermining it, scrambling it (the ultimate example would be the Dawn of Man sequence in 2001).
"All I see is indolent colonialists. I guess I have to be British to see it."
Not at all. I'm not British. And the film, when it was released, was a 'box-office hit', not in Britain but in other countries, like France.
"Downton Abby with better pedigree."
But "Downton Abbey" is an obscene glorification and pseudo-romanticisation of class privilege, prejudice and bigotry, a reactionary fantasy of Restoration of a regressive, even pre-bourgeoise aristocratic feudalism, all presented as if such a fundamentally anti-democratic, anti-ethical and deranged ideology is 'natural' and 'reasonable' and 'normal' (ideology always presents itself as if its political determinations are normal, natural, 'non-political', an 'anti-political' politics, which is what makes it so oppressive and mortifying).
Whereas "Barry Lyndon" is a critique and satire of such madness, of such a barbaric (masquerading as 'civilised') social reality.
"It's really weird for NY guy to make this film."
I don't think so. An outsider will often see things in a more critical light, will see things that 'locals' have blinded themselves to on account of their ubiquity, familiarity, immersion, of taking things for granted. Recall another satire directed by a US filmmaker on bourgeoise English elites, albeit set in the 1930s: Robert Altman's Gosford Park"
Yes, of course I completely agree, but aren't you actually completely wrong?
There is an aspect of glorification, nostalgia that general viewers come out with. Let's be real, Kubrick loved the English, no? That's why it's a parochial movie. I couldn't care less for the lives of the English colonialists.
We have to talk about Kevin, I mean the incestuous relationship between the US and UK. It is weird for an American or a Chinese (Ang Lee) to make movies about the UK. No one is making movies about the oldest novel in the world, Lady Murasaki.
"There is an aspect of glorification, nostalgia that general viewers come out with."
No. That's equivalent to someone going to see Spielberg's "Schindler's List", or Polanski's "The Pianist", or numerous other Holocaust-related movies and then claiming that they are pro-Nazi glorifications of anti-Semitism.
"Let's be real, Kubrick loved the English, no?"
That isn't being 'real'; that's retreating into blind bigotry. Kubrick lived in England in order to maintain a healthy distance from his funders/financiers, from Hollywood, to maintain a degree of autonomy in his dealings and film projects. It has nothing to do with 'loving' or 'hating' entire populations of countries (the ultimate manifestation of irrational and deranged paranoid bigotry). After "A Clockwork Orange" and the unhinged, witch-hunt Kubrick was subjected to by the cynical and pseudo-pious tabloid media in England, and his response to it, it would be ridiculous to claim that he was some kind of sychophant to some misty wooly-eyed fantasy of a racialized "Englishness".
"That's why it's a parochial movie. I couldn't care less for the lives of the English colonialists."
But it's your dismissiveness and indifference to these things that is parochial, like claiming that because one couldn't care less about the wider cosmos, that therefore the wider cosmos is parochial!.
The film isn't 'about' caring for the lives of mass plunderers, mass murderers (ie colonialists), but about examining the nature of such oppression, its insanity, including its consequences.
Yes, of course I completely agree, but aren't you actually completely wrong?
"No. That's equivalent to someone going to see Spielberg's "Schindler's List", or Polanski's "The Pianist", or numerous other Holocaust-related movies and then claiming that they are pro-Nazi glorifications of anti-Semitism."
But those viewers are not German, and mostly not Jewish. They are made for American audiences. Are you denying that there's a general nostalgia, identification with modern viewers for the English of the past? Even if it's a critique, all those other films also have some critique. Fine, you deny that, but the popularity of all American shows are about the English.
But that's not my main point. Let me be blunt: Why should anyone care about the English when every god damn movie is made about them, or a Hollywood adaptation about them? I am sorry but even the west is not Western in reality. It is parochial because there are far more bigger stories you can tell, like I mentioned before, than every god damn English novel we have to see a movie about.
Having said that, it's not about the quality of the film I complain, more a sociological reason. It almost seems like, movie makers with awesome power throughout the world (and you have no idea how powerful that is in the psyche of non-western people) are under pressure to explore 'outside America', they go to England. Fine, you can identify with issues being dealt in this movie in an intelligent manner because you are so used to them, all I see is colonizers.
You've somewhat wandered way off topic here, introducing non sequiturs and red herrings. But to address some of the points raised:
"But those viewers are not German, and mostly not Jewish."
Those films are mass-market commodities made to maximize distribution (and profits) to a globalized capitalist system, shown in a majority of countries throughout the world. They were indeed viewed by Germans, as well as those identifying with Judaism (both of the directors have Jewish backgrounds, though obviously they don't practice that religion, being liberal-conservative capitalists).
"Are you denying that there's a general nostalgia, identification with modern viewers for the English of the past?"
No, I was arguing otherwise, that Kubrick's film is very far from being some uncritical, sentimentalist romp romanticizing some imaginary past, idealizing and mythologizing it.
Many contemporary viewers are not being nostalgic about these imagined pasts, because they were not even born at the time; nostalgia relates to the remembrance of past actual experience, of remembering and re-imagining a past that is past, that cannot be repeated, a 'lost' past: what we cannot repeat we are condemned to memorize, remember, re-imagine, just as what we cannot remember, what we repress, we are condemned to repeat ... Rather, they retreat into the 'nostalgic mode', into the forms of the past, latching on to such dead, anachronistic forms, fictions and myths as an anxious response to the nihilism of the present, as a hysterical response to the chaos, uncertainty, precariousness of contemporary global capitalism, of a hedonic-nihilistic 'neo-liberal' consumerism and the narcissism on which it runs and which it manufactures. But they (and 'they' is here most everyone at this dark juncture in postmodern contemporaneity) do this not to actually escape this capitalist system, nor even to challenge it, but as a support for it: it serves to create a fake distance from it, a pseudo-escape, an appealing or reassuring myth, fantasy or superstition, a fetishistic alibi that then enables everyone to submit to the system, to conform to it, to reproduce it and perpetuate it in their daily reality, as their daily reality. Everyone is complicit in this to varying degrees; it is how the contemporary ideology works.
Yes, of course I completely agree, but aren't you actually completely wrong?
Just wanted to make it clear: it's like if you ask people, "who's the most evil person in history?", the all say Hitler. Hold on, this is parochial. The most evil person of that era is obviously Hirohito, not the Nazis but the Japanese Military complex. They have killed far, far more people in Asia, especially China, than the Jews and Europe. And they were far more brutal, going so far as to an anecdote that the Germans were horrified of what the Japanese did. Everyone sees the numbers are right there, but somehow ignores it. Why? Because maybe those lives don't really matter.
This is parochialism. And this parochialism infests throughout the world. Now even the Chinese are saying it's Hitler. What do we have to thank for for this skewed, disgusting view of things? Why Western movie industry of course. Or at least a big part of it. "Those immoral westerners, they had fascinating lives, while they had their faults in killing our people they say, but they are interesting, because that's the only *beep* we have".
"Barry Lyndon" is "parochial" because it focuses on "white colonialists" and ignores the "Japanese Military Complex" which is "very bad" and did "much worse things than white people" and "Hirohito is worse than Hitler"?
This is parochialism. And this parochialism infests throughout the world. Now even the Chinese are saying it's Hitler. What do we have to thank for for this skewed, disgusting view of things? Why Western movie industry of course. Or at least a big part of it. "Those immoral westerners, they had fascinating lives
I would love a more sensitive Japan bashing from Hollywood. Especially now when they are changing the constitution from pacifism.
The problem is there's some kind of big brother relationship the West has with Japan, even though Japan is huge (2x France or Germany, I think in terms of manpower, economy, and military). They used the US to become 2nd economy in the world, not to mention bankrupting US auto. Japan is not a little child, our relationship with China is far more important. I think you may be a little bit paternalistic in your view of history.
Aside from all that, Japan really messed up Asia. And they are rightfully angry, for example, the shrine, history teaching and all that. I would love Hollywood to remind what the Japanese did during the Nanjing Massacre. Millions of movies about the Holocaust, but not a single one about this event. This was the most horrific thing that happened, not just to the Chinese, but the whole world. They raped children on the streets, it's unthinkable for the Nazis to do that. But maybe, you don't really know about this stuff, and don't care, which is parochial of you.