Finally, I have watched this movie. My interest was driven first by the music choices (Sarabande and Schubert's Piano Trio in E-flat) and then by some still photos of the cinematography.
In some ways, Kubrick's choices in "Barry Lyndon" remind me of "Tar". The characters' feelings and motivations are deliberately obscured. There are mentions of the main characters' cruelty and harm onto others, but there is also explicit effort to win sympathy for them, including one of the most manipulative devices --- tenderness toward young children.
As expected, the music is beautiful and haunting, the cinematography is stunning. Many a shot leaves me with an illusion of witnessing a scene through a time machine. Well, not quite. The scenes tend to be a little too clean and orderly to be realistic, especially the battlefield ones. Rather, they tend to mimic classical paintings of the era, which are a sanitized version of daily life of aristocracy. The renowned candle-lit scenes, supposedly shot with no artificial light, and the indoor scenes have an eerie quality that is both realistic and dream like. Technically, it is every bit as good as the critical acclaims.
Nevertheless, something about Lady Lyndon bothered me. Every other characters is vividly drawn, including two other female characters and a dozen or so male characters. The only character that makes no sense whatsoever is Lady Lyndon. We see her son from her previous marriage complain about and fight with Barry over his depravity and greed that are ruining her, but she does nothing. In fact she barely speaks a line or two. Instead, we are treated with an occasional scene of Barry making love to her, on top of many scenes of his debauchery, and left with the impression that she is too in love with him to see his misconduct. We are supposed to believe that this conflict is entirely between the two men.
Out of curiosity I looked up the source materials, Thackeray's novel The Memoir of Barry Lyndon and the real-life person, Andrew Stoney Bowes, on which the novel was based. So the funny (ironic, not haha) thing is that Stoney married a rich heiress, Lady Bowes, for her money through an elaborate scam (involving a duel), and inside the marriage he not only squandered her fortune but also psychologically and physically abused her for eight years. He beat her frequently and severely. After she finally escaped with the help of a maid, he sent some guys to track her down, who also beat her and threatened to rape and kill her. She was fortunately rescued and then initiated a long and arduous process of divorce and, despite his various efforts to smear her reputation, won back her freedom and what's left of her estate.
Well I suppose no one would ever think that Lady Bowes' story was thrilling, terrifying, dramatic, or heroic enough to turn into a novel or a movie. In Thackeray's novel, it is at least mentioned that Barry admitted to beating his wife (but only when he was drunk, according to himself). In the movie, however, that detail is entirely absent, as all abuse and confrontations are transferred between the stepfather and stepson. To me, it is comparable to narrating the adventure of a Japanese solider in China during WWII without mentioning that he had chopped off a few civilians' heads. I am not against humanizing anyone, even the worst, but excuse me for puking a little over here.
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