Lyndon is Stanley Kubrick’s third historical film after Paths of Glory and Spartacus. It is a searing account about exile, being a stranger in one’s own life. The performance of Ryan O’Neal has been called stiff while in fact it is cinematic acting at its most subtle. The connection with the adjacent Kubrick films is direct. The computer HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey), the antihero Alex (A Clockwork Orange) and Barry Lyndon are each in conflict with everything that Western culture has learned to respect. But these forms of life are based on a misguided conception of human nature. The European 18th century was the most formal period of Western civilization. In Barry Lyndon, this conception finds a perfect cinematic expression. No film goes to such lengths in conveying life as ceremony and manners. It is in a league of its own as a historical costume drama. Redmond Barry enters the value system of this society and submits entirely to it. His story is about the zeal to join the privileged class through marriage and succession, to the point of evoking Kind Hearts and Coronets. But the fictional aspect of property evades him. “Barry was born clever enough at gaining a fortune, but incapable of keeping one”. So as time goes on, Barry Lyndon’s lot is to finish “poor, lonely and childless”. Violence remains hidden. It has been said that Barry Lyndon is more violent than A Clockwork Orange, only the mechanism of deception is greater. The account of war is the most awesome in modern cinema. Armies obeying their marching orders are portrayed as cannon fodder, falling headlong onto the battlefield, recorded like an animal test. Death becomes the common denominator. “Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.” (William Makepeace Thackeray)

Peter von Bagh, from unpublished notes among his posthumous papers (2014), edited in English by Antti Alanen.