238. Barry Lyndon

• Year of release: 1975
  
• Director: Stanley Kubrick
• Genre: Drama, Romance
• IMDB Page

It's been some time since I made my last post. In fact, I nearly skipped all of February. Hordes of fans were emailing me about my blog... Not credible? Doesn't matter, on with the review!

Barry Lyndon is about the tale of Redmond Barry, an Irish farmer in the 1700's wanting to ascend into higher social circles. The entire movie revolves around Barry acquiring wealth and luxury and his eventual fall.

And that's the story in brief. There are two big parts in it: his rise to glory and his fall. Despite my sadistic nature I didn't like the second half of the movie. Which is not a good thing, being that this is a three hour movie. Needless to say, I dragged myself to the end of the movie, only to find out it has one hell of a (almost) final scene.

"Come on, guys. The second part didn't suck that much."

Either way, I think this movie is more about its historical and cinematographic values. For the former, I can say that the costumes look amazing and the setting is filled with so much atmosphere that you'd wish you were there. 

As for cinematography, as far as I know, it's very good. I read that the lighting is superb in this movie and I can only nod my head in agreement. One thing I liked as well is the absence of too much dialogue. Some movies feel they need to hold your hand and explain everything in great detail and preferably twice in case the short attention span of the average human was looking at something else (perhaps the cleavages in this movie), but this movie deliberately let's go of too much dialogue and it works.

Also, as for the newly invented cleavage factor, this movie gets 2 "big 'uns".

I'm rather undecided about this movie. There are parts that I like very much and parts that I wouldn't stand to sit through again. So, yeah, I'd say buy it. But on own risk.

Buy it.