Stanley Kubrick’s most misunderstood movie, according to Stanley Kubrick
A mainstay of any ‘top ten directors of all time’ list, Stanley Kubrick was such a force in film that he directed incredible movies in five different decades, was Oscar-nominated in four of those decades, and moved around genres seemingly effortlessly.
His best-known movies are some of the very finest of those genres – if you want jaw-dropping, ahead-of-its-time sci-fi, then 2001: A Space Odyssey is as good as you’re going to get. If you want genuinely unsettling horror, then plump for The Shining. And if you want an example of a perfectly-executed black comedy, you won’t find much better than 1964’s Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
But one of his films, certainly in the modern era, is less well remembered, albeit held in hugely high regard by either people who were around when it came out in the 1970s, or by directors working today who regard it as a work of total brilliance, among them Martin Scorsese.
Barry Lyndon was a historical drama released in 1975 that Kubrick wrote and directed, telling the story of a poor 18th-century Irishman who married a rich widow solely in order to climb the social ladder. Kubrick, who only made 13 films over a 40-year period, set to work on the movie not long after the release of A Clockwork Orange, and the work he did on the eight-month shoot has been described as groundbreaking.
He employed camera techniques that hadn’t been seen before, scenes lit only by candle and used paintings of the Napoleonic era as inspiration for the settings in the film. He didn’t cast any huge stars apart from Ryan O’Neal, who had been both Oscar and Golden Globe nominated for the previous few years, preferring to work with actors best known for their stage work.
When the film was released, however, it was not universally acclaimed in the way Kubrick had hoped. Many critics acknowledged the skill and vision the project had required, and it wasn’t a flop at the box office, but few people outright loved the movie, and it disappeared relatively quickly. In the 50 years since, it has had something of a reevaluation as a classic, but it still doesn’t rank alongside his most famous films.
Fellow director John Milus, who knew Kubrick for two decades, told The New York Times: “He was very vulnerable to criticism or to whether a movie was a success or not. He wasn’t completely comfortable with Barry Lyndon. He just felt that people didn’t understand it.”
Adding, “People were bored by it. I think after that picture he felt no one was going to let him make a film again. Apparently the only thing that really bothered him a great deal was that Barry Lyndon failed commercially. He made The Shining after that. (Jack) Nicholson, I remember, at the time said: ‘I’m glad to be off that one. That was rough duty.’”
Indeed, Kubrick reportedly took on the Stephen King adaptation because he was convinced it would be a commercial success as well as a great film, but he was famously irritable on set and allegedly made the female lead, Shelley Duvall’s, life something of a misery during the gruelling, freezing cold production.
Kubrick’s last film was the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman thriller Eyes Wide Shut, which came out the same year he died, in 1999.
