Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" Joins the Criterion Collection | TV/Streaming
The story follows the rise and fall of a roguish Irish opportunist by the name of Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal). As the film opens, we observe from a distance as his father is killed in a duel, as the omnipresent narrator (Michael Hordern) informs us, “over the purchase of some horses.” Barry soon becomes infatuated with his cousin, Nora (Gay Hamilton), who flirts with him for a bit as an amusement but then accepts a far more financially and socially advantageous marriage proposal from Captain John Quinn (Leonard Rossiter). Barry impetuously challenges the captain to a duel and when he triumphs, he heads off to Dublin with 20 guineas in his pocket and the promise of a new life before him. That dream is almost immediately scuttled when he is relieved of money and horse by a father/son team of highwaymen. After hearing promises of money, glory and position in exchange for his service, Barry enlists in the British army and finds himself serving as cannon fodder for the Seven Years War. Eventually, he tires of this and deserts the army but, through a stroke of dumb, unfortunate luck, he ends up being forced to enlist in the Prussian army and winds up serving with some distinction.
After the war ends, the Ministry of Police employs Barry for a mission to determine if expatriate Irishman and inveterate gambler the Chevalier de Balibari (Patrick Magee) is a spy or not. Barry is to serve as the Chevalier’s servant and report back any information that he is able to uncover. However, perhaps seeing the Chevalier as a sort of father figure, Barry immediately informs him of his real purpose and the two begin working in tandem—while Barry continues to string the Prussians along, he instead helps the Chevalier to cheat at cards. and when the heat gets too great, he is able to use his unique position to sneak the two of them out of Prussian territory literally under their noses. After spending several years traveling through Europe helping the Chevalier cheat at cards, Barry tires of this particular grind and decides to find a wealthy woman to marry instead. He soon sets his sights on the Countess of Lyndon (Marisa Berenson), who is rich, beautiful and titled. Alas, she is also married to the elderly Sir Charles Lyndon (Frank Middlemass) but one cardiac attack at the gambling tables and Barry and the Countess are free to wed.
Having finally achieved wealth and the trappings of power at the end of the first half of the story, the second half finds Barry, now freely spending his wife’s money on wine, women and gambling, seeing it all slip through his hands. Much of this is at the hands of Lord Bullingdon, the son of Sir Charles and the Countess who, even at the age of ten, correctly clocks Barry as someone who only loves his mother’s money and is frequently beaten by his stepfather for his insolent truth-telling. Before long, the Countess has Barry’s child, a son named Bryan (David Morely) but while Barry truly loves the child—possibly because it is one thing that he can legitimately claim to be his own—his relationship with his wife and Bullingdon grows ever frostier. However, when Barry realizes that if the Countess dies, her fortune will go to Bullingdon while he and Bryan will be left without a shilling, he uses a large amount of her money to buy himself a title that will ensure his position among high society once and for all. All of his efforts, so to speak, go to waste, when the now-adult Bullingdon (Leon Vitali) arrives at his mother’s birthday party to publicly denounce Barry as a money-grubbing monster, a play that results in Barry leaping up and brutally beating Bullingdon in front of everyone and becoming a social pariah in front of his newly purchased peers. They are not offended by the fact that he beat Bullingdon, mind you—his crime, in their eyes, was to lose control and do it so publicly.
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