Something to watch tonight: Monday 19 February

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)

Tonight marks the start of the 2024 Wellington Film Society sea­son with a 6.15pm spe­cial screen­ing of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon at the Embassy Theatre.

The film was voted equal-45 in the most recent Sight & Sound poll of the best films of all time and I wrote about it for RNZ:

Because, for all the won­der­ful paint­erly com­pos­i­tions and candle­light tableaux, it is the work of the act­ors and the wit of the script that really makes the film sing. Love Story star Ryan O’Neal is a kind of blank can­vas as Barry, sur­roun­ded by a cata­logue of Britain and Irelands’s greatest char­ac­ter act­ors, all con­trib­ut­ing to a wry com­ment­ary on class and ambition.

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The film charts Barry’s rise and fall, from hand­some and rogueish social climber to dis­abled and all-but des­ti­tute, liv­ing off the char­ity of those who he had once tried to emu­late. There are many adven­tures along the way – the film is very long in true Kubrickian fash­ion – but nev­er seems to out­stay its wel­come. Kubrick’s per­fect choices in what we now call ‘needle-drops’ also help: Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi and The Chieftains all contribute.

For all the light­ness of touch, though, we shouldn’t dis­miss the phe­nom­en­al tech­nic­al achieve­ments in recre­at­ing the 18^th cen­tury world of great houses, ornate ballgowns, battle­grounds and duels. Kubrick had ori­gin­ally wanted to make a film about Napoleon – the research fam­ously takes up dozens of crates in the filmmaker’s archive – but the com­mer­cial fail­ure of the Dino De Laurentiis epic Waterloo meant that no one was con­fid­ent in fin­an­cing that film but the recre­ations of some absurd Seven Years’ War battles show that research wasn’t wasted.

If you aren’t in Wellington tonight, you can take a moment to check the sched­ules for your loc­al New Zealand film soci­ety here. It is one of the best invest­ments in film appre­ci­ation you can get.

Where to watch Barry Lyndon

Aotearoa: Tonight at the Wellington Film Society (Embassy Theatre) or digit­al rent­al from Apple ($2.99!)

Australia: Digital rent­al from Apple, Amazon or Microsoft

USA: Streaming on Roku (with ads) or digit­al rental

UK: Digital rent­al from all the usu­al outlets