Casey on Kubrick Part II: Barry Lyndon

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
Hey, everybody, and welcome to Movie Crush almost said welcome
to the podcast, like Josh does Uh in here in
the studio with everyone's favorite new cinephile, Casey Pegram. Well
you're an old cinephile. Yeah, you're new to them. That's true,
That's what I meant. Uh. And we are here for
part two of the Stanley Kubrick. Uh, I say three

(00:48):
part I know it's gonna be longer than that. The
Stanley Kubrick what do we call him? This a special
deep special deeps mini series mini series like that? Uh?
And we or I rather had the great pleasure of
watching Casey's pick for the second film this series, Barry
Lyndon last night for the very first time last night

(01:09):
slash this morning? Oh do you have to break it up?
Or or just went past midnight? No, here's the deal
is uh? While I'm it takes a lot longer to
watch these because I will pause to make my notes
because I don't want to miss ship. Yeah yeah yeah.
So it was like, and I still had an hour
and fifteen minutes to go. Had you even got into
part two yet? Okay? I was gonna start a part

(01:30):
two okay? Uh? And it wasn't like, oh my god,
this is so slow and this is so boring, because
we'll get into that because it's a common criticism. I
was way into it. I was just like, I gotta
finish this. Yeah yeah, yeah, sure to be my best self. So, uh,
this is kind of fun, Casey because we get to
kind of just dive in. Uh, let's talk Barry Lindon. Yeah, so,

(01:53):
I don't know. I mean, I'm curious to hear your
thoughts on it, not to throw it on you first,
but you know, I watched this. I've seen this problem
will be between ten and fifteen times. I've started watching
it in high school and it seems like I get
around to it about once a year. This may be
one of those for me. I loved it. Yeah, I've
I've seen it theatrically. I think two or three times.

(02:14):
I've got to do that. Yeah that I mean that
is like the ideal way to see it. Um. The
Landmark here in Atlanta played it on film actually, um,
two or three years ago. Uh where does that movie
crush alumnus Scott was there. I saw him him in
the lobby. Um by midtime art is what I mean? Mark? Yeah, Yeah, Um,

(02:38):
it was like a beat up thirty five print, so
it wasn't like it. Actually the Blue ray looks much better,
but it was still very charming and wonderful to be
able to see it on film. Scott was there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
of course he was. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me, and
uh yeah, I'm gonna seen it a couple of times overseas,
and uh, you know, I just I just watched this

(03:01):
most recent time, night before last. The Criterion Blue Ray,
which is like a newer restoration four case can looks impeccable. Um,
and just the movie just gets better every time I
see it. So yeah, well everyone, this is I streamed it,
and you it is available to stream if you're an
Amazon Prime member, So that's the good news. Uh, if

(03:23):
you're if you're signed up for Prime, you can watch
Barry Lyndon if you have three hours and good taste.
Yeah yeah, and it looks pretty good on Prime. Yeah, man,
it looked great. You know, I've got a pretty good TV. Um.
Although now that you talked about the oh LEDs um
totally got the bug jelly. Uh, I fucking loved it, man,
like all the criticisms, and I guess if you haven't

(03:46):
seen it yet, Um, you should know that it was,
uh a bit of a flop. Yeah, not well received
and critically or financially. I mean it wont some like
technical Academy award. It's like costume design and that kind
of thing. Cinematography of course, Yeah, David Alcott, amazing, John
John Alcott, I think John, Yeah, I think David something

(04:09):
was the set designer, Yes, he won as well. Yeah, yeah,
I just watched. Um, I went through all the extras
and uh, yeah, there's a whole segment on of course
the cinematography, but also the set designer who had a
full unnervous breakdown during what was up with that? Just
too much? It was because he was he worked on
a lot of the James Bond films, and he also

(04:30):
worked on Dr. Strangelove. He designed the bunker, that famous
bunker set was so incredible, and the war room, yeah,
the war room exactly. And uh and Kubrick had asked
him to do two thousand one as well, and he
turned it down because he just knew Kubrick was going
to drive him insane with logic, with asking him why this,

(04:50):
why does it have to be this way? What is
the logical justification and he just wants to be like
because it looks cool Stanley, you know. And so so
he knew like to get between Stanley Kubrick and NASA
and try to you know, he just was not up
to that challenge mentally. You know. He said that working
with Kubrick was like one of the best experiences in

(05:11):
terms of the work that he did. He thought the
war Room was the best set he ever made. And
I think he's right, but you know, he just he
just could not go there. And then when Barry Lyndon
came around, Kubrick went to him again and said, I
can only pay you half of your normal rate, but
will you do this and and he said, you made
this very easy, Stanley. No, I'm not going to do it.
And like six weeks went by, and then Kubrick came

(05:32):
back to him and said, all right, I'll pay you
a normal rate, please come to this movie. And but
the thing that was tricky from a set design perspective
is they didn't build sets. It's all on real locations
in these old houses and so yeah, and during the
production apparently it just got to a point where, um,
he was he said, he literally was questioning every decision

(05:56):
to the point where he had no bearings anymore, and
he basically had to like take some time off, go
to therapy and like build himself back up and remember
all his accomplishments and everything and kind of get to
the point where he could make a judgment call and
feel at all confident about it because he just kind
of broken him down. But he didn't win the Academy Awards,
so yeah, he can sit around and stare at that. Yeah, man,

(06:20):
that's crazy, uh and also believable. And I know that
he spent um like a full year in Ireland before.
I mean, it was a year of prep and um
and by the ways, you know, you know everything I'm
gonna say. But for those of you out there who
don't know, the backstory is, uh, Mr Kubrick was going
to do a film and his entire career wanted to

(06:41):
do this Napoleon film. But a movie came out called Waterloo,
which did not perform well right around that time, so
he scrapped it. But he had done all this research
on the time period and did not want that to
go to waste, so he picked up the book, the
Factory Book. Um, he was gonna do. He looked at
Vanity Fair first, Yeah, that's what I heard. End. He
liked a lot about Vanity Fair, but he felt like

(07:03):
it's too much to condense, there's too much event, its
scope is too big, So he didn't really see how
it would work as a movie. And that's what brought
him around to the Luck of Barry Lyndon, which is
the title of the book. Yeah, so, um, he had
all this knowledge about the time period. Um very famously
composed this movie based on paintings. Yes, yeah, who were they?

(07:26):
So as Gainsbro, Hogarth and Stubbs were some of the painters,
and um, he wanted to go primarily with paintings from
the same era that he's depicting. Yeah, so like eighteenth century,
but he cheated a little bit and went back a
little further and went a little more ahead as well,
um to kind of you know, it's it's about a

(07:48):
three year span that he's drawing from for the paintings. Well,
it's amazing when you're when you're seeing some of these shots,
it's so clearly, um, the frame and the composition is
so clearly mimicking a painting. But also like there were
so many shots like that where there was virtually no
movement from anyone, uh maybe their hands. And of course

(08:10):
that one great great shot when when the when the
kid comes and wakes at the end and sitting dead still,
and that one is just like a direct reference to
a painting. Yeah, and then the posture of him in
the chair and everything. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that painting,
which was awesome, but so many, so many times in
this movie too. Later on and that well, I want

(08:32):
to say third act. It's the third act, but it's
part two. Um. They are they have these compositions where
they look like a painting and they are surrounded by
those same paintings, like sometimes very large on the wall. Yeah.
And one when he's um reading the book to his kid,
and I was watching one of the features and they
talked about how that painting is is of sort of

(08:55):
people in high society, and the idea is almost that
you're seeing this you know, irish kind of scoundrel who
has elevated himself to this place in high society, and
it's like they've almost kind of you know, they don't belong,
they're quite you know, And so the painting is like
a kind of a commentary on that and then at

(09:17):
the same time, it's there at the end of the
film one of the last shots where you see lady
Lyndon like playing paying all her bills and just kind
of shaking her head as she has to write the
five hundred you know, check to what guineas guineasafetime payoff. Yeah, yeah,
and uh, and the same painting is in the background,

(09:38):
and in that instance it doubles almost as sort of
like in the painting, it's people that are very prosperous,
and yet in within the room itself, it's about a
family kind of in decline now financially. Yeah. And um,
I know sometimes people listen to these without having seen
the film yet, which is a great compliment I think

(09:58):
just to to us, you really should watch it, but
you should watch it a but just the quickest of recaps,
so you know what we're talking about is Barry Lyndon
is a film about and I want to say con man,
yeah kind of. But what I think that the actual
child in the movie puts it best. He's a common opportunist, uh,
and that's the best way to describe him. He's an irishman, uh,

(10:20):
sort of a rogue who who? Um, and it's one
of my favorite things in movies when the the story
is sort of happens to the character and every event
to lead you know, as the movie goes, he's sort
of forced to do the next thing that leads to
the next thing. And I think Roger Ebert even said,
you know, this is a character who life happens to him. Yes, yeah, uh.

(10:43):
And so he eventually works his way into the high
society after being a British soldier and then a Prussian
soldier and um, like a spy and a spy and
assuming the identist, stealing and identity like an officer, a ambler,
a sort of you know, not even a gambler. He
was like the gambler's assistant that helps him cheat. Yeah yeah,

(11:06):
that's cheval yea yeah yeah yeah. So that's that's what
the movie is about. And it's basically just sort of
this three hour journey of this character. And um, I
guess let's talk about let's talk a little bit about
Ryan O'Neill. Um. He was cast as the as Barry
Linden Redmond Barry who becomes Barry Linden once he marries

(11:28):
Lady Lindon for her money. Um, and she's also you know,
super hot, but ed more to do with her money. Yeah,
and she, I mean she in particular, like if you
look at this Gamesboro portraits like that, that's very much
the kind of classical beauty look that she has, is
what that painter kind of went towards. Yeah, and Kubrick
apparently told her like to not go outside for like

(11:49):
four months preceding the films. Pretty pale like everyone in
the movie. Well, some are straight up power yeah yeah, yeah,
but everyone is just the pallor and the paleness. It
is very evident. Yeah. Um, Ryan O'Neill, Yeah, yeah, Ryan
O'Neill got big star at the time. Very divisive casting call. Yeah,
still remains so because a lot of people say this

(12:11):
is a masterpiece but for his acting, and I disagree. Yeah,
I disagree as well. Yeah, so what's your take. I mean,
you know, Kuber Kuber definitely did just in terms of
like strategic box office logic. He wanted a name, he
wanted a leading man. Ryan O'Neil had done that movie
Love Story, Yeah, and he'd also I think at this

(12:34):
point he had worked with Peter Bogdanovitch on Paper Moon.
I want to stay with the O'Neal. He was in
What's Up Doc, which is a huge movie. Yeah, he
was a big big He was a big name. It
was kind of like you know in the nineties when
Kuber cast Tom Cruise, Frank states, it's that kind of
idea of like, I'm making a very like demanding film,
but I'm gonna put like a big name at the
center of it, and that will kind of hedge some

(12:57):
of the box office, you know. Um, and he was
coming off a bunch of successes as well. Kuber quest Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
so he was. He had made Clarkercarness just before this
in two thousand one before that, and Strange Love before that.
So yeah, that's three in a row. Um, they were
kind of all in a row that when you think
about it, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, like

(13:17):
Barry Lyndon kind of like shook him a little bit,
and that's why, in part why he then makes The
Shining afterwards, because he wants more like a genre shure thing,
audience pleasing kind of thing, you know, whether or not
it ultimately did please an audience to watch the Shining,
but um, I love that was The Shining was his
big give. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like the one for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um,

(13:40):
but yeah, I mean in one of the extras they're
talking about the performance style in Kubrick films. We talked
kind of touched on this in the last podcast that
Kubrick does tend to direct actors in a in a
kind of stylized way. It's not always particularly naturalistic. And
in Barry Lyndon you have Ryan O'Neill doing a more

(14:02):
kind of restrained, flat kind of performance, but everybody around him,
for the most part, is a little bit like amped
up a little bit. You know, there's there's some really
like you know, Captain Quinn at the beginning of the
movie is so funny, like he's just like and you know,
yeah yeah, and like just just his expressions and you

(14:23):
know the faces he makes and um, you know it's
it's he's like being ridiculed. It feels like a black
comedy and yeah, yeah yeah and um. And so I
think Ryan O'Neill having that kind of flat quality just
brings out, you know, the contrast of everybody else around him,
and I don't know, maybe also makes him a little

(14:43):
bit more of a figure you can identify with because
you're able to kind of project your own feelings and
emotions and things onto him because he's not going so
over the top with what he's doing. Yeah, and and
that's the character to like Barry, Linda or Redmond Barry
was a man out of place, a man who didn't

(15:04):
want to be given away, like or give up his hand.
So he was while he was a con man in
a way, it was always very subtle and I feel
like he was just trying to not be found out.
Uh So I think it fits the role absolutely, you know.
And it also kind of goes with what you were
saying about things happened to him. He's less of an actor.

(15:25):
He's less you know, actor in the sense of doing
things of being active. Um, he's kind of a passive
person and uh and and sort of a cowardly person
too in a way. Although when we first see him,
you know, when he's young, when he's Redmond Barry, he's
he's a young man and he falls in love with
his cousin and he is he is kind of motivated

(15:48):
more by passion and emotion, and it's because he really
you feel like he really believes in something and he's
really like, um, he's acting more on genuine emotion, whereas yes,
of course, of course and all that, but um, you know,

(16:09):
as he gets older, as he sort of as sends
the class ladder, the rankings of society, he becomes more
and more kind of removed and distant and cold. And
about the only thing you can say about him that
is redeeming near the end of the film is just
the love that he has for his son, his biological son.

(16:29):
You know that he does seem to genuinely care about
that kid, and that's about the only thing. He treats
his wife terribly. Um, he treats his steps un terribly.
He you know, he's he's only interested in kind of
ascending rank and gain the title so that he'll have
some financial security. We can get into that more later,
but you know, he he gradually kind of loses who

(16:52):
he was and he just becomes this kind of blank slate.
But that's kind of how they are. Yeah. Yeah, it
was definitely a comment on the upper crust, uh, and
just sort of the vapid coldness. And you know, like
we said time and time again, and we will as
we continue the series. Stanley Kubrick's films have never been
described as warm character wise, um, and that and that,

(17:16):
and that does create a bit of an arms length
for an audience, but it's all very purposeful. I don't
think it's like an accident or like, oh man, it
just didn't get the emotion of this, because when when
Ryan O'Neill is tasked in really two big scenes to
amoat when the captain dies to the sort of in
the to the side of the battlefield, and when his

(17:38):
son dies he brings it and that ship is real.
Oh yeah, those are very affecting scenes, especially a son. Yeah,
so that to me kind of just proves that he
was it was all very purposeful. Yeah, it's not like
Ryan O'Neill acted poorly in that movie. I think he
was tasked to be removed and cold and distant and flat,
the typical kind of Kubrick in which probably yeah, yeah, yeah, no,

(18:01):
it does have to be hard to just keep withholding
withholding withholding, Yeah, you know, for a year, however long
you were shooting a long time. I love. The favorite
scene of mine was when when he was robbed on
the trail by a gentleman. Yeah, what's a Phoenie, Yeah, Phoenie.
It was a real was a legendary highwayman. He had

(18:23):
the double guns out. But that scene was so funny,
and there were a lot of sort of darkly comic
moments where but again things happened to him, like had
he had he dined with them uh, which he had
the offer to previously, he would not have been It
would have thrown off the timeline and he would not
have been robbed on the trail, his horse knot would

(18:44):
not have been taken. He would have ended up in Dublin. Instead,
he had to join the British Army and that kind
of kicked everything in a completely different direction, derailed whatever
his trajectory was going to be absolutely and he just
kind of went with it. Yeah, but he did what
he had to do. I guess who knows what would
have happened to him if he wound up in Dublin.
He would have could have lived an entirely different life.
But that's not a fun movie, no, Yeah, but that's

(19:05):
the That's what's so charming about the film in a way,
I think, is that you are just following somebody's life
and they're not even particularly maybe the most interesting person
from this time period to look after, but it's it's
almost his own mediocrity. That gives you the best vantage
point to just look at the society itself, because he
himself is kind of an absence in a way, so

(19:28):
you're you're encouraged to look at the periphery at what
all is happening around him, that he's just being swept
up in the current of history. But like Forrest Gump
or something, you know, in a very weird way. Well,
it's that there were so many times when I was
watching this, I was like, oh that, I'm surprised you
didn't think of Forrest Gump because that's kind of a
perfect analogy. But where I saw so many films that

(19:50):
it clearly been just uh stealing yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,
from Barry Lyndon, just Kubrick, but like Barry Lynda specifically, yes, yeah,
of course, Wes Anderson, yeah, yeah, well fully admits it.
The way the way west Anderson uses zooms oftentimes is
very reminiscent of Kuber, the same way Kuber used them,

(20:11):
and the narration I think, yeah, it was very reminiscent
of Tannenbombs. Yes, yes, the sort of omniscient narrator who
sometimes would in this movie would say things right before
they happened. Yeah, he he will. Yeah, and sometimes even
even a little bit in advance of than happening. So
there's that. There's that line of voiceover about you know,
you're you're watching a scene of Barry playing outside with

(20:34):
his kid. I think they're playing like croquet or something,
and uh, and the narration is just, you know, but
fate would have it that, you know, Barry would end
his life poor, destitute and childless something like that, you know,
and his family line would end with him. Essentially, That's right,
And and it almost without you completely processing it at

(20:55):
the time, but it's telling you, like, this kid's gonna die,
he's gonna lose everything, ing um. And yet when you're
looking at on the screen, nothing, none of that has,
you know, really begun to show itself. And it happens
a little bit afterwards. And Kubrick talked a lot about
that that voiceover being so valuable in in the viewing

(21:16):
of the film for the viewer because by by pre
figuring a lot of this stuff, by kind of gently
nudging you this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen,
it makes things feel a little bit more like fate.
It makes things feel a little bit more set in stone,
and when they happen, they arrive with a feeling of
like necessity or like it had to go this way,

(21:38):
so it feels less like he's just being bounced around
and like um, you know, things are just like arbitrarily
happening one after the other. Everything kind of feels like
it has a purpose and it's happening, you know. And
it is the voiceover that lends at that quality. If
you were to watch the film without that voice be
very different. That would be like yeah, and usually in
that I mean I do love well then voiceover, but

(22:01):
this is a kind of voiceover I usually would be like, no, man,
that that's not how you do it. Yeah, it's two
on the nose. It's too telegraphed, show don't tell kind
of thing. But it just works. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and
it's fascinating too because apparently this really surprised me, even
though we talked last time about Kubrick changing things up

(22:21):
last minute, but that voiceover came entirely in post. It
was not part of like a screenplay, It was not
structured that way, and that that amazes me because the
film as the final product, feels so carefully and deliberately
constructed that I'm really surprised that he didn't have this
device in mind. Maybe it thought about it, but it

(22:42):
wasn't formalized in like a script screenplay sense. Um yeah,
but until well into the editing and they tried different things.
They tried different narrators and different so it's just I mean,
even even when they were shooting and prepping and everything,
like the screenplay, Liam Itality talks about this where um,

(23:03):
it would just say, like Barry faces off in a
duel against you know, Captain Quentin. That's the whole scene.
And then the next scene is like Barry gets robbed
in the woods. That's the whole scene. So you know,
Liam vitally describes getting handed the screenplay and just looking
in like every scene was just like a descriptor of
what it is, but there's no dialogue yet. When did
he deliver that? So they actually started shooting and he

(23:26):
still didn't really have much of a screenplay put together
other than just he had like the framework, like he
had the events in order and like the two part structure.
I think he probably had, um, but all the specifics
of the dialogue and everything was still like TVD and
so they shot for six weeks in Ireland. Then Koper

(23:47):
basically said, all right, you know what, I'm kind of
getting a better feel for what i want this movie
to be. We're gonna shut down production and just like
come back in January and pick it up again. And
so he like went away for something like six or
nine weeks something like that and like actually kind of
wrote it for real that time, and then they came back.
And also somewhere in there, I don't know if it was,

(24:08):
but at some point the the ira A actually threatened,
Kubrick heard his family and he left. He did. He
was like, all right, that's a wrap on Ireland. You know,
we're going to go back to England and a little
bit in Germany and so on. Yeah. So did he
not go back to Ireland? If I don't think he
went back. He he did not want to mess with
the ira was mid seventies, Yes, that was high to
the troubles. Yeah, not good. Yeah. Well, let's talk a

(24:36):
little bit about the it's a it's not a war movie.
There are scenes of battle, and there are some army
stuff the Seven Years War, but that's definitely would not
classify as a war film, and usually this I mean,
I mean, I guess you get some stuff with movies
like Vanity Fair, but this time period, I feel like, uh,

(24:59):
you see a lot of war movies set during this time,
but not a lot of three hour character studies about
this time period. But the war stuff was amazing. Oh,
it's incredible. That's that's the part that he carried over
from all the research and work that he did on
Napoleon when he was prepping Napoleon. Um, I know it's
all very accurate. Yeah, Like, yeah, it's not. They're shooting

(25:22):
them like maybe the real battlefields where stuff happened, and
just how how war went down. And like everything in
this movie is how they used to fight. Wars rule oriented,
whether it's the fistfight or you know, the bare knuckle
brawls or the war or the dueling like it's all
or the or the game the card games, like everything

(25:44):
had rules back then. Kubrick knew them all. Yeah, and uh,
and there's still something very like barbaric about it all.
But society puts this veneer of respectability on it by
enclosing it within these quote unquote rules. But I think
you don't hide in the woods you march right at
each other, and maybe you get lucky and shoot people,

(26:05):
or maybe you get unlucky and catch a bullet. Yeah.
You literally just march in a giant row towards the
other army. When you get into firing range, they just
start shooting you, and the whole first line just like
goes down. You know, if you're lucky, maybe the bullet
hits the guy next to you or something. But but
that there's there's literally like no skill involved and not
getting shot. You're just marching. Then. Yeah. The dueling, Yeah,

(26:29):
Josh and I did a show on dueling. It was
more like will the gun work? Yeah, rather than how
good is your aim? Yeah? Yeah, because like the final
duel he's pointed right at his head and shoot him
below the knee yeah, ten feet yeah, yes, you know
so those and his gun misfired to begin. Those things

(26:49):
just sucked. Yeah, put But you know, in terms of
talking about rules, that's a very interesting look at rules
and the idea of acting honorably and so on. Um,
but those war scenes are amazing, And what was so
cool is you're they're marching towards the French troops and
the French or firing and so you get that bit
of a battle, but the main battle, like I guess

(27:12):
eventually you get close enough to where you're bayonetting. Yeah,
you can all have kind of hear them like you
you know, you you hear them firing. They fire maybe
like three kind of rounds where they fire, reload, fire, reloated,
and you know, his his good friend gets hit and
so he carries him off to the creek and you
just kind of here in the background like that, ah,
like you can tell they've gotten to the bay and

(27:32):
is but an interesting way to play it. Yeah, you
never really see it, and and you realize how quickly
a battle like that kind of just plays itself out,
you know. Yeah, it's it's not like the trench warfare
of like World War One that Kubrick looked at in
Paths of Glory, where it's like six months to gain
you know, an inch basically of territory and just meaningless

(27:54):
chaos and death. Yeah, this felt like forty five minutes. Yeah,
it was played out in real time, and they even
say in an area should like this battle never made
it to the history books, but everybody there found it
memorable enough. Um. Yeah, it's just it's fascinating, And the
whole point of the battle was because there was like
another battalion that was gonna like be marching down that
road and they didn't want the French soldiers there when

(28:14):
they came along. So they're basically just kind of like clearing, yeah,
clearing a path. Yeah, it's just kind of I mean,
there's there's a deep absurdity there that that the narration
touches on lightly without doing overdoing it, but it's just
just enough to let you know, like this kind of
stuff happened all the time and it really didn't amount
to hill of beans, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting

(28:35):
character wised too, because um, Redmond Barry as much as
we say, like he doesn't have any particular talents and
things just happened to him. He is, uh a great fencer,
he's a good shot. He is a great fighter. Yeah,
he because he kicks that guy's ass who's a lot bigger.

(28:56):
You don't expect him to win that fight, but he
knows what he's doing. He never gets hit. Yeah. Uh.
And then he's he kind of becomes a bit of
a war hero, like for real, Like he not only
in the in the first battle, carries his good friend,
his first father figure, you know, which is there's a
lot of daddy stuff in this um because it right
at the beginning, he has lost his father in a

(29:16):
duel and he's constantly seeking that father figure. But he
carries him off the field and cares for him. Um.
He also gets to skip that battle. But then he
saves uh what's his name. I think it's pot Storf,
pot Storf. Well, I I want to make sure it's
not pots Down because that's one of the locations, but
I think it is pot Stoff. I think it's pot Storf.

(29:36):
He he saves him for real, like everyone else leaves
in that in that outpost, and he goes back in
and lifts the fucking thing off of him. And that's
after pot Storff was the one who got him, you know,
conscripted him into the Prussian army in the first place.
He busted him when you know his story did not
add up. Yeah, it's interesting characterwise though, that he actually
showed Valides have these moments of heroism where he does

(29:58):
kind of rise to the occasion and but it's not
play it in a big movie way. It's just very Kubrickian.
But then later you know when he's later on, when
he's recounting his kind of glory days to his son,
you can tell he embellishes these stories and talks about
beheading like nineteen Frenchmen, and you know he again like
you're that's that's a sign that his character has kind

(30:20):
of a real shift in his character. That he couldn't
just relate the true story of this heroic thing that
he did. He had to invent some ridiculous thing about
all these beheadings, and you know, just it's like he
he loses like his authentic self and he's just a phony,
like even to his own son. Yeah, he is a
good father in a way, I don't know. Good's a

(30:42):
weird word for the time period. He's a very doting father, yes, yeah,
but that is mirrored by the mistreatment of Lord Bullington. Yes,
and just what a fucking asshole he is. Absolutely, But
he's that way because I mean it's not justified, but
he's that way because Bullington is just so close to
to Lady Lyndon. I mean, Bullington has like he's he

(31:05):
figures him out at ten years old exactly. He has
his number the whole time, and he's not he's not
quiet about it. So there is that they just have
a mutual disdain for each other. Yeah, I mean he said,
he's the one that said at the very beginning, I
find him nothing more than a common opportunitist, like sharp kid.
And he was right, you know, he was he was

(31:26):
right about everything. Yeah, and uh and it seems to
drive a wedge even between him and his mother, sadly
because you know, later on, even though he's still kind
of in that mama's boy like when when it first
cuts to adult bullingdon he's like on the grass yeah, yeah,
and he's he's he's sitting kind of almost in his
mother's lap, still watching this. Yeah. But you know, she

(31:51):
she has some commentary. You know, it's in the scene
where he brings uh, you know, the child into the concert,
and you know, the mother says something to the effect
of trying to remember how she phrases it, but basically
like I would have loved you, or I could have
been closer to you had you not been such a
painting the ass with you know Erry. Um. Yeah, which

(32:13):
is I mean, it's so shitty. I mean he goes away, yeah,
on his own accord, but he stays gone for you know,
a large chunk. Yeah, although you know he's going to
come back. Yeah, you get the checkout gun, like he
has to come back. Yeah. Before before we get off
the subject of the battles, I did want to say,
like Kubrick originally, like it's like we were talking about

(32:34):
he was going to make the soul of Napoleon, and
the battle scenes in Barry Lyndon are like an indicator
of what Napoleon might have been getting towards. But Napoleon
was going to be even way more, almost unimaginably larger scale,
where he was literally going to rent soldiers from the
Romanian army like tens of thousands. Some scenes were gonna

(32:55):
involve like forty people. And he had this amazing idea aware,
you know, because you have to make uniforms for that
many people, that just the budgetary requirements to to make
those kind of uniforms period accurate and so on would
have been just incredible. So he came up with this idea.
I think they they did make these uniforms and test

(33:17):
them out on camera, where like the first row of
soldiers that's closest to camera, we're going to be in
these real you know, accurate fabric accurate period kind of
aged costumes. But as you progressively moved further back in
the rows, eventually you would get to people that were
wearing this kind of paper fiber uniform that was very

(33:38):
very cheap material but would still photograph well from a distance,
look accurate and not tear easily, and so on. That
could be made for like one to four dollars per uniform.
And so that was how he was going to achieve
again shooting these like re enactments of battles on the
on the actual battlefields where these battles occurred, And of
course he was going to probably to the best visibility

(34:00):
from historians and so on, have the same battle formations
and positions and all that was going to be represented
on screen very very accurately. So it makes a difference, man.
I mean, it's easy to say like, oh, come on,
like you don't really need to yeah, yeah, but there's
an authenticity to his films, and especially this one, it

(34:21):
really does come through like none. You can tell none
of this is fake, you know, I mean, not only
because it's obviously the early seventies, but uh, it all
just it feels like you're watching real life unfold you're
just like immersed in and you know, every every conceivable
aspect of the history has been thought through and considered,

(34:43):
from the locations to the you know, the costumes too,
and you know he he talks about how it's absurd
for you know, to be doing a period piece and
to hire like a costume designer to do something like
inspired by the period. They just copied it all from
paintings and photo you know, not to graphs, but paintings
and etchings and drawings and so on. Uh, because why

(35:05):
would you invent when you can just do the actual
real thing. Yeah, you're never going to get it exactly
right if you just try to make something inspired by
So just do the thing. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty great. Um. Well,
on on the the actual shooting, not only of that
battle scene, because I did watch a little like twenty
minute thing where they talked specifically about the six hundred

(35:26):
feet of Dolly track they laid and they had three
cameras going. But um, you probably know more about this
than me, but I know that Kubrick worked with NASA
to get specially crafted lenses to not only allow these long,
super long shots like on the battlefield, but to allow
the maximum amount of light for because we gotta start

(35:48):
talking about candle that the NASA. The NASA lenses would
not have been used for any of the exteriors. I
believe those those would have been. Kubrick had a particular
zoom that he he really loved using that you just
throughout the movie where you start on these tight close
ups and then it's a slow pullback. And like, for instance,
the one the first duel by the by the water's

(36:10):
edge at the beginning of the movie, it's such an
amazing shot because you start on this close up that
doesn't feel like a close up. It already feels like
kind of a wider shot, and it's already like kind
of a whitish, sort of medium running shot, and and
then it kind of starts to pull back. And so

(36:30):
many made this observation that at every moment during that pullback,
if you freeze frame it you have like a great
looking composition, then you could like print out put up
on a wall somewhere. So it's not just that he
starts on good composition and it ends on a good composition.
It's like through every stage of it, when like the
tree enters the frame and then like some more people

(36:51):
standing around into the frame and then by the time
you get back, you've you've got the entire height of
the tree on the left side of the frame, like
a beautiful cloud pattern in the sky river and like
it's like compositions within compositions. Yu And yeah, so that's
that's that particular zoom lens that he used on a
lot of the daytime exteriors. It has a big I mean,

(37:12):
let's just talk real quick about that. The shot, the
pullback shot. Um, it's a Kubrick move for sure, but
he uses it so much in this movie it becomes
Um it's not overused, but it becomes a thing of
its in and of itself. Uh, the way he reveals
and I started, I started getting way into my brain

(37:34):
about it, like is it even a metaphor of this
character who you start a movie on, this teenager in Ireland,
which is you might say, a tight shot and then
you pull back throughout the entire film to reveal this
three hour uh wide shot kind of the structure of society.

(37:56):
And it felt a little thematic, and that's probably a
little you know, reading it into what Kubrick was probably doing. No,
I think I think whether whether you thought about that
consciously or not. I mean, it does, it does make sense,
and it does kind of it mirrors very well, like
you said, what the film is actually doing on like
a thematic kind of narrative level. That it's also it

(38:17):
makes me think of like painting, where sometimes if you
look at reproductions of paintings and books, where you'll have
the entire painting on like one panel, one one part
of the one part of the page, but then you
also have like a detail that's like a blow up
enhancement of just a particular subject in the painting. And
to me, it's like moving from a detail back to

(38:39):
the entire canvas or something like when you go to
a museum, or at least I do you stand back
and look at the picture, and then you move in
real look at the thing on the table, and it's
like there's things you can discover at both ends of
the scale. So it's it's a way for him to
kind of mimic painting in a way, but also to
do something very cinematic, which is to do all of

(39:01):
that within the same shot, and it's moving. It's like
a moving tableaux or something, and he's also pushing the
audience away. Literally, yeah, he's pulling back. He's like, you're
starting up close to this character, but then you're moving back,
and it's just like, but also consider them in the
context of their surroundings in this period of history, and
but totally like if this film has been criticized for
keeping the audience at arm's length, and yeah, yeah, it's

(39:25):
kind of it might even there might even be a
slight tongue in cheek knowing Kubrick when it comes to
stuff like that, because it is almost always a pullback.
I don't know if he has any push in he has,
like I don't know if he has a zoom, and
he's got a couple of slow dial yeah yeah, and
he's got a lot of static camera. And then the
only time he goes handheld is when there's violence, when

(39:45):
there's a fight. Yeah, so yeah, you know, the first
one is the fifth brawl in the Army that's handheld,
which makes handheld super effective when it's not overdone. When
he beats the crap out of Lord Bullington scene is
that's an incredible scene, just the tonal shift in the
way the energy of the movie changes where it's like

(40:07):
he's making this break with polite society. You know, he's
he's showing his true colors kind of and everyone is
just aghast at what he's doing. And yeah, it's superly
violent and messy, and again it shows it shows like
those kind of like barbaric tendencies that are just bubbling
beneath the surface of like polite society. Um. And the

(40:28):
handheld is is a big part of that. And then
it also happens again when attempts suicide and you know it,
that's that's a remarkable scene because we get very little
of her like internal life, how she feels about anything.
She's Yeah, you know, almost you can see is just
when she's been mistreated, like when he blows a smoke

(40:49):
in her face in the carriage, or when she's out
walking with Lord Bullington and she sees him with the housemaids. Um.
You know, it's all you see is her suffer basically
in silence kind of, and you have very little indicator
of of how she feels about any of it other
than she's unheppy. And yeah, and that one scene where
she's just like knocking over the chair and screaming and

(41:12):
it's handheld again, and you just kind of feel like, wow, Okay,
these are real, living, breathing people. It's just that society
requires them to not show any of that. And it
happens feel in three hours, so it makes it so
very powerful when it happens. And uh and it's funny too,
in the scene where he beats Bullington's ass and has
like ten people pulling him off. Yeah, I'm like, oh,

(41:35):
there's a little bit of clockwork Orange, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
well they you know, I had never picked up on this,
but um, if you look structurally at Clockwork Orange, it's
a rise and fall. And the movie is basically divided
up into into two halves. You have the introduction of
Alex and you have this progression all the way up
until when he finally gets thrown in jail, and then

(41:56):
you have the whole second half of the movie with
Ludovico treatment and everything else where. It's like his downfall
in a way. Um, and there's like a mirrored aspect where,
you know, towards the end of the movie he's like
returning home to his parents again and finding out that
they've rented out. So like, it has this very clean

(42:16):
one part rise, one part fall. In Barry lynnon is
the same exact structure. Yeah, weirdly. Yeah, that is interesting.
I didn't think about that. And if you think about
Kubrick's fixation on symmetry, it's like a visual metaphor. He
also is that way like narratively structurally that he likes these,
you know, bifurcated two halves of a of a narrative

(42:37):
that marry each other in some way. Yeah. So back
to the lenses and the candle its yes, yeah, uh,
he very famously, um, as much as he could, especially
in the exteriors, he used natural light. Yes. Um. It
is a bit of a misnumber the more I dug
that he you know, you've heard people say he only
used natural light piers, No, that's not true. Um. A

(42:58):
lot of the interiors he apparently almost never had a
light inside a room, but you have outside the windows. Yeah,
he was casting light constant uh, and they would cover
the windows as you know with it's called opal but
it's like a sort of a see through um like
diffusion yeah, diffusion. Um, I guess if you don't know anything,
I'm trying to think of listeners and what describe it.

(43:20):
It's almost like wax paper exactly. Yeah, that you would
put over the windows, so when the light comes in,
it just gives a very even sort of glow, doesn't
give you like that hard direct light that casts really
harsh shadows and goes to one specific point where you're
aiming the light. It just diffuses it so that it's
more of like an ambient It just brings its like
all light level. It's like light coming into a window,
exact like the sun does. And he wanted it to

(43:43):
do it this way, not because he wanted to be
Stanley Cooper can be a pain in everyone's ass. He
did it because they didn't have lighting back then like this.
He wanted it to look like it would have looked
where coming from daylight and candles that's what you had
back then. He achieved it through the use of those
exterior lights and then very very famously through the use

(44:05):
of thousands and thousands of double and triple wicked candle yes.
And uh they talk about in the extras how these
candles would burn down very quickly. I assume they had
to be well assumed. We can guarantee this that they
were mimicking the candles of the period. They were not
modern candles that might last longer. Uh So these candles

(44:26):
burned down very quickly and had to be changed out
after pretty much like every take or two. Yeah, and
the drip, the drips control whatever it had to be. Yeah,
they they had to design kind of special candle holders
that would look period accurate but also assist with these
drips not getting on any of these priceless historical locations

(44:48):
where they're shooting, because it's like, you know, you anybody
that's ever like been on like a location shoot or
you know, had somebody come to them to want to
shoot in their house or something like. Productions will promise
we won't break anything, we won't touch anything, we'll put
it back just the way it was, And people that
are maybe naive are like, Okay, that sounds good, and

(45:08):
then don't ever do it. And then you know, boom,
you bring in like a forty person film crew carrying
like heavy lights and gear and bumping into walls and
knocking it over and yeah, it's it's really you know,
it's it's with historical landmarks. Oh man, I'm sure they
were insane. The people that they were working with, that
can that ran these places. It just I can't imagine

(45:31):
how tough that was well. They said that some of
these houses, you know, a lot of them probably are
open for like tours to the public, and they did
not close them down to the public while this shoot
was going on. So if you happen to go to
one of these houses while they were shooting, they were
just kind of corral and like rope it off, like
don't go in that room because they're doing stay in there. Yeah, Stanley,
you were shooting a little thing in there. Um, but

(45:52):
I believe in some cases they actually had to like
stop shooting and let people check out the room for
a minute and move on and then like, okay, we
can pick up again. So he just imagined like how
often they're having to stop and start And we said
and with between the candles, and but the effect though,
it is like stunning. Oh, it's incredible. Candle that scenes

(46:13):
there's just this warmth that like you cannot get from lights. Yeah,
there's there's no way to do it. Just the flickering
of the light that you can see on their faces.
And if they were because I mean obviously a lot
of movies have shot with candles in the shot and
then lit with something else that's a more constant bright
kind of sources are providing the light source. You can

(46:35):
tell the providing the light source because they are literally
you see when the candle flickers, when it changes direction
or something, the light goes away for us for a
few frames, and you see that flicker playing out on
their faces. The same was true um in the exterior
because they were shooting in Ireland for a year, which
is like, you know, one of the rainiest cloudy is
placed on the planet and there there are long shots

(46:57):
where he would uh you you could see the change
in the sky, which I know, it's beautiful. Terrence Malichus
done that, but generally you don't do that because it messes,
you know, you call every aperture set messes a continuity.
But he had a special uh I think a lens
made that he could control the aperture as they were shooting. Yeah,

(47:19):
which is crazy, like, yeah, maybe they rode the aperture
a little bit. They did. They had they had one
scene in particularly that had special lens made where they
actually it didn't It was like a still photography lens
that they had to retrofit to work on a camera.
Ye did de click the aperture? Yeah, And I think
there was two one one one he was being robbed,
and there was another one. I can't remember which scene,

(47:40):
but they said basically that they started and they moved
like six or seven stops to the end of the scene.
It was wide open and just which affects you know,
the field depth the field and like, you know, the
slightest little jiggle with a with a with the camera
like it's amplified by a million, So just really technically

(48:01):
unbelievable stuff. Yeah, there's there's one scene that I that
I clocked last time I was watching it a couple
of nights ago. Um, where it's just a shot of
like a road. Uh, the road is kind of on
the left side of the frame. The right side is
just sort of trees and countryside coming or whatever or
not the way maybe the carriage maybe um well I

(48:22):
feel like maybe it was something on horseback, but maybe
it's a carriage. Um. But like the cloud actually appears
to kind of move with him through the shot where
it's like that was just one of those happy accidents,
I'm sure, but maybe they did it like twenty or
thirty times until he was like, oh that was a
good one. Like I like the way the cloud moved
through the shot right as he was coming through. It's
just one of those things, Yeah, they talk about, especially

(48:43):
like you said in Ireland where uh in those early
scenes with Captain Quinn dancing and and all that kind
of stuff, Like from one minute to the next, it's
like it's rainy, it's cloudy, it's sunny, and if you're
gonna have any kind of consistency at all, you just
have to sort of wait for the for the sun
to go back behind the cloud or out or whatever
the effect you're going for. Wow. Um. One of my

(49:10):
favorite parts is, uh, is the section with the Chevalier. Yes,
when they first meet, you know, he has been tasked
to be a spy by Storf and his crony whoever
that other guy is the second who is really the first?
Of course their meeting room and you know it's like

(49:31):
their little military office is just like a grand palace. Um.
So he gets tasked with being a spy. Uh. They
say that this this guy is a is a gambler
and sort of a man about town, and you need
to need to get in there and see what's going on.
And the narration when he meets him, he meets he
sort of looks like John Cleese. He's in full like

(49:51):
white makeup, and he looks like this dandy fop and
he's got the eye patch, he's got the eyepatch going.
He's got the really visible mole like you see in
so many pe all of that period. That's the thing
they put on. Yes, exactly, exactly. But he said the
narration goes right before he sells out his mission, which
was instantly the narration goes. There's many a man who

(50:12):
will not understand the calls of the boast of feeling
which was now about to take place. Yeah, yeah, I
love that breaks down. Yeah, just as like I'm a spy.
I'm here to spy on the exact pot store sent
me and yeah yeah, yeah, he just spills the Ven's
immediately well because he's daddy, and they gets up and
just immediately hugs him, and then they have this like solidarity.

(50:33):
They both had this outburst of emotion. Yeah, you know,
um for the time period. Yeah, even though he's kind
of having to he you know, the Chevalier's reaction is
a little more Subduti's patting him on the back to
there that's his son, and yeah, yeah, and then they
traveled the you know the country, uh in Europe, like
gambling and going to salons and spas and cheating and

(50:54):
ripping people off. And that is such a that that
technique of like I I feel like it's used a
lot in comedies. It's almost a cliche at this point
where you know, the voiceover will prefigure something somebody's about
to say. Sometimes they'll even say what the thing is
and then cut to the person saying the thing. That's
a very like common effect. But somehow in Barry Linden

(51:16):
it's not like a laugh out loud moment, but it
is just like a rye kind of like winking a
nod super dry. Yeah, yeah, interesting. Back to lenses. Yes, um,
because we're not done. I mentioned NASA. What what do
you do? He worked with NASA on a special lens, right,
So NASA had designed in Zeiss, working with NASA, zis

(51:36):
very famous lens manufacture out of Germany had made these
special lenses that had an aperture of fo point seven
as zero point seven which if you know, just to
briefly explain aperture and like f stops um, the aperture
also known as you have stop is like the ratio

(51:57):
of the aperture to the focal length of the lens.
So to make it kind of easy to understand, um
as the number is lower. If it's say you're in
an F one, that means the opening of your lens
is equivalent to like the focal length your lens. So
you're letting in a lot of light. Yeah, the aperture
will get wider and narrower, allowing in more and less.

(52:20):
Yet yeah, exactly, and so uh, the the fastest available
lenses when Kubrick was making this film, like fastest available
in terms of like what was kind of commercially around
might have been a one point for um, but more
likely like a two or two eight, especially if you're
talking zooms for primes, you probably had some like you know,

(52:40):
Still's lenses that would open up to a one four,
and maybe some motion picture lenses to UM. But Kubrick,
because you wanted to shoot in candle light, he needed
a faster lens in that faster in in the sense
of lenses in the sense of like photography does not
refer to like the frame rate you're shooting at. When
you say a fast lens, you mean a lends that
gathers a lot of light when you can shoot in

(53:02):
in this case and low light conditions super low. Yeah,
so Cooper Cad calculated that. Okay, our speed of film.
The sensitivity of the film is what they call uh
an a s A of one hundred. A s A
is used interchangeably today with I s O. If you've
ever done you know, video over stills photography, you're probably

(53:24):
familiar with the I s O setting. The I s
O is like how sensitive the film is to light.
And as that number increases, it has numbers like one
hight hundred and so on. Every time that number doubles,
you're getting another stop of sensitivity in the light in
the in the sensor. And so what Kubrick was planning

(53:45):
on shooting on was just is one film and they
were going to rate it at two hundred and then
push it one stop in the development. Yeah. And what
that means, everybody, I know we're getting into, but pushing
is when when you develop something, um, not as it
was intended to be developed. You developed it like for longer,

(54:06):
you know, and as though they were a different film stock,
well maybe film stocks something kind of you treat it
you basically just let it develop for longer. So that
more of the image, the brightness of the image comes through,
but at a cost of you're you're also exposing like
more of the grain in the image. Yeah. So like
I remember in film shoots early on, they would uh,

(54:26):
they would change the film over and they would tape
the can shut and somebody would say push that two
stops and they would write that on the tape so
the lab would know to develop it specifically that way. Yeah,
and sometimes you know a lot of people would do
that for almost aesthetic reasons, especially as you get later
on into the lifetime of film, Like there were faster

(54:47):
films around. Yeah, you could get four hundred or eight hundred,
but you might still shoot on one and push it
a couple stops because you actually want that grain pattern
to come through and to give you your your image
that kind of like texture to it. Um. But in
the case of Kubric in the seventies, I think he
was shooting on the one speed film because usually the
lower the lower the I s O of the film,

(55:08):
the more kind of colorful and vibrant and rich it's
going to be, um, the less grain there's going to be,
So you get just this beautiful, pristine kind of image
that was very important for instance, for like the daytime
exteriors to kind of mimic that of paintings. If you
shot that on like sixteen mail meter or if you
shot it on you know, a faster film, there would

(55:30):
be more grain in those scenes and it would kind
of spoil the effect in a way. So all this
is kind of setting up to say Kuber had a
real problem. He had like a math problem or a
physics problem where it's like these candles only put out
so much light. They literally put out one foot candle,
which is a popular kind of way of measuring light,
and that was with double and triple wicks and doing

(55:52):
everything they could candle, yeah, sometimes right under someone's face.
And so he had this problem. Right, we've got a
hundred you know, is o or as a film, we're
gonna push that one stop to two hundred because that's
still going to give us an acceptable level of grain.
Uh By pushing it to two hundred, Okay, we've gotten
one aperture closer to this problem. But at a one

(56:14):
four we're still not there. We're still way under. So
how do you get faster? Well, he was reading an
article I believe in American cinematographer that talked about these
lenses that Zeissa developed for NASA, and the lenses again
had an aperture of F zero point seven. And this
is so they could shoot in space. This is so
they could shoot like the Dark Side of the movie. Basically, yeah,

(56:35):
and so that is that is a full two stops faster,
which means it gathers four times more light than the
one point four. So but it was not that simple.
It was not as simple as like getting the lens
from NASA and slapping on the camera because they were
never certain camera exactly and the the this the design
of this lens was was had had nothing to do

(56:57):
with motion picture cameras. So Kubric had to have someone
modify one of his personally owned cameras to fit the
lens so that it was literally just a few millimeters
away from the film gate. So a very very narrow
tolerance for any kind of error, you know, in in precision,
if it was off by just a millimeter one way

(57:18):
or the other, the image would probably be out of focus.
It might be vignette, or it might be a little
too cropped in or something. So he had to get
it just right, had to design an entirely different like
viewfinder system for the for the camera, so that when
they were actually rolling, they could still see what they
were doing. And you know, the combination of pushing the

(57:39):
film stop, doing everything they could with the candles using this,
you know, incredibly kind of technically advanced lens from NASA.
And then of course we we mentioned earlier, as you
open the aperture up more and more you're letting in
more light, your depth of field gets more and more narrow.
So in in these you know, it was a fifty

(58:00):
millimeter lens, which is for for thirty five millimeter cameras.
That's kind of like a portrait lens um if you're
if you're accustomed to like shooting full frame, it's more
like a seventy seventy five something like that, So it's
it's not a wide lens um. It's more like a
medium close up kind of lens. And as your as
your focal length goes up, that also reduces your depth

(58:23):
of field because you're in more of a close up situation.
And so if you had the subject about eight feet
away from the camera, then your depth of field was
equivalent to like one point seven inches, which means if
anybody leans forward the slightest bit, you're you're immediately out
of focus. Well that's one reason why everyone was so

(58:44):
still on a lot of these shots. Yes, not only
did he want to mimic the painting, but the actress
who played uh Lady h Lyndon said, you know, we
had to remain still because we would be out of
focus if we moved a fucking inch. Yeah. Yeah, And
so Kubrick had to come up with this uh system
where his focus puller like, it's it's just unreasonable to

(59:05):
expect a focus piller to be able to eyeball the
difference of a couple inches from eight feet away or
however far away he is. So Cooper actually came up
with this idea to have a second camera, close circuit
TV camera that would be kind of uh, perpendicular to
the side of the actor. And then they placed a

(59:26):
grid over the monitor that was showing the image from
this close circuit TV camera, and there it was like lines,
vertical lines going down the picture from the profile of
the actor, so that when the actor did lean forward,
they were measurements noted on this you know, overlay that
would say the distances, and so he could look at

(59:47):
that line in the actor intersection with that line and
move the lens, you know, move the focus ring accordingly,
And they did the whole movie like that, you know, whenever,
whenever they're on these um dimly lit candle light interiors,
which is a lot of yeah, yeah, I mean so
it's incredible, Like if you watch that movie, like certainly

(01:00:08):
the the the images of the candle it interiors, they're
soft to have a beautiful softness to them, but they're
never out of focus. No, And like people that don't
um if you're not super technically savvy about some of
this stuff, like in the last like eight minutes just
went over your head. When you watch this film, and

(01:00:28):
in an era and a year especially of some of
the best looking movies you've ever seen, Barry Lyndon stands
out apart from those even even then, like while you're
watching this movie, if you're like, man, this really looks great,
that's why, you know, like such great preparation and care
and thought and inventiveness went into making what you see

(01:00:50):
on the screen. Uh, And that's why it seems like
one of my favorite shots is when the soldiers when
that house is on fire and the soldiers have torched it,
and they are leaving with like some of the supplies
that they have rated just kind of marching slowly away.
And it's in that bit of narration too, is he
kind of sells out the era and and the military

(01:01:15):
because the narration kind of straight up says something like,
you know, during this time period, we're you know, we
think of them as of noble and all this stuff,
but like kind of what you're seeing on screen. I
wish I wish I'd written down the exact quote. It's
something to the effect of, I know, the shot you're
talking about, and the bit of narration I'm thinking is
it comes a little bit later where you actually see them, uh,

(01:01:38):
some Prussian soldiers marching by with what looks like just
like random kids, and like, yeah, they've got like young
people that people people that are not you know, farmers,
people that are not like trained soldiers. It just says,
you know, we we think of the military, we think
of like the king and so on. Is being he's
like dignified high ranking people that that that there's sort

(01:01:59):
of like an honor in in in going to war
and bravery and so on, but actually in order to
keep the ranks full, you know, because basically the king
needed like cannon fodder. Um, they would just have to
take anybody into the army. It was sort of an
indictment of war in the military and nobility. And it
just kind of goes by like all on one quick

(01:02:19):
little Yeah, it says so much because it's not even
the grand statement of the movie. Yeah, it's just you know,
part of that world. You know that that there they
basically just need warm bodies to catch bullets. You know.
It's it's it's brutal. I'm looking on my page here
trying to think of a couple of my favorite parts. Um,
Linden's the former Linden who dies his death scene. Yes,

(01:02:45):
this is one of the great scenes in movies. Yeah,
it's so over the top and like just that guy
is just chewing through scenery. He tries to open up
his pills and they spill out onto the table and
then he's he's wheezing and he's he's on death door stuff,
you know, and baring just a redman had just left
the exactly saying he who laughs laughs exactly exactly exactly,

(01:03:06):
and uh, and it's so interesting the effect that again
the voiceover creates there where you're still seeing this person
alive moving on screen, even though he's like struggling to
catch his breath. But the narration says, you know, Lord
Lyndon passed away not long after, So you're seeing this
person as they're still alive, but you're hearing that they've

(01:03:28):
died or that they're going to die. Well, and you
even before, as the first time viewer of this movie,
when they're sort of facing off right there, the guy
Lyndon was getting so worked up. I'm like, he's gonna die. Yeah,
he's gonna yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's just what happens. Yeah,
it's so funny and again but played a little bit
for black comedy, I think, Yeah, it's so over the top. Yeah,

(01:03:50):
And just the the sense that, like, you know, if
if you have any notion that your wife loves you
or something, the fact that he's he's dying, he's not
long for this world and he's already seeing his replacement.
Yeah yeah, and he can't do anything about it. And
it's like just yeah, the the notion that his whole

(01:04:14):
life has just been for nothing, for a sham, you know. Yeah,
And that's a bit of a like the notion of
the May December thing, like the old man with the
young you know, the sixth year old man with the
twenty five year old girlfriend. That's all fun in games,
but he knows in real life, those those men know
that that woman would rather be with someone closer to

(01:04:37):
her age. Like deep down, they maybe have the money,
and they may have the notoriety or the wealth of
the fame, but like at the end of the day,
this character and in real life, these guys they see
the Rhin o'neils come into the room and the way
their wife looks at them exactly, and all the money
in the world won't change the fact that you're about
to fucking die. Yeah. Yeah, it's brutal really and stuff.

(01:05:00):
It's interesting too because at the beginning of the movie,
what is Redmond Barry doing. He's he's kind of resisting
this almost sort of arranged marriage that's going to happen
between his cousin and Captain Quinn, where you know, the
family says it out right there like this Captain Quinn
is worth fift guineas a month. You know, it's like

(01:05:22):
there's no talk of romance, there's no talk of he's
a good guy. Or anything like that. It's just like
he means a lot to this family financially, the bottom line.
So it's it's very much like, you know, an arranged
marriage or something. And uh, and and young Barry kind
of like idealistic Barry wants to resist this and when

(01:05:42):
believes in true love and passion and so on. And
then he gets a little bit older and soon he
does the same exact thing where sure she is a
beautiful woman, but he clearly doesn't love her, and and
he just it is entirely about him rising through the
ranks and kind of legitimate sing himself as part of
this higher wrong of society. Well, and then his mom

(01:06:04):
at one point kicks it up a notch because she's like,
you're with lady Lyndon, and this is great. And I
think in his mind at that moment he's like, yeah,
he thought he was set. I'm done. He thought he'd
done it. And the mom basically says, you don't have
a penny to your own name, exactly, and you are
a bad accident away from being broke. And so that's
when he starts trying to ingratiate himself to the larger

(01:06:27):
of the crust. Uh. And and a chief title or whatever. Financially,
he's the cause of his own demise. He is the
agent of his own son's death. Um which, by the way,
I know this film, uh, I'm not defending it, but
by being a cold sort of detached thing. But I
will say, this is the only movie I've ever watched

(01:06:49):
where a child dies and I didn't like even get
a lump in my throat really now, man, During that
I was just like, all right, this is happening. Interesting,
And I got into the acting and Ryan O'Neill breaking down,
But I wasn't myself like upset, Wow, interesting. I'm I
don't know. It's sometimes when I watch it, I do
have more of an emotional response, and sometimes it is

(01:07:11):
more of that kind of slightly distanced feeling. But I
do find that too, you know, at least on certain viewings,
depending on how I'm feeling or whatever. I have kind
of gotten more choked up during that part just because
and I might on a different day too. Yeah. Something
about the scene that really got to me was when
he's in bed and his head is all bandaged and

(01:07:31):
he can't feel anything other than like just his face.
I guess he's paralyzed. Yeah, And he talks about his
body being very cold, and he just asked his parents
straight up in that way that children do, am I
gonna die? Like? He just comes out and says that
there's no beating around the bush. There's no intact. It's
just the curiosity of a child that doesn't know. This

(01:07:52):
is not necessarily the kind of thing you say out loud,
you know. Um, So he's just you know, am I
going to die? Um? Will I go to Evan? You know,
I'm very cold. I can't feel anything. It's I don't know.
There's something so so um sad about it to me. Um,
But you know I I also didn't get emotional watching
it this most recent time, but it has affected me

(01:08:14):
that way before. Well, it's because the character of Berry
is not one you attach yourself to emotionally. UM. And
I was it was interesting. I was thinking about a
lot of the criticism that um, like Pauline kle very
famously in The New Yorker said, Kubrick has taken a
quick witted story and controlled it so meticulously that he's
drained the blood out of it. It's a coffee table movie.

(01:08:36):
We might as well beat a three hour slide show
for art history majors, and I just didn't see it, man,
Like it's a three hour film, but it needs to
be because what you and where you start with that
character as Redmond, Like I get that, what is he
like eighteen or nineteen? Yeah, something like that, like Redmond
Barry at the beginning that movie and one legged Barry

(01:08:58):
Lyndon hobbling in to that carriage at the end. When
you think about that, you've you've gone through a journey
scene a life that you would not have gotten in
two hours. Oh for sure. You know it's necessary to
be this long, and it is slow, But I was
never bored. No, I don't find it a boring movie
at all. Every scene, if you're on the movie's wavelength,

(01:09:19):
has humor. It has kind of commentary on the world
at the time or or the interior, kind of change
that's happening within within Barry Lindon. Um, Yeah, there there's
nothing dull about it. There's there's just too much going
on in every scene. They all feel like they have
a purpose and they're propelling things forward and they're giving

(01:09:41):
you more information about this period of time. And some
of them do proceed very slowly, but I mean they
it also allows him to have these like incredibly beautiful moments,
like the scene where lady Lyndon leaves the card game
table and walks outside and is kind of lit by
like moonlight, and you had this amazing contrast between like

(01:10:02):
the blue night lighting of the of the exterior and
the warm interior lighting through the window, and that wonderful
tracking shot as Barry walks out to to meet her,
and the movie just really takes its time and draws
out that moment and it has the quality of like
just the wonderful, like classical kind of cinema. There's something

(01:10:25):
so movie like about that that particularly moment um, but
also real of the period too. I think, yeah, I
don't think people, it's not modern day New York City.
I think there was slow and uh, Scorsese talks about that. Actually,
I think it's part of the Life and Pictures documentary

(01:10:46):
that is all about Kubrick. Um. But but Scorsese says,
you know what Kubrick did with the period films, he
took it back in time and he actually allows you
to feel the slowness the pace of in that period,
rather than being kind of this amped up like, don't
get bored modern Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a

(01:11:08):
much more slowed down some dude, and once if you're
willing to go with it, to just like surrender to
the case of the movie and just become completely engrossed
in it. I find it. I mean, it's one of
those movies that I could watch times over and over
and over again and never get bored with it. You will, yeah,
you're maybe maybe I will. Maybe. I already can't wait

(01:11:30):
to see it again, but I for sure want to
see it on the big screen. Yeah, with great sound
and like because the music, I mean, we haven't gotten
into that. Like Kubric of course loves classical music, and
in this movie he has free reign because it is
during that time period, so he just goes nuts with it.
He does. He does say that he cheated a little bit.

(01:11:52):
The Yeah, the one of the main themes, the Sarah
Bound the Dune Dune, Dune Dune, that I believe is
from maybe the like forty years later than the film
takes place, but he gets a passed for it and
um yeah again. In in the extras, they talk about
how um he was considering all kinds of different music

(01:12:14):
for the film, trying different things in the editing room.
Um probably looked at doing, you know, an original score
to some extent, and then finally, like quite late into
the editing process, decided, actually I'm just gonna go with
all you know, pre existing music. Still re recorded it
and did all kinds of different arrangements and orchestrations of

(01:12:34):
it for different purposes. Because sometimes you have that theme
just on like tempani. Sometimes you have more like a
full orchestra. Um. Sometimes it's played and like during the duels,
it's more of like a suspenseful kind of version of it.
Sometimes when things are more tragic and emotional, that's when
the orchestra comes in and the strings are swelling and
it has more of like that tragic dimension. Um. So

(01:12:57):
it's it's very versatile piece of music as well. And
it just was like this amazing consistency to the movie
that it's like the same tune being played in different
registers depending on it just it works so well yeah, yeah, um,
all right, we only got a few more minutes, so
let's go ahead and finish on that final duel. There's
three duels that sort of sort of beginning middle and

(01:13:20):
in this this movie and the final duel with with
Bullington um is played in real time and it's long,
like the setup, but again it's all just he could
have trimmed three or four minutes. But why absolutely like
the way they showed the rules and the and the
and the um sort of how stiff it all was

(01:13:42):
and how you had to go about it. Um. And
this duel is interesting too because they there was the
only one where they didn't fire it once. I know
there were different kinds of duels. This was like we
take turn shooting at each other. It's very interesting that
you know, you flip a coin to see who shoots Firstee,
who shoots first, who's going to fire and who's going
to receive fire? Yeah, and you notice they turned to

(01:14:04):
their side to make themselves at least a little bit
more narrow than then then facing straight on. And again
it's this absurdity. It's the idea that you know, what
you're what you're doing is somehow proper or gentlemanly or something.
And then that great barn with the with the birds, yeah, yeah,
the doves, and yeah it was the only one that
was an exterior um. But that made for some really

(01:14:27):
like great frames and um gives you the just the
sound of the doves kind of rustling and and just
such a such a sense of place and everything. Yeah.
And Bullington's one of my favorite like reactions in the
whole movie is when his his gun missfires and he's like,
you know, I need a different gun, and they're like, no,
that was your shot. That counts Like that gun discharged,

(01:14:47):
so it's your time to receive you know. Yeah. So Lyndon,
you know, fires into the ground and take sort of
the even though he fucking hates his kid. He hates
the kid. He refuses and he would have killed him probably. Yeah,
he's a good shot. Yeah. Uh. And he fires into
the ground and you think for a moment like he's
gonna let it go. And they ask him, and I
think everyone's kind of like we're all good, right yeah,

(01:15:08):
and he just looks and it's like, you know, I
have what did he say? I have not received satisfac exactly? Yeah, man. Yeah.
And then and then right there you see and Ryan
and Nils reaction in his eyes. You just see him.
It just washes over him like my life is about
to take a very drastic turn. Yeah, you know, I
he's not killed. He he it's like he wants to

(01:15:29):
be magnanimous in that moment. He wants to do this
like honorable thing and and sort of like subtle things
amicably so that maybe Bullingdon can be reintegrated into the family.
They can all live together happily ever after and still
be rich and still be rich and you know, and
uh in Bullingdon just that all the way from him.

(01:15:50):
But that's the only way that movie could end. Like
Barry Lyndon in the end, cannot stay in a place
that he has not earned. There's no ending if if
he as that, it's just like he has to be
kicked back out. Yeah, uh, because he never he never
belonged there, no, you know, to begin with, he has
to kind of regress back towards where he started. And

(01:16:11):
short one leg funny funny tidbit from uh again from
from some of the extras on the criterion, um Leon
vitally is actually vomiting in that scene. They they they
fixed him a lunch that day that was meant to
be deliberately disgusting. That was like cold soup and like

(01:16:32):
chicken and just this nasty concoction. Yeah and um and
even that wasn't enough to get him like physically sick,
and so they went to Plan B, which is that
they cracked open a raw egg and had to swallow
that down. And he said, as soon as it went down,
I could feel it coming back up. I really And
so when he's standing there about to receive fire and

(01:16:54):
he has that first a little bit of vomit that
comes out that is real, true life vomit, he runs
over to the corner and he gets really sick, and
you kind of hear that off screen, and Vitality said
he was petrified that Kubrick was going to make him
do it over and over again, but in fact, Kubrick said, nope,
that was great, Like it was a natural reaction only exactly.
That was like the one time he ever did just

(01:17:16):
like a single take. It's putting Vitality through it over
and over again. That's pretty cool, all right, man, I
know we could talk for another hour. I feel like
we did it. Oh I'm so, I'm so glad you
saw the movie. You enjoyed the movie. Thank you for
picking this one. Absolutely. I don't know, it's just one
of those that was on the list that I never
got around to. And I never even knew quite what
it was. I'd seen bits and pieces through documentaries. I

(01:17:37):
knew it was that era, but I was always just like,
what is Barry Lyndon? And now I know. It took
me even even when I watched it in high school,
like it was one of the last ones I got
around to, ye because I had that whole first Kubrick
box set and I kind of worked my way through
the whole thing and then eventually it was just kind
of like, all right, I got three hours to kill
I guess I'll check out this like lesser known, lesser

(01:17:58):
appreciated Kubrick movie, and I was just blown away from it.
And again, like so many of his movies appreciated much
later than they were at the time, big time, it's
sort of I mean, not every film he did, but
he he had a weird thing about, uh, people giving
them a second look years later, because now this is
regarded as one of the great masterpieces of all time,

(01:18:20):
and I think it absolutely deserves that reputation. I mean,
it's just you know, when we were talking about The Shining,
that's a movie that I'm very comfortable like picking apart
kind of nitpicking, and I look at it almost as
more of this kind of like object, but Barry Lyndon
is to me is almost perfect. There's very little that
you could point out as flawed. It just feels so

(01:18:43):
tightly constructed, so incredibly executed, that it's just this incredible
kind of masterpiece. I think it's more than a movie.
I know that sounds cheesy, but it really is. Yeah, alright,
good stuff man, great, thanks a lot, Casey. Part three
coming soon everyone before doing movie. Crush is produced, engineered, edited,

(01:19:22):
and soundtracked by Noel Brown and Ramsay Hunt at how
Stuff Work Studios, Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Casey on Kubrick Part II: Barry Lyndon