In ‘Barry Lyndon’, Stanley Kubrick has employed a number of
unique techniques and motifs to express the epic story in a visual way, rather
than through a ‘humanistic’ and sentimental narrative. These strategies can facilitate
the audience to understand the messages Kubrick has intended to convey behind
the story.
Because Kubrick has not placed emphasis on a clear or
straight-forward storyline in ‘Barry Lyndon’, some viewers could not easily
understand the story and would swiftly jump to the conclusion that the film was
boring and cold. I think a fairer description is to say the audience members
are alienated by the film, and it is not necessarily a bad thing as it may
first seem. In an interview regarding his unrealized ‘Napoleon’, Kubrick has
explained why he often made films either about the past or the future. He felt
that when the audience was experiencing an era unfamiliar to them, they would
be alienated and therefore would have to take a more detached perspective when
engaging with the story. This was exactly what Kubrick requested from the
audience. True, it is okay to be sentimental and tells others, ‘I understand
your situation.’, but do we really understand? If we are to understand and look
for deeper reasons, can we trust our subjective mind and jump to conclusions
easily? Kubrick wanted the audience to take a clinical detachment and to served
as observers when watching his films. Only when the audience could detach and
take an external and objective view, they could start to appreciate how the
characters in the film interacted with their environments and how or why the
environments would influence them in a particular way. If we are to look for
identifications from the characters, we will just be as entrapped as them, and
will never be able to look through the surface to reach a deeper understanding.
This was especially true for ‘Barry Lyndon’ – as Kubrick wanted to express his
view on big questions regarding human nature.
The naturalistic style
The techniques Kubrick employed have contributed to a
naturalistic style in ‘Barry Lyndon’. The approach he has employed was also
unconventional and represented a technological breakthrough for film-making,
which ironically it was employed to make a film about the past. Kubrick and his
cinematographer John Alcott have clearly stated the motivations behind this –
they wanted to film 'in the way we see things'. What they were driving at was
to achieve a realistic and naturalistic feel to the film, and they have been
experimenting since they were attempting to make ‘Napoleon’. Concretely, that
meant they wanted to make the film using natural and available lighting,
without the use of any additional lighting to achieve the effect. What was even
more daunting was their intentions to shoot some interior scenes with either
available lighting from the outside (sunlight or moonlight depending on the
scene), or the illumination of candlelight alone – without any additional
electrical light sources. Through their tests, Kubrick and Alcott have
concluded that the movie cameras available at their times were not sufficient
to capture these scenes satisfactorily. Later, Kubrick heard that there were a
number of rare Zeiss camera lenses, which were used by NASA to film the dark
side of the moon in the space mission. Gratifyingly, Kubrick got hold of one of
these lenses and modified it to fit onto the movie camera. It was the only
lenses at the time that could shoot candlelight in an interior scene without
the extra help of electrical additional lighting. Now, while Kubrick has
achieved his aim, the lens was not without problem. Because of its very short
focal length, it displayed zero depth of field in the scenes. In other to
maintain focus, Kubrick had to stage and position the scenes very carefully to
achieve the desired effects, and in some cases had to deliberate the movement. A
further advantage from this was that it gave a very static impression to the
scenes, which was what Kubrick has intended when he made the film.
With the technology allowing him to realize his style,
Kubrick has committed to portray his 18th century as realistic
possible, in an objective and detached manner. Yet, we need to understand that he
was not trying to make the audience identifying with the characters, like many
sentimental movies out there. A simple example – when someone is sad, you may
say ‘oh, I understand you, I share the sadness with you.’ But do you really
understand, and do you really share it? It is a sentimental answer to try to
show that person that you care about him. Except that you can hack into the
person’s mind and share that particular sadness, I feel it is a misuse of the
word ‘understand’. You can be compassionate with someone, but you can only
objectively appreciate or understand the situation. What Kubrick was driving at
was something similar. The characters in ‘Barry Lyndon’ behaved like they were
the people in the 18th century, and Kubrick did not frame this
characters to be similar to the modern audience, so that the viewers could
identify with them. Kubrick was portraying in an authentic manner how a person,
in a given setting in the 18th century, would have behaved. Certain audience, wishing to look for character
identifications when they watched ‘Barry Lyndon’, could not find anything
common between themselves and the characters starred by the movie stars like
Ryan O’Neal and others, were alienated and therefore hated the film. For
Kubrick, the only thing common was the psychology, or the timeless nature that
drove these characters and the audience alike. That was why Kubrick desperately
dispatched some many unique techniques to invite a clinical detachment from his
audience. What he wanted from the audience was for them to engage with the
ideas rather than seeking some sentimental feelings from the characters or the
story. From this, Kubrick has committed a rigorous realism to ‘Barry Lyndon’,
just like when he was working on other films like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.
How could Kubrick achieve such a sense of realism? Well, the
production team has researched on the materials regarding that particular era,
and in particular, Kubrick has inspected a number of paintings from the 18th
century, in order to portray in a pictorial manner the interactions in that
age. The end result was that the whole film looked like a moving painting, for
which Kubrick’s 18th century was portrayed in a meticulous and
authentic manner. Because the way the 18th century worked was
extremely different from the modern age the audience was in, it has led to an
alienating effect and the viewers had to take an observer’s stance, and to
literally viewed the story from a distance. I suppose it was the attitude for
Kubrick when one viewed history – one could only approach history in an
objective and intellectual manner, rather than through a subjective, ‘I know
how you feel’-type attitude. Only through such an appreciation can we find some
meanings or inspirations when we are engaging with the past.
The zoom
The anthropological distance was significantly enhanced by
Kubrick’s bold use of the reverse zoom, and Barry Lyndon could be considered as
the ultimate film of this technique, because Kubrick has done this so many
times in the film, almost as if it was a personal ritual. The reverse zoom in
the various thematic scenes seemed to take a common approach. It often started
from the close up of a human figure, or a depiction of human action (such as a
pair of hands working on something), and then the reverse zoom started to pull
back until an almost panoramic view was seen, with the human figure now being
very small in the surrounding environment. While Kubrick employed this because
he wanted to invite objectivity and clinical detachment from the viewers, I
believe he had a more philosophical reason to do this, and the ideas were very
similar to what he was trying to say in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.
What Kubrick was presenting here is a realistic position of
human’s position in the universe. When we look at things in life with a
human-centered perspective, we tend to see ourselves as the protagonists of the
various narratives, and the various often aspects are secondary or subservient
to us. Kubrick, like some other philosophers, believed that the universe is
indifferent to our passions, and therefore in ‘Barry Lyndon’, he was presenting
an impersonal view on human nature, custom, and various mechanisms that
governed the characters in their world. Of course, the impersonal and
dispassionate could be cold for some sentimental viewers, yet Kubrick’s intention
was always to inspire awe rather than sentiment or short-term sensations in
those entertaining films. Indeed, this perspective could facilitate the
audience to a calmer and more contemplative mood, and to observe and think
about how nature, and more important to the film, man-made systems and rituals
could affect the lives of these characters.
Kubrick’s characters were often entrapped by their
surroundings. They found themselves powerful to the nature and universe, or in
many cases, the systems they have created to control themselves and make
themselves ‘civilized’. The image of a small human figure in a vast environment
is a motif often used to illustrate this point, as in the films of Welles,
Herzog, Antonioni, Inarritu and many others. Kubrick’s reverse zoom has
enhanced this to an almost cosmic perspective. Humans are imprisoned in their
surroundings, and as I will discuss in the next article, the tragic fact they
can not understand or have the imagination to counteract or escape from the
surroundings will likely lead them to submit to the stronghold of these systems
and lead to dehumanization.
The narration
Kubrick’s films often have some forms of narrations, and it
is also the case for ‘Barry Lyndon’. It is important to point out that the narrative
approach in the film and the novel it is based on are very different, and these
have led to impacts on the audience’s perception of the film or novel. In
Thackeray’s original work, it employed a first-person narrative, where Barry
was an unreliable narrator. He was boasting, telling lies, and deliberately
giving out inaccurate information to impress the audience that he was a great
guy. This reflected that the novel was based on a more humanistic perspective,
where Barry could be quite immoral or ruthless when he tried to get what he
wanted. And, he was also attempted to take control on things around him. In the
film, however, the narrative style became a third-person narrative, and the
story was given by an omniscient narrator. Yet, as pointed out by many others,
the narrator was not a 100%-impartial observer. While he tended to take a
detached tone in his observations, he often passed satirical or cynical comments,
and there were things that he did not know or failed to comprehend, suggested
he was not hardcore omniscient. What were even more curious was that the narrator’s
comments often provided dissonance to the images portrayed on the screen, quite
similar to Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ in some cases. Of course,
certain audience could jump to the conclusion that he was an unreliable
narrator if they believed wholeheartedly in photographic reality.
What I suppose Kubrick was trying to do was to provide a satirical
challenge on the notion of representation. If the narrator was really
omniscient and provided accurate and objective information regarding the story,
then these information merely filled up the holes in the plot, complementing
the images which did not provide on the screens. In this case, it would be like
Kubrick’s ‘The Killing’, where the narrator provided the information for the
audience to make sense of complex and non-linear storyline in the film. In
‘Barry Lyndon’, the narrator’s observations often posed challenges to the
audience when they attempted to interpret the narratives in the film. If the
audience, or more relevant, the characters in the film, could have access to
these information, they would have a drastically different interpretation or
understanding of their situation, and there would take a very different course
of action. The tragedy of the characters was that they were merely components
in the story, and they could not easily detach from their worlds and lead to a
greater appreciation of the issues they were facing. If we, the members of the
audience, are being sentimental when we watch ‘Barry Lyndon’, there we are no
different from the characters which were confused and disillusioned by the
world they were situated in.
In some case, the narrator also challenged the notion of
objective representation of history, and the humanist view championed by many
warm and feel-good films. While these comments were witty and facetious in some
cases, they could be disturbing because that only suggested how insignificant
and unimportant an individual was in the face of history. In the skirmish which
Barry had to fight against the French troops in the Seven Years War, the
narrator informed us that this incident was not even recorded in any history
books, even if thousands of soldiers died in the most absurd way in this
insignificant battle. When Lord Charles Lyndon, being a powerful and rich
aristocrat, was confronting death in the most hideously painful way, the
narrator told us that all he has got was a small obituary in a book, and no one
else would remember him. Kubrick went as far to mute the voice of the narrator
when he was reading out the obituary, suggesting how uninteresting this character
was. Just like the Japanese film ‘Harakiri’ and ‘Samurai Assassins’, the
so-called objective history could be distorted or might be false – because they
were written by the winners and the powerful, and the other more personal
stories were seen as unimportant and were left out. Yet what Kubrick was trying
to reiterate here was that the indifferent universe is very fair – no matter
what sort of social status or abilities you have, a mortal will eventually die
and it is of no importance to the universe. With the human-centered ego and
hubris, this is a pretty sad comment, yet only when we can detach from our
subjectivity and the surroundings, we can understand and find out the
meanings of the things that take place around us, leading to the possibilities
of real changes.
(To be continued.)
by Ed Law
29/4/2017
Film Analysis
