"Barry Lyndon" turns 50 — and raises questions about misogyny and class
Stanley Kubrick adapted an 1844 novel but removed much of its commentary on gender.
Only a single shot in “Barry Lyndon,” the 1975 Stanley Kubrick period drama that turns 50 in December, reveals its feminist origins. As the omniscient narrator (Michael Hordern) describes Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) as being happy with forcible domestication at the hands of her new husband Barry Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal), the camera lingers on her face. She seems depressed, withdrawn, a shell of her self… far from the picture of domestic bliss as explicitly described in the film’s text.
In this visual, Kubrick used the tension between image and text to juxtapose an implicit truth about how women are oppressed under patriarchy with the surface lie told patriarchs. It’s a shame the movie doesn’t contain more moments like it.
I draw attention to this moment because it is the only one in “Barry Lyndon” that speaks directly to feminist themes. Otherwise “Barry Lyndon” can best be regarded as a class-oriented adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s revolutionary 1844 novel, “The Luck of Barry Lyndon.” In the novel, Thackeray drew from real-life violent domestic abusers like Andrew Robinson Stoney-Bowes to scathingly skewer the narcissism, grandiose delusions and viciously exploitative misogyny of that type of man. Brilliantly, Thackeray has Lyndon tell his own story, setting him up as an unreliable narrator whose wild claims of badassery and noble lineage must be taken with several mountains of salt.
Kubrick, though leaving in some of Lyndon’s roguish qualities (he cheats on and emotionally neglects his wife, lies about his military exploits, etc.), utterly removes the downright evil ones from Thackeray’s novel. More importantly in terms of understanding the film: instead of focusing on Lyndon’s abuse toward his wife, Kubrick reorients the story toward Lyndon’s obsessive attempt to elevate his social class.
In short, Kubrick took a Victorian novel about feminism and transformed it into a lush period piece about economic inequality.
To be clear, I am not criticizing “Barry Lyndon” to denigrate it. Quite to the contrary, I’ve rewatched this slow three-hour epic many times for its lush imagery of the Irish and English countrysides, its meticulous historical accuracy and its incredibly astute, intelligent writing. Kubrick made 13 features in his career, and not one of them was a bad movie. Yet as much as I loved “Barry Lyndon” after seeing it, I found it hard to enjoy it as much when I got around to reading the Thackeray novel.
I do not believe that Kubrick needed to downplay the gender commentary in the original work in order to emphasize the observations about class rigidity. Yet he did, and it is hard not to notice.
“He always changed his stories,” explains Tony Zierra, a Kubrick expert who directed a pair of documentaries (“Filmworker” and “SK13”) about the legendary auteur. “That’s just how he worked.” In the case of “Barry Lyndon,” Kubrick seemingly made these changes in large part to attract O’Neal — a big star fresh off his heartthrob turn in “Love Story” — to play the lead role. It is unlikely O’Neal would have at this juncture in his career wanted to play a literal wife-beating lunatic.
Elizabeth Yoffe, who produced Zierra’s Kubrick documentaries, elaborated on that point.
“In this case, he saw something in Ryan, as Tony mentioned, and there is actually quite a parallel between what that type of character and what that type of actor wants and gets and how they rise through certain ranks and they fall,” Yoffe observed. “I think that what ended up happening, I can’t say for sure, but what I would say is that Kubrick wanted to show the misogyny and showed it in the way that he could. But there were also realities, for instance, working with Marissa Berenson and Ryan together.” Kubrick had already cut a sex scene they had shared, due to the actors’ mutual protests, showing that the actors had influence over how their characters were portrayed.
“I would say utilizing Ryan O’Neill, I believe that Ryan O’Neill would’ve himself in some ways” resisted the Thackerayian depiction of Lyndon, “and Kubrick would’ve seen this pushed back on being the villain, the full-out ‘I’m beating you, I’m abusing you, I’m SA’ing you’” narrative, Yoffe explained. “So the story itself would’ve run into further obstacles. That’s something that I think he would’ve been aware of.”
She concluded, “And he wasn’t really trying to make a point about misogyny. He was making a point, again, about hierarchies and power and what people seek and what’s in the core of who they are, which I think he really captured now that I’m reading Thackeray again.”
I agree with Yoffe and Zierra, at least insofar as the likely explanation for Kubrick’s toning down of his main character is concerned. At the same time, “Barry Lyndon” is like so many other movies based on novels in that the story from the book is better than the one which appears on screen. This is not always the case — for instance, I think Kubrick’s version of “The Killing” is superior to the novel on which it is based — but it is especially conspicuous with “Barry Lyndon.”
My recommendation: Watch the movie, then read the book, as I was lucky enough to have done. If you do it the other way around, you might be disappointed.
Back Seat Socialism
Column by Matthew Rozsa who is a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.