Barry Lyndon is a curious choice for Kubrick, who has become more and more estranged from the taste and smell of human experience….

[Watching] the movie is like looking at illustrations for a work that—partly through Thackeray's, but more through Kubrick's, negligence—has not been supplied. Striking as some of these illustrations, often in long or extreme long shot, are, they do not encourage our getting involved with the characters in the story. This has something to do with the episodic nature of the film, but mostly with the fact that the director seems more concerned with landscapes, architecture, period interiors, costumes, etc., than with what happens to the people in them. (p. 84)

[The] film is almost entirely cool to the point of near-tonelessness, exuding, along with visual splendor, an aura of detachment if not indifference out of which the death of Bryan resonates with a doubly...