It was Stanley Kubrick’s big folly, the great director’s lone flop. It was slow-paced and bloodless and calamitously miscast. Critics likened it to a coffee-table book, or a tasteful slideshow, or an interminable tour of a musty art museum. No one, it seemed, was especially thrilled by Barry Lyndon when it appeared in cinemas back in December 1975. The film was unwrapped for Christmas and dutifully admired for a spell, after which it was quietly packed off to the attic to rot.
Now Barry Lyndon is back, celebrating its 50th birthday with a remastered new print – and guess what, it’s brilliant; its reputation is a joke. And while it would be nice to blame those contemporary critics for steering us wrong, I’m conscious of the fact that I watched Barry Lyndon as a student and didn’t like it much either. Perhaps certain films, like youth, are wasted on the young. Possibly some pictures gain texture and flavour with age. In which case Barry Lyndon’s not a book, or a lecture, or a traipse through the Louvre. It’s a fabulous wine from a vintage year, fortuitously set aside as a gift for the future.
