The praises and criticisms for this film cross on the point of film technology: costumes, props, soundtracks, F0.7 shots, candlelight, oil painting-like pictures... The admirer said: awesome! Critics say: formalism! This tendency is consistent with Oscar's evaluation of Kubrick. "2001 A Space Odyssey" brought him a best technology award, and "Children in Troubled Times" was the best costume, props, photography and soundtrack. Regardless of Cannes or Oscar, he missed the director screenwriter award in his life.
When everyone sees Kubrick as a paranoid detail control, please think about it. Will someone with his mind make a gorgeous and empty film?
"2001 A Space Odyssey", "A Clockwork Orange", and "Open Eyes" are all plated with amazing forms, but their forms have deep connotations that match them. In rustic language, it is "the perfect combination of art form and creative content". Like "Children in Troubled Times", there is a kind of grandeur, intangible, which makes people reminisce again and again without feeling crooked, that is, the charm of Kubrick himself.
Under the balanced pastoral composition, retro atmosphere, and extremely shallow and soft depth of field in "Children in Troubled Times", Kubrick told a story full of philosophies and a philosophy of life that the people like to hear. Russell once said, if you feel unhappy, just think about your being such a small particle in the universe, from birth to death, but so. I think this psychological suggestion is not feasible. It not only does not make people relieved, but it increases fear, because people's fear comes from the fear of life being insignificant, and the fear of living a lifetime is nothing. The philosophical story that Kubrick told in the language of the movie is the same as Russell's words, but it is much more gentle and comfortable.
The story takes place in England in the eighteenth century. Raymond Barry, an anonymous Irish boy, was frustrated in his first love and left. Within a few years, through coincidence, luck and his own courage, he tortuously set foot on the peak of life, married a beautiful noble widow, enjoyed all her property, and received a beloved son. However, his life is like a parabola. When he reaches the maximum, he will fall all the way down until he loses everything and returns to the starting point. But his life and the time in his life can never go back.
Behind this simple and clichéd story is the state of a "person": a person's relationship with history, the value of secular life to him, and the meaning of his life. There are several narrations and subtitles in the film to explain this "condition":
Barry's troops crossed the English Channel to fight the "Seven Years War" with the French. When the warship rides the wind and waves, the narrator says:
It would require a great philosopher and historian to explain the causes of the famous Seven Years War in which Europe was engaged and in which Barry's regiment was now on its way to take part. Let it suffice to say, that England and Prussia were allies and at war against the French, the Swedes, the Russians and the Austrians.
The narrator went on to say:
Barry's first taste of battle was only a skirmish against a small rearguard of Frenchmen who occupied an orchard beside a road down which, a few hours later, the English main force would wish to pass. Though this encounter is not recorded in any history books, it was memorable enough for those who took part...
It is well to dream of glorious war in a snug armchair at home, but it is a very different thing to see it first hand…
a war that historians argue endlessly, a battle forgotten by posterity, for hundreds of years Barry, who was on the battlefield before, meant a flickering fate, and for those soldiers who fell down on the drums and bullets, it meant the end of everything.
Fortunately, Barry escaped the bullet. After that, like a master surfer, he shuttled freely in various situations and gained both fame and fortune. Barry is far from perfect, he is a vanity struggler, like a dust in history, but a great father:
Barry had his faults, but no one could say of him that he is not a good and tender father. He loved his son with blind partiality. He denied him nothing. It is impossible to convey what high hopes he had for the boy and he indulged in a thousand fond anticipations as to his future success and figure in the world. But Fate had determined that he should leave none of his race behind him, and that he should finish his life poor, lonely and childless.
but, "fate, his descendants could not trace the continuation of his life." when his young son fell off the horse As he was seriously injured and dying in bed, Barry cried bitterly.
Finally, the son he poured all his love into, and his only connection with this eternal and merciless world, died.
The camera suddenly cuts to his son's funeral, the funeral procession, the small black coffin, accompanied by the priest's eulogy and a slightly sad grand soundtrack. The most impressive thing in the whole movie is this shot. I think Kubrick’s warmth is in it, although the perspective of the whole movie is cold and alienated.
Barry lost a calf in the final duel and traveled far away from home again, becoming a lonely, desolate, disabled gambler, and then no news.
Trailer subtitle wrote:
It WAS in that at The Reign of George III at The aforesaid personages lived and quarreled - Good or Bad, or Ugly Handsome, Rich or Poor - They All are equal is now.
Barry's life is too sentimental, too brave , Tangled, sorrowful... hundreds of years later, it doesn't matter.
This clichéd life story is finished, and it is not fundamentally different from the article on "Milk". Perhaps, there are no clichés in the world, and there are more vulgar people, and they become vulgar. If Kubrick used his photography, soundtrack, and set to tell a cliché story, it would be great. Therefore, he should not be underestimated.
Another underestimated aspect of Kubrick is that many people think he is a reckless artistic lunatic who pursues visual effects at all costs. In fact, although the box office of "Children in Troubled Times" was not ideal at the time, in general, his movies made a lot of money (only the box office, not DVD derivatives). The costumes in "Children in Troubled Times" are exquisite, but in order to save costs, many extravagants in the distant scene wear paper clothes.
Barry Lyndon
Written for the Screen
Produced and Directed
By Stanley Kubrick
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