Dingle Barry Lyndon
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Barry Lyndon
edt89 — 10 years ago(December 31, 2015 07:23 PM)
Dude's kind of a massive piece of sh**, right? From about 5 minutes in I was already hating Redmond for how he ruined that British officer's courtship with that local trollop. From there on Barry does one despicable act after another and the film suffers pretty heavily from the fact that Kubrick seemed to think we'd just go along with the roguish nature of the character. While I realize he sort of got what he had coming, it kind of didn't feel like he got enough of what he had coming.
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hyperstillharry — 10 years ago(March 21, 2016 07:26 PM)
Mystified by sectarian, classist ignorance and bigotry? The OP is clearly an insular, myopic idiot, as prejudiced as the pompous, condescending and corrupt Quin himself
The film, of course, is satirizing and parodying such corrupted figures as Quin, as with Charles Lyndon, Lord Bullingdon, Rev Runt, Wendover, etc, the film being a critique of the barbaric savagery of aristocracy feudalism, ending on a note of cautious optimism and progress: 1789, the year of the French Revolution, when deranged feudalism gave way to a new regime (bourgeois capitalism and tokenistic democracy), a new system of social-reality, the present one. Barry may indeed be "fckd up", but he is probably the least "fckd up" character in the whole movie
Yes, of course I completely agree, but aren't you actually completely wrong? -
kenny-164 — 10 years ago(March 24, 2016 09:24 AM)
Harry,
I agree with your general take here. Over the years I have encountered people who have sympathized with characters like Bullingdon. So I should not be surprised when someone sympathizes with Quin. To my mind they as you say represent the old order, with the newer one that began with the American Revolution, which you did not mention, and the French, which you did, lasting to today.
Perhaps they have been confused by the perhaps too ironic narrator, as well as the unreliable elements of the narration from time to time. Kubrick's choice of what went into the narration remains one of the most fascinating if somewhat problematic elements of this film, I think. I wonder how he would react seeing some of those comments supporting people like Bullingdon. Perhaps he would be distressed, or perhaps amused how his portrayal including the narration sort of teases out them and how they reveal their retrograde prejudices. I like to think it is more the latter.