All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 26, 2014 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
01:13:24
The Importance of Being Earnest

John, Richard, and Roman discuss Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 masterpiece, Barry Lyndon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
John, Romain, welcome back.
How are you?
Good.
Quite good.
Good.
Romain, how is Christmas in Paris going?
Actually, I'm glad you're up for a new Jean du Jardin session.
Christmas is actually, you know, you must have a lot of snow in Whitefish, but here it's raining every day, so it's a rather disappointing Christmas time.
Oh, that is a little sad.
Yeah.
But I will be moving out from here in a few days to really celebrate Christmas in my family.
500 kilometers, sorry, metric system, from here.
And maybe the climate will be drier, I may say.
That's very good.
I think the last time the three of us ran a podcast was almost exactly a year ago.
We talked about The Shining.
Exactly.
It was on December 19th, and actually, if you hadn't had good news yesterday, it would have been the same day, but now it's the very same day, one year from now.
Yes, well, with Kubrick, there are no coincidences.
I mean, this is some...
We're looking at ourselves in the mirror or something like that.
Both times, this weather was very similar.
We're near the solstice, so for me, out here in the Pacific Northwest, it's getting dark before 5, and it's snowed over, there's powder.
It's a very Kubrickian landscape, fitting for the shining.
And pagan at the same time.
Yeah, very pagan.
Christmas, the most pagan of holidays.
But let's get to...
The next film.
We've all agreed, before we leave this earth, we're going to have to do a podcast on every Kubrick film.
But today we're going to do one of those, and that's Barry Lyndon.
And it's a film I saw, just speaking personally, it's a film I first saw about 12 or 15 years ago.
And I remember thinking, I was obviously, despite the fact that I saw it on VHS, I was very impressed by the visuals.
And it was probably, you know, it was probably the most, it is probably the most beautiful film out there.
It's hard to imagine others that equal it in terms of care for detail and just Kubrick's photographic vision.
I mean, it's really unparalleled.
But Barry Lyndon is one of those films that it's kind of like Kubrick's forgotten movie.
I mean, not that it's not highly regarded, but...
I think people gravitate towards the shock and awe of Clockwork Orange, or obviously 2001, or maybe some of the later things like Eyes Wide Shut or Full Metal Jacket.
But I think Barry Lyndon, it doesn't have the...
And the shiny, of course.
Barry Lyndon doesn't have that...
You know, je ne sais quoi about it, that everyone wants to talk about it and reinterpret it and so on and so forth.
But I think it might really be one of Kubrick's best works.
I mean, not just technically as an artist, but also just in his layering of different meanings and different kind of ironical qualities.
But let's just try to get in it in this way.
I think we should get in it...
Purely through the aesthetic of the film.
And as many have noted before me, Barry Lyndon is to a degree a kind of moving painting.
And there's some very clear parallels with them.
Whenever I watch it, and some of these scenes, they almost seem to evoke a Hogarth painting, or Velasquez painting, or some famous landscapes from that time.
But it's all on cinema, so it's in a way alive and moving, but then in another way, it's very static, and it has a really surreal quality to it.
But I guess one more thing I'll mention, and then I'll pass it off to Romain and John, There's an aspect to Barry Lyndon that this is his journey into the past, and he almost has to get there through our aesthetic vision of this era, which comes to us through paintings, and also through novels, but I think more poignantly through oil painting.
And just like 2001 is...
Kubrick's journey into the far reaches of the future, this post-human, post-earth future.
It's almost like Barry Lyndon is an equally long journey, and it's this journey to the depths of the past.
And it's very interesting, just when I was reading about this film, to do the actual filming, Kubrick actually...
He's cobbled together these cameras that are truly unique and they're of his own design.
And they involve an older camera itself.
And then also he attached to it the latest technology at the time, which was a lens made by the very famous lens maker from Switzerland, Zeiss.
But it was actually made for NASA.
Satellites and things like that.
It was almost like he was using space-age technology in order to finally be able to film the 18th century.
And what it creates is, A, it gave Kubrick the ability to actually capture candlelight so that you didn't need all of this artificial light on people where it really creates a kind of synthetic world and you can...
You can create a scene just perfect.
Instead, what he does is he actually films candlelight, and it gives the scene obviously more authentic to the period, but also almost kind of spontaneous.
Quality, if that's the right word.
It's not a synthetic quality you create in a studio.
It's something that's real, and it's different.
And it also creates this kind of lens that can capture that light.
It's also this incredibly narrow depth of field, or shallow depth of field, rather.
And so, again, it gives the quality this almost two-dimensional quality.
That you're really looking at a painting when there's this focus on the foreground and the background becomes a blur.
It's just an amazing, surreal, dreamlike effect.
Again, I don't know if any other director would take the care to do that, to not just make a costume drama.
That's obviously been done before.
But to think about we need to use a new technology in order to see into the past.
Just like we can use a telescope to see to the stars, we need this new lens in order to see back into the 18th century.
It's just something that I find...
Anyway, just thinking about it is pretty amazing.
But let's just start here.
Let's just start with the aesthetics.
And John, I'll just pass it to you first.
What is your take on all this, just the aesthetic world that Kubrick creates with Barry Lyndon?
Well, I think all of his films have this very strong aesthetic quality.
I mean, he began as a photographer.
And he sort of carries over this sense, I think, into film because he puts such care into shot composition.
I mean, this one is the most like a painting, although all of his films are beautiful.
As for what you said about technology, I think that's a good point.
I remember Kubrick in an interview made a famous comment that if it can be written, it can be filmed.
I think that he believed that through the medium of film, you could access almost anything, any element of the human experience.
Another element for me, as far as the aesthetics go, is that this is really the closest Kubrick ever came to his dream project, which was his Napoleon film, which he had actually attempted to do after Clockwork Orange.
I don't remember all the details, but...
There was a strike in England in the film industry or something, and he wasn't actually able to do it.
But you can kind of see that it's obviously a little bit earlier in time, but especially in the war scenes, there's a little bit of a Napoleonic quality to the way he films them.
So I think there's a little bit of that.
But as far as the aesthetic being like a painting, I absolutely agree with that.
Although I sometimes see it, like in 2001, how Kubrick portrays technology in this really kind of Faustian, incredible, heroic way.
At the same time, he also kind of undermines it by showing how it's dehumanizing.
And I see that in Barry Lyndon as well, because in so many shots, he'll sort of zoom in on a human figure, and then the camera sort of slowly pulls back, and you see that the Whichever character it is, is sort of at the center of this beautiful painting-like vision.
And while it is beautiful, at the same time it occurred to me, I feel like Kubrick is almost showing the person as being trapped in that.
They're almost reduced to part of the scenery, which I think relates to the theme of the film, which is that if you want to get into high society at this time, You have to surrender your freedom and submit yourself to all these different mores and ways of doing things.
In a way, it is dehumanizing.
I see that reflected in the aesthetic.
Also in the battle scenes, that very bizarre scene where they're attacking the French position.
Even though I know that this is the way wars were actually fought at that time, it's almost surreal the way the British troops just walk steadfastly into the French fire and they sort of fall like bowling pins without even making a sound.
There's this sense that they're on this conveyor belt almost being delivered for slaughter, which also I think relates to the duel.
Especially the last one, where you sort of have to stand there absolutely still while somebody else shoots at you from a few feet away.
So you can receive his fire, which is a euphemism for being shot.
Well, I know Kubrick did a huge amount of research into the way duels were fought, and apparently they went through fashions, just like everything else in Europe.
Like, the way he depicts the three duels in the films is supposed to be, you know, very accurate.
But yeah, I can't imagine, like, yeah, stand and receive your enemy's fire.
That would be...
Right.
Well, I think just to jump in, and then I'll pass it to Romain, but I think with everything with Kubrick, there's all these layers of irony.
And, you know, and you can see this in these things where, you know, like, Full Metal Jacket is both an anti-war film and a pro-war film.
To be frank, all at the same time.
And we'll get to that.
But I think you can see this here with Barry Lyndon.
And also, you know, technology is both dehumanizing and humanizing at the same time.
And it's kind of interesting in 2001, I mean, how, you know, gains consciousness and becomes a kind of character.
Much more so than Bowman, who's a kind of 1950s company man who has no emotions or history or thoughts or feelings or philosophy.
And so Hal's the only character.
And even at the end, when he's dying, he's being killed, he becomes a kind of child and sings a song in this deeply human way.
I don't disagree with what you said.
I think technology is dehumanizing in Kubrick and in the real world.
But I think with Kubrick, there are all these layers.
And even with these things like the British marching in that skirmish, just marching into the fire of the French soldiers, or standing and receiving fire, I mean, to a degree...
Part of us wants to look at that and be like, oh, this is insane.
What are you doing?
You're allowing formality.
You're just dying for formality's sake or something.
You're an idiot.
But on another level, there's something really deeply heroic and courageous about challenging someone to a duel and facing death.
And being willing to put your honor over your life and receiving, marching into an opposing force.
I mean, we're reminded of...
People in the 20th and 21st century of, you know, the laptop bombardiers.
I think it was Alex Coburn might have coined that phrase.
But those, you know, who are on their little laptop and they're, oh yeah, let's send a drone over to Pakistan and blow up someone we think is a terrorist.
Yeah, that's great.
You never get your hands dirty.
But, you know, in the 18th century to march forthrightly into your enemy's fire, there's something profoundly heroic and deeply human about it.
You know, all the same.
I think Kubrick is getting, I mean, this is one thing I say a lot.
I mean, Kubrick is getting at that.
He's getting at these layers of irony and different layers to something where something could be kind of anti-war and pro-war at the same time.
It could be, you know, Barry Lyndon's an anti-hero and a hero, I would say, all at the same time.
But anyway, I've talked too much.
Let me, Romain, why don't you jump in on anything that you find interesting about what we've just talked about?
Well, like you, Richard, I saw it quite lately in my life.
I think I was something like 20 or 22. And a few years ago, I rewatched it and I discussed it with friends.
And one of them said that Barry Lyndon was celebrating all Europe, which, of course, is a concern for us.
Of course, I disagree, but it bears discussion.
You can't just brush it aside.
On an aesthetic level, because it's what you were talking about before, you have this refinement that is celebrated, obviously.
And all senses are solicited.
It's not only the images that are beautiful, but the way people speak.
You know, you can imagine the flavors of their meals or, you know, the fragrances of, you know, the ladies' perfume.
And everything is refined and beautiful.
And, you know, on the surface, it's really a kind of longing of, you know, a bygone era.
The elite was, you know, had a kind of class and, you know, really deserved this title.
When you compare it to Bush or Sarkozy, you don't have the same feeling, obviously.
But, you know, I suggested the title for the podcast, Something is Rotten in the State of Berlin, or it could be England, in reference, of course, to Hamlet and Denmark.
And because if you scratch the surface, you find much more unpleasant things about Europe at the time, about aristocracy, of course.
And it's no wonder then that the society where, you know, the scene takes place.
So it begins during the Seven Years' War, which began in 1756.
And it ends just when the French Revolution has started.
Or just before it starts.
And during that, there is the American independence war.
So it's exactly the time when the European aristocracy was collapsing.
And still you have this magnificence and...
Even bravery in Jews or war or other situations where people defend their honor.
But all this refinement is just concealing the fact that society is maybe reverting to a more brutal stage.
It would be an interpretation, but...
Another one would be that simply the ruling class is no longer legitimate because it doesn't fight, because it has become effeminate, and that people like Berlinden are just foreshadowing the later triumph of the bourgeoisie.
So we have many things to discuss here, but I don't think it celebrates European aristocracy, but rather that it says that Beneath this veneer, you have, you know, violence and all this refinement is just a kind of hypocrisy.
That basically were all the apes from 2001.
Sort of the implication.
Yeah, no, when you said that, I was actually imagining...
Barry Lyndon punching Lord Bullington almost in an A-flank fashion where he's slamming the skull with the bone.
I think Kubrick is one who would probably reference some earlier films and almost create this universe where things have their own logic.
I agree.
When you were saying that, I was thinking of one of the speeches by Lord Windover.
If that's his right name.
But it's basically someone who's this stuffy, pompous person whom Barry goes to once he decides that he wants to have a peerage and he wants to basically secure his fortune with a title.
Yeah.
The best people.
Not the most virtuous, but not the least virtuous either.
Not the most intelligent, but not the most stupid.
And I think basically when he says the best people, you should substitute the most useless assholes imaginable.
And I think I say that with tongue-in-cheek, but I think that really is what Kubrick is saying, because all of those people are just lifeless stuffed shirts.
I mean, there's another scene with Lord Wendover.
I think it comes...
And he's telling some frivolous joke.
And again, with Kubrick...
There's never a coincidence.
Nothing's filler.
With a Hollywood movie, they might say, oh, we need a little comic relief in here.
Let's create some funny character who says a joke.
No, no, no.
Everything in Kubrick is part of the story.
There's a point where Wendover tells a joke and he says, oh, a man came up behind me and they said, oh, is Lord Wendover still alive?
And I said, oh, well, I was so distressed I didn't know how to answer him.
I said, no, he's dead.
And they started laughing.
That's what Kubrick is saying.
These people are dead.
But they don't know it yet.
They just don't know it yet.
They just need to get their heads separated from their bodies.
Which didn't happen in England, actually.
I was thinking about that scene in terms of violence and formality in Aristocrats.
There are these parallel scenes.
I mean, one of them is the fight that he has with Mr. Tool, who's a kind of big buffoon kind of guy.
But even there, it's formalized.
You know, they're in a ring.
It's a very important scene.
And actually, I've tried to bring my friends, my best friends, to consider it.
But, you know, I interpreted it when I saw it first.
Maybe it was just after philosophy class.
You know, this Hegel theme about the master versus slave dialectic.
Because you can't, you know, help imagining what happens to the red-birded guy.
So, Tool.
Mr. Tool.
Which is, again, that last name is clearly not a coincidence.
Yeah.
And because if Barlinden is, you know, vanquished by this guy, he will be humiliated.
And you can't help, you know, just before they were fighting, you know, except one friend who was advising him, you know, to respond.
All the other soldiers were laughing at him.
And then he becomes their hero.
So you can just imagine that Tool becomes, you know, kind of underdog of the troop or something like that.
And it's really because Barlinden is more fit to fight, but it's also because he doesn't want to become the slave of the troop.
And, you know, it's maybe I over-interpreted.
No, he's willing to risk death.
And again, to go back, we can circle back around to what I was talking about with the aristocrats, but I think we're...
Again, all these themes are kind of interwoven, so it's proper to talk about them at the same time.
But yeah, I mean, Barry, despite the fact that he is kind of an anti-hero, despite the fact that you're not really supposed to look on him as a virtuous, admirable person...
Nevertheless, Barry, as this kind of country Irish upstart, there's a lot about him that really is truly heroic.
And one of those aspects is that he is willing to face death.
He's willing to look it in the face and risk his life in order to maintain...
His honor.
And he does that with Mr. Tool.
You know, that guy.
I mean, who wants to get in a fight with a guy who's, you know, 300 pounds and 6 '5"?
You know, it's pretty intimidating.
But he's willing to do it.
And with Captain Quinn.
Yeah, with Captain Quinn in the very first duel.
You know, you have all these Irish people who are kind of, you know, kind of wily.
Hobbits.
Yeah, they are kind of hobbits.
But they're also kind of wily little grasping hobbits where they're kind of like, oh, Captain Quinn, let's marry off our sister.
And then Captain Quinn can pay off our mortgage.
Basically, we'll get $1,500 a year.
I think at one point he said he is $1,500 a year.
So it's like this equation.
Actually, Captain Quinn often reminds him that.
Oh yeah, Captain Quinn has been in it.
I'm a man of property!
When he says that, the actor is really good because he couldn't ridiculize the English army better than that.
Yeah, he's a physical, yeah.
And actually, he's only defined by what he owns.
It's interesting.
Yeah.
But Barry, in a way, kind of breaks that up.
Because Nora is really not a wonderful woman at all.
She's a little bit of a slut.
She's been flinging herself at every man in these parts these five years past.
The Manosphere would say that she's a six.
Right.
At most.
Yeah.
But Barry, you know, white knight that he is, no, we won't get into this.
He has a low notch count at that time, so that's why he's okay to...
Right, he is a boy, but at the same time, he basically, he says, no, I am in love with my cousin Nora, and I am willing to fight you.
And he says at one point, I'm willing to...
With pistol or sword, I'll go to a church and fight Captain Quinn.
He's willing to do these things based on honor.
He's not going to gain much of anything by marrying Nora.
It's just simple.
He has a kind of puppy love for her, but he also thinks of her in an honorable manner.
And all these other people, these kind of schemers from these wily Irishmen, they're kind of like, what are you doing?
Don't bring honor into this.
This is all about money and sex.
Don't you get it?
Or just money, really.
Or just money.
And for him, it's just about honor because, you know, when he believes he has killed Captain Quinn, he has to flee because even if he had really killed him, you know, killing an officer, especially in wartime, he would be...
Actually, if he had been caught by the police, he would be killed.
So, it's...
Either way, if he wins or loses, he will be dead.
Right, and he's willing to do that.
He puts honor over his life.
So, again, I think in this weird way, I think before we started the podcast, John, you mentioned that William Thackeray's Barry Lyndon was one of the first antiheroes.
That's what I read, that in the history of English literature, anyway, he's considered the first antihero.
It was something new in English literature at that time that he introduced.
I think you're right.
The film is very different from the book.
Obviously, in the film, I think Barry is somewhat more sympathetic.
But he is considered the first anti-hero.
In a way, in this very Kubrickian way, I think it's almost like the anti-hero becomes the hero.
It's similar to Joker in Full Metal Jacket.
Joker almost becomes a warrior.
And, you know, it's, I think, you know, when you think about it, to go back to an earlier theme, before we circle back to the aristocrats, to go back to an earlier theme of, like, how do you access the past?
I think Kubrick is saying that you can't, like, there's...
This isn't a reproduction or a reenactment of the past, because that's impossible.
It's like some of these paleo-conservatives who have some fantasy about returning to the Middle Ages and just becoming a nice little peasant.
Or maybe they imagine themselves as a king or something.
Silly Dungeons and Dragons-linked quality to that.
That's never going to happen.
You can't do it.
We've lived through too much as a species.
We're too ironic.
We can't do it.
It's just a fantasy.
I'm thinking of some of these conservatives, particularly Joe Sobrin and others.
Joe Sobrin would probably be aware of this, but you can't do it.
And I think what Kubrick's saying with Barry Lyndon is in order to access the past, you have to go through lenses.
And pun intended on that one.
I mean, you have to go through the NASA lens.
But also you have to go through William Thackery.
And William Thackery is a mid-19th century novelist who is in a way satiring the early romances of something like Goethe's...
The suffering of young Werther, you know, die Leiden des jungen Werthers.
These hyper-romantic, you know, Sturm und Drang kind of...
A young man discovering his feelings and passions.
In a deeply authentic and forthright type of novel, he's satirizing that and saying that, no, look, it's all about sex and people are dissembling and playing games and things like that.
In order to access that past, you've got to go through these filters.
You've got to go through the lens.
You've got to go through Thackeray.
But that's not quite right as well.
But it's almost through these windows.
We can start to glimpse the past and get it at something true.
But anyway, to circle back around to the aristocrats, I think what was interesting about that scene where Barry Lyndon attacks Lord Bullington, basically just to remind our listeners...
This is the scene where it's after Barry has whipped Lord Bullington multiple times.
Six times.
Six times.
As a young man as well, not just as a child.
And Lord Bullington, there's a concert going on and Lady Lyndon is playing the harpsichord and the horrible Minister Runt is playing the carinac.
He's a very important character.
Oh, he is.
We can talk about him a little bit later.
But I think what's interesting about that scene is, you know, Lord Bullington comes in and in the most theatrical manner possible.
He insults Barry Lyndon.
He calls him an Irish upstart.
He's not worthy of the society.
He's a country bumpkin.
He's deadest in life.
Yeah, and he's trying to take...
He's taking away my inheritance.
There's this almost obvious edible complex of the young Lord Bullington.
But anyway, he's deeply insulting Barry.
And then Barry...
In a way, does something that is quite honest, despite the fact that he hits him in the back first.
He does something quite honest and understandable and something you can't really fault him for it.
He goes and punches him.
And he's kind of like, well, if you're going to be at war with me, let's just have it out.
Let's fight right here and honorably.
And all of these aristocrats, they're just horrified by this.
It's like, oh my god, I can't believe it.
A fight!
Oh my god.
But at the same time, all of them, in a way, they can't take violence.
Well, not direct violence.
Not directly, yeah.
They'll send an army over to fight the American rebels, or they'll scheme in order to destroy their rival, or they're aware, though faintly, that their titles and peerages are ultimately derived from the fact of someone acquired them by force of arms.
But they have to cover up violence with all these layers.
It's a formality and ornament and so on and so forth.
But it's almost like Barry Lyndon who forthrightly presents it as like, okay, you want to fight?
Let's fight.
You can't do that.
You're not one of us.
You're not a true member of our shitty society of hypocrites.
We're going to shun you.
I don't know.
I just think that was such a powerful scene.
But anyway, I've been talking too much.
You guys should jump in.
On that theme or some of these other things.
Well, I think that there's definitely...
We were talking about this before we started recording about...
And also earlier in this talk about the duality.
Kubrick never says just one thing.
There's always layers.
And I think on one level, you can sort of see ways in which that society was better than ours.
The way everybody speaks in their manner, it certainly is better than most of what we have today.
But at the same time, there's this obvious degeneracy.
It's something with traditionalists often I find that they take the, you know, that Evel and Ganon said, you know, the only valid form of government is monarchy, and they kind The French Revolution was bad because they overthrew the monarchy.
Come around to that view, because we have to say that, you know, the monarchies at that time in Europe, I mean, they really were very corrupt and obviously degenerating.
And, you know, maybe in some, I mean, I'm not saying that I think the French Revolution was all great, but at the same time, maybe it was necessary, you know, in order to sort of renew things.
Yeah, actually, it reminds me of Bain.
You know, he's evil, but he's necessary evil.
Yes, yes.
French Revolution was.
Or at least the aristocrats deserved it, in a way.
Yeah, an article at Occidental Dysentry, all jokes aside, it was by our friend Gregory Hood, and it was about the French Revolution, actually, and he said that you would take what, you know, Because Napoleon was obviously born of the revolution.
He was just a Corsican upstart at the beginning of it.
And that he would take the French Revolution and what followed against the French monarchy just before that, any time.
Because it was corrupt, but also...
You know, sometimes these right-wing reactionaries are, you know, fantasizing a kind of rootedness of the aristocracy or things like that, you know.
People where aristocrats were close to their people and really caring about their land and tradition.
And it may be right for this, you know, the little aristocracy, but for the great lords and dukes and counts, The people and the land they had were just tokens.
You know, they could exchange at some treaty or...
So, actually, the French Revolution and what followed next in the first half of the 19th century, the European people discovered things like identity, nationhood.
They rediscovered tradition, actually, because Catholicism in Catholic countries had degenerated, and the 19th century was a very Catholic century.
So I'm not Catholic, but even from a Christian standpoint, it might be argued that the French Revolution was a kind of necessary stage for...
Tradition, good things to, you know, to emerge again.
So it's complicated.
And Barry is kind of caught in that.
I mean, to go back to what John was saying, I mean, Barry is caught in the world.
And Barry is a remarkably...
He comes too soon.
Maybe you could say that.
And also, for Barry being this pretender or this dissembler, con artist, I think in a way that is a misunderstanding of him.
He's a very passive person.
Things happen to Barry much more than he makes them happen.
You know, he just ends up with the, you know, Chevalier de Barbary and he just can't.
He ends up and he's like, oh, he's an iron.
That's the way he meets his wife, actually.
Yeah, that's the way he meets his wife.
He's just assisting Chevalier de Barbary at the card game.
Yeah, and he's in a way a passive receiver of his wife's affection.
It's not like he really seduced Lady Lyndon.
Lady Lyndon was eyeing him.
No, she's with a...
And he walked out in almost like a ballet-like manner, kind of...
You know, approaches her very slowly, stylized, and then she almost kisses him.
I mean, things happen to him.
I mean, with the Chevalier de Barberie, he goes and he meets him, and he can't help himself.
It's like, oh, I haven't seen a real...
I've been in the Prussian army for years, seven years, in fact, you know, in this war.
And, you know, I finally found someone from the old country.
And, oh, and you have such a...
I think Barry...
And to go back to what you said too, John, Barry is kind of caught in between all these things.
He's too soon, but he's too late at the same time.
He has a sense of honor, but then he almost can't help himself as well.
When a peerage is hanging off the low-hanging fruit on the tree, he's going to grab it.
Or when Lady Lyndon is there, he's going to go grab it.
He's not deep and he's not wise, but he's clearly smart and he's very good looking and he's brave.
And he kind of can't help himself.
He's going to play the game of this 18th century.
He lacks imagination, actually.
He's a kind of 18th century Patrick Bateman.
You just want to fit in.
You know, it's because in...
American Psycho is seen in the taxi where he says his girlfriend, I just want to fit in.
And it's actually just what Barry Lyndon wants to do.
He wants to get a peerage.
In England, it kept being useful, but in seeing the big picture, wanting to be part of an aristocracy that was about to collapse is kind of ridiculous.
He's not a visionary, obviously.
No, no, he's definitely not that.
He doesn't have a very...
He's not a man of thought, obviously, but he doesn't really have a reflection on things that happen to him.
He just does them.
Of course...
Circumstances force him, like when he's robbed of his money and he has to hide, and so the army is convenient for him, but he doesn't really reflect on a path that could lead him to a certain point, and he meets his wife, his future wife, completely at random.
To go on a little bit of a digression here, do you think that in a way we're kind of living in a late 18th century society?
Yes.
In a way, there are a lot of parallels.
This movie was made in 1975 or 1976.
1975.
Or 75, yeah.
So you were trying to get a peerage at the American Conservatives, that's what you're trying to say.
With the best?
The best people.
The best!
The people about whom there is no question.
These people are safe.
Men of poverty!
But in a way, I was thinking about it.
And I am just as at fault of this as anyone.
It's interesting how the most common form of communication on the internet is actually sarcasm and irony.
And I actually mean that very seriously.
I mean that seriously.
I agree with you.
What I mean by that is that on Twitter or Facebook, the way you express yourself, and in a way you can do it very...
And the way you get likes is to use sarcasm and retweets.
To use sarcasm and irony.
And so you say, oh, that's really classy of him.
The word classy is almost never used in a real way.
Classy is almost always ironical or something.
It's almost like people will tweet and...
Basically, every single thing they said is actually the opposite of what they said.
You know that famous essay by David Foster Wallace called Irony is Destroying Our Culture?
Yeah.
I think he was absolutely right about that.
Yeah.
That maybe is good.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe it's necessary.
Yeah.
But also, maybe what I was thinking about as well, I...
When Ramon mentioned The Dark Knight Rises, where Catwoman whispers to Bruce Wayne, she says, you know, there's a storm coming, you better batten down the hatches.
You're not going to be able to live in this world.
And I almost, in a way, we have a kind of 18th century society today.
I mean, if you think about the kind of decadent whites who are, you know, IT consultants or, you know, work doing...
Computerized trading for some firm or whatever.
In a way, they're living in a false world.
They're getting a lot of money, but they don't seem to be doing labor.
There's a lot of luck, certainly, involved with their...
They might not quite have titles, but they have similar things.
I'm a creative director for a Silicon Valley startup or something.
They kind of have titles in a way.
And there's a luck, and then they go and they kind of treat things ironically, and they'll indulge in silly scandals of the day.
They'll tweet about a police officer brutalized a man, and again, whether he did or not, the whole point is they're saying, oh, I'm on the side of the good.
Multicultural people, because I care about this man who was beaten up and killed by cops or something.
And it's just this silliness, this lack of seriousness.
And you can almost envision all of these people just being rounded up by mad, angry...
Who knows, Mexicans or blacks or something, and just totally done away with French Revolutionary style, just because they're benefiting from all—they have all this wealth, they're benefiting from the world, but then they don't really want to protect it.
They can't even speak to you in a non-ironic fashion.
They certainly can't face death and look death in its eyes.
Or receive fire.
Or receive fire.
They're going to be running to get back to the movie.
If they steal your love or something and you challenge them to do a duel, they're like, what are you even talking about?
You're going to fire a gun?
Are you ready to receive my speech?
They don't have that.
You know, there's this lack of a heroic instinct.
So, I don't know.
I think maybe we're closer to living.
We kind of live in the age of Lyndon.
Yeah, it's not an exact parallel, but I think you're right.
I mean, it's...
It's an aristocracy now that's based solely on money rather than these other things that were important in the 18th century.
But it's no less of an aristocracy.
You still have to say all the right things and do all the right things and act a certain way to get into it.
So yeah, I think the parallels are definitely there.
On fiat money, it's no longer...
It's a 19th century capitalist who was owning something, a factory or land or, you know, a fabric or gold, of course.
And since, you know, Gregory Hood has often quoted him and James Burnham should certainly be revisited, but not from the Leadership Institute standpoint.
Today it's fiat money, so it's related to the fact that you have a central bank and private banks that can print money out of thin air.
And of course it changes everything.
And digital money.
And digital money.
And the other day you have nothing.
And that's why you have to be very conformist.
You could have in the 19th century bourgeoisie, you could have very free spirits, free minds.
Because once you got rich, you could remain rich out of your land and your tenants paying you, your customers buying from your factory.
But today, if you mess with the PC cannons of our time, you can have serious problems, even if you're wealthy.
Because with inflation and with all the ways that the government or the financial institutions can access your money, Yeah,
I mean, imagine if...
Imagine if Zuckerberg, for whatever reason, said, oh yeah, you know, I think there actually are significant IQ differences between races or something.
He literally would go from a multi-millionaire to zero in like...
Yeah.
I mean, people would leave.
They would go to Google Plus or wherever.
No.
Well, they wouldn't do that.
Not Google Plus.
Nothing that extreme, but they would do something else.
And, you know, these things are not, you know, these things are really ephemeral.
I mean, you can move and leave and there's nothing to it.
You know, his wealth could evaporate.
I mean, it's that.
He stands on a precipice to that degree.
It is kind of all fake.
It's not like he owns herds of cattle and has peasants working his land where he could say, you know, I can stand for myself.
Imagine if Bill Gates was, instead of flooding Africa with billions, just gave it to NPI.
In a matter of...
Maybe days or hours or minutes.
All his most faithful collaborators would tweet against him and there would be press releases.
Yes, of course.
You would have opinion polls and he would be a dead man.
Just the fact that the language he used, all of his former followers would begin tweeting against him.
It's something that expresses the silliness of the world.
Bill Gates should do that.
I'm a long-time Mac user, but if he wants to give me his billions, we could make an arrangement.
I could put my pride aside for that one.
Okay, what else should we pick up?
We were talking about Barlinden a dozen minutes ago.
We didn't touch on the very last epilogue.
We talked about that before.
I think that's hugely important.
Go for it.
I agree with what you said, Richard, that it can be read in many different ways.
The obvious way is that they're all equal in terms of that they're all dead today.
But, of course, it's also a reference to 1789, which is the date on this, I guess it's sort of an 18th century check that's being written out to Barry, sort of his...
Annuity, yeah.
Yeah, and referring to the French Revolution, that this system that all these people are part of is crumbling, and soon they're going to be considered no different from anybody else.
Yeah.
There's that element.
And I think, Richard, you were saying something before about how this idea of equality is another way of looking at it, is that all this refinement and everything is going to go away so that we can have Walmarts.
Yeah, I think it's both, or all three.
I mean, that's what I think is so interesting about Kubrick, and that's why I...
I think we should talk about him and explore his films, because there's so many layers.
There is the Hamlet-like layer of poor Uric's skull, like this idea that a peasant or a king were all the same, were dust, were bones at the end of it.
And I think he's also clearly referring to the 1789 and subsequent revolutions.
But in another way, I think...
This goes back to that idea of the multiple layers to the film.
This is a Thackeray novel, and if you look at the narrator to the film, Barry Lyndon, he has a Thackeray-like quality, although I just learned from you before we started recording that actually the narrator's lines are not from the book exactly.
No, not at all, because the book is actually written in the first person from Barry's point of view, which actually is another significant difference because he's kind of an unreliable narrator, and you can tell that he exaggerates things and alters the truth, so that kind of element is missing from the film because you're seeing everything objectively.
But the narrator also...
Doesn't get it, I think.
You know, the narrator, I think from a 19th century standpoint, almost doesn't get it.
What I was going to say, I'll talk about that, but I'll circle back real quickly to the they're all equal now.
My sense of the narrator was almost like he is some kind of Christian libertarian who might write for LewRockwell.com or something.
He's like...
Oh, look at this.
This is the murderous work of these aristocrats.
They're so terrible.
And there was actually one scene where I think the narrator really proved that he was unreliable.
It was when Barry has the pretense of being an officer.
He steals an officer's clothing and he goes and he...
It sounds like Liebschen, but I think it's Liebschen, who's a young German girl with a young child, and her husband's away, and they go and have a romance.
But at the end of that, Barry goes in, and I think in a way he finds the love that he was searching for with Nora.
You know, he goes and he has an honest romance that's sexual, but also very honest and loving with this, although fleeting, with this woman.
You mean with the Prussian?
Yeah, I said German.
Prussian.
No, she's not Prussian actually.
It's in another part of Germany, but it's not Prussia.
Yeah, she's German of some nature.
She's speaking German.
And it's actually kind of interesting because he, you know, Barry Lyndon has learned to speak German, but he almost wants to speak English.
He speaks German better than Lysian speaks English, but he almost wants to speak...
English, Irish English, with her so that he can almost re-experience his love with Nora, I think.
But anyway, at the end of that, when they're departing, he, and they're speaking German, actually.
He says, Auf Wiedersehen.
And he says, Auf Wiedersehen.
And then she says, Auf Wiedersehen Redmond.
And what that indicates is that...
You know, in their 48-hour romance, or how long it was, Barry was actually honest with her, and he told her that he was not Jonathan Fekium, or what is his name?
Fakenum.
Fakenum, yeah.
Again, the word fake, you can't say, you hear fake in there, it's clear.
But anyway, so he's actually told her the truth, and she still loves him.
And he leaves.
And then the Thackeray-esque, ironical narrator comes in.
He's like, oh, she was one more town that was stormed and pillaged by a soldier.
But that's really the wrong view.
I mean, that's almost the kind of 19th century view of they're all equal now.
Like, oh, they had a lot of pretenses back in the day, but now we all have one vote.
You know, or something like that.
And I think, in a way, Kubrick isn't saying that.
That's kind of the modern way of looking at the past.
I mean, even now, when they make movies and TV series, like Mad Men, set in the 50s and 60s, like, oh, look how much more advanced we are now.
I don't think that's what Kubrick is trying to do, but you're right, the narrator kind of reflects that idea.
Yeah, he's a kind of Christian libertarian who kind of thinks that all these aristocrats are all, the state is evil or something.
But again, I think that misses the fact that Kubrick does admire the achievements of the 18th century.
warts and all, it is a kind of higher civilization.
There was still, there was a sense of decorum and formality and meaning that I think he still takes seriously.
And so, you know, you kind of miss that.
And again, this goes back to Guy, I mean, I'm rambling, but I think that works for this film because there's so many different meanings.
But it also goes back to the fact that Barry Lyndon, despite the fact that he's a con artist, is very honest.
In a way, all he wants is love.
He's searching for a father figure.
His father died in a duel.
You know, shortly after he was born.
And he's kind of searching for a father figure.
And he finds it in the Chevalier, you know, of all people at some point.
Patrick McGee.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think he also is searching for love.
I think he wants honest, you know, companionship.
And Barry probably becomes the father that he never had with his son.
Again, even the narrator admits that he is a loving.
Yeah.
And so I think in this weird way, Barry is a kind of deeply honest person.
Yeah.
I did want to point out, too, since we were talking about the narrator, there was something this last time that I watched it that I never picked up before, is that there's an interesting thing when, after Barry comes in and kind of confronts Lord Bullingdon, I mean, the elder.
Oh, yes.
Is that his name?
And he gets...
Oh, the Elder Linden.
Right.
And he starts to sort of go into having a heart attack or something that the narrator launches into this long sort of obituary for him.
And there's a historical inaccuracy in it, actually.
Okay.
Really?
The narrator says, just in passing, I will be short, I promise.
He says, died in the Kingdom of Belgium, which didn't exist at that time.
And actually, it's not the Kingdom of Belgium, but the Kingdom of the Belgians.
Just, I'm done.
I wonder if that was on purpose or not.
But the thing I was going to mention is that he starts reciting this obituary and then Kubrick sort of turns it off.
In mid-sentence, he just cuts the guy off.
It's very interesting.
I was wondering what he's trying to communicate there.
He is suggesting that his perspective and the narrator's aren't the same.
It doesn't really matter.
He's turning his head away while someone's yammering on.
I think that's definitely what Kubrick would say.
I think it's too easy to look at the film and say, oh, the narrator is the voice of Kubrick.
Oh, definitely not.
Yeah.
But it's almost like that gives Kubrick plausible deniability as well.
But no, I think Kubrick is saying something very different than the superficial meaning of the final title card and the kind of ironical moralisms of the narrator.
Although the narrator had some good lines.
You would need a philosopher and a historian to determine the causes of the Seven Years' War.
He has some good insights.
When I watched it the first time and all the times afterwards...
What really struck me is this line of the narrator when he says, I'm not sure of the exact wording, but maybe you have it, Richard.
When he says that Redmond Barry is the kind of guy that can forcefully win a fortune, but cannot keep it.
And actually, the story is divided in what would maybe be a little simply summed up as...
The rise and fall of Barry Lyndon.
But in the second part, and it's strictly divided, like a play, what strikes me is that even if everything is beautiful and the life he has is what many people to this day dream of.
I don't, but many.
People we know, dream of.
And it's really boring.
I mean, so there's this birthday party with, you know, the magician and you have all these nice horses and ballet and concerts.
But it's utterly boring, especially for a man who knew war and who could, you know, rub elbows with powerful figures and military leaders.
And for me, 10 years ago, it's the way I interpreted it, but I wasn't as politically mature as today.
And I saw it as an allegory of the West.
You know, the West is dying of boredom.
And if you're looking for a real reason why people don't make children, it's like tigers and lions when they are in zoos.
They don't procreate because there's no reason to die and therefore to live for.
And of course, I'm slightly over-reading because I don't think...
I'm not sure, at least, that Kubrick wants to say that...
Boredom is what is killing the West today as it was of the European aristocracy in the 18th century, but that's what we're witnessing anyway.
People don't have a higher goal, but even in their day-to-day life, there is plenty of boredom.
And maybe the worst thing is that before...
It was possible to accept it, you know, in a simple society, like an agrarian society, boredom was maybe part of life when, you know, you have to wait for the harvest because you have sown and you have to wait for it.
But now we don't accept it and we are dying of it.
Or maybe not we, but the Western civilization.
We're all kind of like Lady Lyndon in a way.
You know, who is this passionless...
She has certain desires and lust, but she's a very passionless and passive person.
Well, the implication is that Barry kind of forces her to be, though.
Yeah.
In the narrative of the film, remember it says that the narrator says with kind of a sarcastic tone about how Barry thought it more proper for her to withdraw from the cares of the world.
Again, I don't trust the narrator.
He also says that Lady Lyndon became to Barry a puppy dog or a furniture or something.
But I actually think the narrator is unreliable.
I think that Barry actually is loyal to her.
I think you can see that.
He stops cheating on her.
At least what we know of.
He's found with the maid.
Yeah, he apologizes.
There's a really amazing scene, I think I might have mentioned this, where she's lying in a tub and he has that Kubrick characteristic where he's drawing the camera away and she's sitting in the tub in this languid...
Passionless, you know, almost asleep fashion.
And Barry comes over and he apologizes to her.
He says, I'm sorry.
And then he bends down and kisses her.
Much like Nora bent down and kissed him in the first scene of the movie.
There's a way that he's actually loyal to Lady Lyndon.
But to go back to what I was saying before, I think Lady Lyndon is kind of an allegory for the West in the sense that...
She has certain desires that are normal and healthy, but she's kind of playing a game she doesn't really understand.
She's flirting with her eyes with Barry Lyndon.
And then he comes in and kind of ruins her fortune.
But she becomes passionless.
At one point, she tries to commit suicide and goes through this crazed, distressed period.
but but you know at the end of the day she's spending all of her time writing checks and just you know diminishing her fortune by the day is kind of an allegory for the West there's nothing there but writing checks and even the people even the a little like the West today actually yeah oh we better write Africa with public
I'm not talking about public aid to the third world, but rather how we are indebted to our Chinese and Saudi and other money Sorry.
Where they're actually making things.
Yeah, actually, because eventually, of course, she stays wealthy, but her wealth is very significantly diminished by all the expenses that were made.
Oh yeah, she doesn't even know what she's doing.
At the end of the day, it's like you've...
You need to maintain a certain lifestyle.
And so you spend all of your time...
Keep your rank.
But then you spend like 90% of your time with bankers and lawyers and writing checks and transferring funds.
I love that line about Barry spending all of his time corresponding with decorators.
Right.
It's like the billionaire who would be much happier if he only had 30 grand a year or something.
Because now I need to figure out how to invest all this stuff.
I don't even know what to do with it.
He spends all this time with lawyers just writing checks to them.
I agree with your interpretation of the narrator.
The problem is at the root of the Western software, so to speak, starting from humanism and the Reformation.
It's this idea that human life, its meaning and its value is measured by happiness, the level of happiness that you achieve.
And I really feel, you know, I...
I'm not a happy person because I don't care about happiness.
What I want to do is achieve something.
Because someone with Down syndrome can be happy.
And Forrest Gump is happy.
And I don't want to be Forrest Gump, even if it's what we're expected to be as white males.
And the problem is that the narrator, for him, everything that matters is...
If people were happy or not.
And it's the way he comments on Barry Lyndon's destiny and Lady Lyndon's suffering.
And it's not really important.
If someone becomes a billionaire or a great statesman or a great artist and is unhappy with his life, it's fine.
I mean, Kubrick, I don't think Kubrick was a happy person.
I read that he was a kind of family man because he was protecting his family and in his family sphere he was maybe happy but to create something and to go further and to go upward you have to be Unsatisfied with what you're doing.
So the problem with Barlinden's destiny is that he wants to achieve a kind of, you know, to create paradise on Earth.
And of course, it's the shortest way to, you know, to die without a legacy and actually to, you know, a legacy in terms of genetic legacy and cultural legacy.
He doesn't leave anything after him.
And the problem is happiness, the quest for happiness, which is pointless, in my opinion.
I agree that happiness is overrated.
You don't want to become satisfied or fat.
If you can actually be satisfied by something that you buy...
There's a problem with you.
I don't want to deny some satisfaction with having a good meal or buying some new coat or something.
But if that is...
It's joy more than happiness.
Happiness is like a permanent state and actually it's an illusion because the only happy persons I met were stupid people.
All the clever people I met were unhappy because even if they were successful, successful is not the same thing as happy.
They wanted to do more, especially people who were more intellectual.
But even people who were starting companies and making good money of it and creating things for people, they were never satisfied.
They wanted more, and so they were working harder to get it.
They didn't tell themselves, "Oh, no, I've achieved what I wanted.
I will just wait for death," which is what happiness amounts to.
Well, I have to say the only place I've been where the majority of people seemed to be happy was India, ironically.
I could talk for quite a while for why I think that is, but yeah, I think it's related to this idea that...
Most people there have very little and they don't really concern themselves with the future because very likely their future will be exactly like their present.
So they don't really spend a lot of time worrying about a lot of the things that bother us in the West.
Yeah.
Well, why don't we put a bookmark on this one?
I think we should come back to this maybe in a few years, but we'll have seen the movie with new eyes.
On December 19th.
Right.
Hopefully sooner.
Well, maybe not this one.
No, we should, before a year goes by, I think we should do another one.
But John and Romain, thank you, and I look forward to talking about the next one with you.
You're welcome, Richard.
▲
Export Selection