The Story Archive

Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick · 1975 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

An Irish farmer's son fights a duel over a cousin, flees into the British army, deserts to the Prussian service and works across Europe as a gambler's accomplice before marrying a countess and setting about buying a title. A narrator tells the audience what will befall him before it does. Kubrick shot interiors by candlelight on lenses built for satellite work, composing after eighteenth-century painting.

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Attributes

Genre
HistoricalTragedySatire
Theme
Ambition & HubrisClass & InequalityVanity & BeautyFreedom vs Fate
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Anti-HeroTricksterWanderer
Plot structure
Rise and FallPicaresque
Symbol / motif
The EstateThe Game / CardsThe Portrait
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
IronicElegiac
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues