Kubrick: Barry Lyndon part 1
As Barry Lyndon begins, the protagonist’s father is shot dead in a duel. We haven’t met the protagonist, we know nothing about him, we don’t know anything. The duel takes place in a long shot, so we don’t even get a good look at the guy who dies. The death of Redmond Barry’s father treated as a kind of abstract narrative joke: Kubrick introduces a character, then seconds later dispatches him to his fate. And yet, I’m convinced that this brief scene contains the kernel of Barry’s motivations and the themes of the entire movie. Barry Lyndon is a drama of class mobility and how the borders of class warfare are defended with lethal force. Barry’s father was to have been a lawyer, which would have elevated Barry into a specific class; his death robs Barry of his status and sets him on a path toward bettering his class by any means necessary. He feels fate has robbed him of his rightful place in society, and he sets forth to regain his social equilibrium. There are many ways to advance,he finds, but fate has a way of striking back.