Stanley Kubrick’s sumptuous and mordantly witty period drama, an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s picaresque novel, returns to the big screen in a gorgeous digital 4K restoration.
1975 was a remarkable year socially, culturally and politically. Against the backdrop of global economic malaise, the Vietnam conflict came to a violent end, the Watergate investigation led to convictions following President Nixon’s resignation, the Sex Pistols performed their first gig and Margaret Thatcher became the first female leader of a British political party. Kubrick’s meticulously designed and rapturously shot adaptation of Thackeray’s novel may not strike one as the most obvious work of art to emerge from this tumultuous landscape, but its exploration of social mobility, imperial decline and performative identity – as presented through the travails of O’Neal’s eponymous, barely heroic protagonist – somehow resonated perfectly with those anxious times.
Now 50 years old, Kubrick’s painterly masterpiece returns to cinemas in a luminous Criterion 4K restoration and during a similar moment of global uncertainty and cultural shift. A landmark in cinema, Barry Lyndon endures not only as an aesthetic triumph but as a complex meditation on power, class, and the theatricality of history.
£100/year gets you: 6 free cinema tickets, 10% off all tickets at Riverside, 10% off our various bars & bakery, free popcorn every cinema visit, no booking fees, AND MUCH MORE
