Barry Lyndon: Camera Moves
Stanley Kubrick approached scene coverage with a detailed understanding of how each camera technique could change the audience's experience of the story. He created visual immersion through the ebb and flow of lens choice and camera movement, leading to impactful character turns.
Today, many filmmakers pick a technique and stick to it, which has the advantage of consistency but can lose the surprise of the visual switch. Cinematographer Gordon Willis ASC described this phenomenon as “putting both feet in a bucket of cement for two hours.” The Prince of Darkness said shooting with shadowed cinematography wasn’t enough; you had to find balance.
Any hack film buff can talk about Stanley Kubrick’s candle lighting in Barry Lyndon (1975), and many have gushed about his NASA high-speed lens. I certainly have and will do so again. But today, I want to focus on another formal characteristic of this film—the use of zoom shots, handheld shots, and static shots—emphasizing their place in the film’s visual storytelling. The juxtaposition of these shooting techniques heightens their effect and draws the viewer into the story unawares.
The film follows fatherless Irish rogue Redmond Barry as he climbs the 18th-century European social ladder, attempting to defy his fate. Duals of gun and words mark each chapter of the journey, starting with losing his father in infancy, “which arose over the purchase of some horses,” according to the dry voice-of-God narrator. A dual for his cousin's hand, Nora, sends him packing, and part one ends with Barry “killing” his rival for Lady Lyndon, her husband, Sir Charles Lyndon. The third significant dual occurs at the climax of the film when his stepson, Lord Bullingdon, demands satisfaction for years of abuse and kicks Barry off the estate after shooting him in the leg.
Kubrick wanted to authentically evoke the past by recreating the feeling of period paintings, explicitly going against the Hollywood tropes of building sets and lighting from overhead grids. He shot in real locations in England, Ireland, and Germany, featuring cavernous ceilings that trapped his protagonists in a caged diorama. For day interiors, his cinematographer John Alcott, BSC kept the lights outside windows, giving the scenes a lonely soft side-lit gloom. The night interior candle-lighting was miraculous given the slow 100 ASA film stocks of the time (pushed one stop), hence the Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 dark side of the moon lenses. All of this was in keeping with the aesthetic of William Horgath’s paintings, admired by the book’s author, William Makepeace Thackeray.
Taking inspiration from paintings is a long tradition in art and cinematography and has only grown more popular with internet galleries of the world’s greatest artists. When I started teaching, I would lug my art books to class and hold them up as examples to emulate. These days I only need a computer and a projector.
Even so, many filmmakers are primarily inspired by the look of other films, which can lead to a visual firing squad mentality. As artists, we need to take inspiration from as many sources as possible if we have any hope of creating a work that recreates the varied vastness of the world. But we also need to beware of making art in another’s form (fears that the likes of Robert Bresson and Maya Deren have raised in the past). Relying on paintings for inspiration can lead to stiff compositions or character blocking if you don’t find the life behind the frozen moment.
LIVING PAINTINGS
Kubrick used several formal devices to keep Barry Lyndon visually arresting and engaging throughout its three-hour run time. Had he only recreated paintings emphasizing Lyndon’s self-entrapment, the power of these compositions would have grown stale. So, in addition to the stately static wide establishing shots, he supplements them with dolly shots, hand-held sequences, and slow, deliberate zooms.
DOLLY SHOTS
Kubrick loves to move the camera with characters through their world. We see this following Col. Dax in the foxholes of Paths of Glory (1957) and Dr. Bowman through the maze of the Discovery One spacecraft in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In Lyndon, Kubrick uses the dolly at key moments as Barry seduces Lady Lyndon and later when he attempts to ingratiate himself into high society to attain a title and thus be allowed to inherit his wife's fortune for himself and their son Brian.
When a camera is visually “attached” to a character, it aggrandizes them and makes the audience view the world from their perspective. It gives us a point of view without speaking. At the end of the film his stepson, Lord Bullingdon, approaches the drunken and broken Barry, who is passed out at a Gentlemen’s club.
Kubrick turns the tables on the protagonist and aggrandizes his rival, who comes to claim satisfaction in a low, wide-angle dolly shot. We instinctively feel his newly gained power as he strides towards his stepfather, knowing the end can’t be far off. Barry can barely open his eyes.
HAND-HELD SHOTS
18th-century society kept people in their place, which Kubrick emphasized by shooting long takes of still coverage, perpetuating the feeling of the frozen painted world. Not easy for a social climber. Kubrick tended to prefer wide-angle lenses over his career, but here we also get a lot of medium-to-telephoto shots. These static scenes are interrupted by jolts of hand-held coverage at key moments of social degeneration. The cultured mask slips off and reveals the animalistic nature under the skin. There is a thin line between society and chaos.
Movies shoot hand-held with abandon these days, but in the mid-70s, it was still a documentary technique, so its limited use felt more impactful. The first shaky coverage starts when Barry, a soldier, is goaded into a boxing match with a bully in his battalion. The men form a square around the two as they fight, and all pretense of stillness vanishes instantly. This shooting style echoes throughout the film, with hand-held sequences in battle and during the pivotal scene in the second half.
Barry has been using his wife’s money to secure a title and thus be allowed to inherit her fortune, which involves hosting parties for the local nobles. As Lady Lyndon plays the harpsichord with a chamber orchestra, Lord Bullingdon leads Barry’s biological son Brian into the audience while wearing his shoes, humiliating Lady Lyndon with a choice between her son or husband. Barry furiously leaps from his seat to attack his stepson, with the intervening noblemen landing in a messy pile. The coverage again leaps into handheld action as the polite society is shown to have a hollow core. After this act, Barry is no longer welcome in this world and the family retreats into solitude.
ZOOM SHOTS
There is no analogue to a zoom lens in painting. You can “pan” and “tilt” your head as you study a composition, especially one of the big works at a museum. You can walk in to notice details or walk back to take in the entire scope, like a dolly or hand-held camera. But your eyes cannot move closer without your body moving. Thus a zoom shot always stands out in film, especially one as mannered as Barry Lyndon.
Zooms have often been used in action movies, adding visual excitement to fights or chases, but Kubrick uses these focal moves to highlight the static nature of his protagonist. As much as Redmond Barry fights his low-born fate, he traps himself in his fears and desires, leading him back to where he started.
These zoom shots have been collectively forgotten by the candlelit crowd, but are the key to understanding the movie. Watching the video at the top of the page shows that by focusing only on the zoom shots we can understand the core values of the protagonist and see clearly how his mistakes seal his fate.
We often see zoom shots in moments of reflection and important story beats, such as the scene that establishes the romantic rivalry between Barry and the British Army Captain John Quin.
This is the second zoom of the film, introducing a battalion of soldiers in their stately uniforms followed by a zoom-in focusing on a jealous Barry.
The following shot zooms out as he chops wood as the narrator solemnly intones that he can keep his cousin off his mind for only a week.
The next zoom starts close on Nora’s hand in Quin’s, zooming out to reveal a John Constable-like landscape painting master shot, the lovers interrupted by an impudent Barry.
Quin demands satisfaction, as he believes an Irishman of such low status as Barry should mistreat no Englishman. Kubrick begins this critical turning point by starting close on loading a gun, then zooms out to another pastoral landscape with trees and a river, the beauty of the scene masking the brutality of the dual.
This fateful encounter sends Barry into the world as a fugitive, only to be robbed at gunpoint by a father working with his son. He is now desperate enough to join the army.
As a soldier, Barry reconnects with his uncle who reveals that Quin is alive and well, now married to his cousin. The final indignity of his young life sinks in as he does battle and deserts with a bathing lieutenant’s uniform.
Lady Lyndon is introduced at the end of part 1 in a garden setting. Barry sits with his gambling partner and notices her walking with her family, accompanying her ancient husband in his wheelchair. As the camera zooms in the narrator intones that Barry has dispensed with a romantic notion of love and is now a golddigger.
Part Two begins with the stiffest static-shot wedding in cinema history, but the focus of Barry’s downfall revolves around his son, Brian, introduced in a slow zoom-out to reveal the happy parents.
Just when you think Barry might have turned over a new leaf the zoom continues in a new shot of the father in a bordello making out with two topless ladies.
The next shot zooms from Lady Lyndon reclining with her two sons, her agency banished, she is now just another decoration in his life.
The zoom shot story continues as Barry attempts to buy his way into high society, but he can’t hide his true nature forever, and after attacking his stepson in public he is banished.
Shot after shot zooms out from a medium shot of him alone or with his son to a wide empty frame. He is surrounded by sumptuous art and the soundtrack vibrates with lush strings, mocking his isolation with visual irony.
MAKE YOUR SHOTS COUNT
Barry Lyndon makes sense as a story, even if you only watch the zoom shots. Every filmmaker should aspire to this level of mastery. Learn what the shots and techniques have meant to audiences over the decades, and then see what you can do to shake things up.
For more insights on the shooting of this film, read the March 1976 American Cinematographer interview with John Alcott, BSC: https://theasc.com/articles/flashback-barry-lyndon