Barry Lyndon (1975)
Stanley Kubrick’s tenth feature is known for its sense of humor, epic length, and NASA lenses, which captured candlelight in a manner that hasn’t been duplicated since. It’s also notable for this cheeky epilogue text which illuminates the three-hour-plus proceedings — which track one Irishman’s journey from nobody to somebody back to nobody — within a broader historical context. Similar to A Hidden Life’s postscript, the text here invokes the vast expanse of time and how likely we are to forget an individual’s story amongst the sweep of history. Where Barry Lyndon differs is in its seemingly cheeky dismissal of these stories: We all die, therefore we are all insignificant — which then acts as something of a twistedly optimistic view on our hero’s journey. If one feels that they have failed in their life’s mission, it does not matter — failures and successes alike, we are “all equal” in the end.
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