Barry Lyndon sights on Thackeray's 1844 "satirical picaresque about the fortune-hunting of an Irish rogue," "Barry Lyndon", the setting of which allowed Kubrick to take advantage of the copious period research he had done for the now-aborted "Napoleon". At the time, Kubrick merely announced that his next film would star Ryan O'Neal (deemed "a seemingly un-Kubricky choice of leading man") and Marisa Berenson, a former "Vogue" and "Time" magazine cover model, and be shot largely in Ireland. So heightened was the secrecy surrounding the film that "Even Berenson, when Kubrick first approached her, was told only that it was to be an
Barry Lyndon has been placed on their 250 Top Rated Movie list. As with any Stanley Kubrick film, there is a great deal of subtle messages and deeper meanings. The main theme explored in Barry Lyndon is one of fate and destiny. Barry is pushed through life by a series of key events, some of which seem unavoidable. As Roger Ebert says, "He is a man to whom things happen." He declines to eat with the highwaymen Captain Feeney, where he would most likely have been robbed, but is robbed anyway farther down the road. The narrator repeatedly emphasizes the role of