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 grown in stature in the years since and is now widely regarded as one of the master's best. It is certainly in every frame a Kubrick film: technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of human goodness. ." Director Martin Scorsese has named "Barry Lyndon" as his favorite Kubrick film, and it is also one of Lars von Trier's favorite films. Quotations from its script have also appeared in such disparate works as Ridley Scott's "The Duellists", Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence", and Wes Anderson's "Rushmore". IMDb users have given it 8.1 star out of 10 and it