Required Viewing 03: Barry Lyndon

Is it even a movie? That's the question Barry Lyndon has provoked since 1975 — three hours of scenes so composed they look less like cinema than oil paintings that happen to breathe. This week on Required Viewing, Dr. David D. Perlmutter — "the Prof" — drags Stanley Kubrick's most beautiful, most divisive film to the table: the one even Kubrick devotees can't agree is a film at all. We get into the candlelight Kubrick captured with lenses built for NASA, a production that had to invent its own tools to exist, and a static, painterly style that would ripple forward into The Favourite. We wrestle with Ryan O'Neal's passive, buffeted Barry, the narrator who condemns him before he can charm us, and a film so often called "beautiful but empty" — asking whether the emptiness is the whole point. Class as a cage, a scoundrel with no moral agency, and a technical achievement so singular it's a genre of one that simply couldn't be made today. Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, take it apart from every angle. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support. ——— The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter. New episodes weekly. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376 Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY. Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast