These grand halls are actually kinda depressing considering little light gets in there.
Makes for a very stark image though, giant halls covered in extravagance yet dark and gloomy, and filled with tiny people convinced of their utmost importance and dignity.
Yeah, could do with some more windows. These massive mansions were also apparently real hard to actually heat during winter.
Definitely my favourite Kubrick film, and one of my favourite main characters I can recall off the top of my head.
I think my favourite part aside from just the cinematography is its kinda dry biographical style, aside from the death of Barrys son nothing is given that much overt dramatic focus for longer than the scene goes on, so you kinda have to try and glean how it would affect him to have his mentor die in his arms or shit like that. I also like how he irl would be one of those guys that reddit creams themselves over how hes a "historical badass who got enlisted in a foreign army but was a hero, then did spy thriller shit and ran a huge con on the aristocracies of Europe etc etc" but then most of the time shit just happens to him, people force or manipulate him into doing something and half the time he's crying and shitting his pants.
Plus he doesn't really grow along the way aside from growing more confident in himself, which again adds to the biographic thing where sometimes people just don't actually grow and get better, they just stow shit away and dont really concern themselves with it. And his final act of mercy doesn't really redeem him in any big way aside from asserting a basic sense of humanity, we aren't told why he decides to do it so it might just as well be scornful pity as it is remorse and mercy or a wish for death. His stepson still takes a second shot and blows his leg off and hes sent off to Ireland for the rest of his life, and at least I'm kinda just left with a sense of the whole thing being just stupid and an example of how contradictory and hypocritical the aristocracy is that the only way to handle something like that is apparently to blow the leg off a guy.
