The events in Barry Lyndon, while dramatic in themselves, are not presented in the form of a drama, but rather in the form of a spectacle for the senses. A beguilement of eye and ear precedes the customary seizure of the emotions. As in so much of Kubrick's best work—indeed, it is perhaps his defining quality—the images that you see exist not simply as vehicles for a story, but as vibrant indicators of a film-maker's commitment to his medium….

While all of this is true to some degree of each one of this director's films, it is true to the greatest degree of his present film: Barry Lyndon is Kubrick's most extravagantly beautiful creation. Opulent and solemn, jewel-like and lucid, profuse and lordly, the beauty of the film is not at all unlike the beauty of Handel's music (of which we hear the majestic and sweeping...