Stanley Kubrick: The Aristotle of the 20th Century

First love! What a change

it makes in a lad.

What a magnificent secret it is

he carries with him!

The tender passion gushes out

of a man's heart.

He loves as a bird sings...

...or a rose blows from nature.

Killarney.

Now, what shall it be?

Turn around and face the wall.

The object of Barry's attention, and...

...the cause of his early troubles...

...was his cousin,

Nora Brady by name.

I have hidden my neck ribbon

somewhere on my person.

If you find it, you can have it.

You are free to look anywhere for it.

I will think little of you

if you do not find it.

I cannot find it.

You haven't looked properly.

I cannot find it.

I'll give you a hint.

I feel the ribbon.

Why are you trembling?

At the pleasure of finding the ribbon.

Liar.

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The illustrious American director Stanley Kubrick is widely recognized as one of the most influential filmmakers who played a pivotal role in revolutionizing 20th-century cinematography. Although an esteemed writer in his own respect, the vast majority of Kubrick’s films are adaptations of novels; however, as the greater part of the film community would agree, if not for Kubrick’s unreplicable cinematic skills, each story would not have left the impact that it did. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle also left a groundbreaking influence on people by reshaping how generations consume and contextualize art. As a part of one of his most famous works, Poetics, Aristotle establishes that the necessary elements to the creation of a successful tragedy are as follows: a plot, characters, diction, thought, spectacle, and melody. Centuries later, Stanley Kubrick had taken these six elements and applied them to his 1975 cinematic masterpiece Barry Lyndon. Barry Lyndon, a film praised for its breathtaking stills and genius exploration of the human mind, is an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844 The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a late-Renaissance narrative that follows the rise and fall of Irishman Redmond Barry. Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon not only establishes these six elements as the foundation of his film but sets a new precedent for what a tragedy could be. 

Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon is the embodiment of Aristotle’s suggested framework for the creation of a tragedy. In his introductory sentiments, Aristotle explains that tragedies must be composed of both “seriousness and pleasure”, expressing that each piece should be completely separate from the other. These distinct components, as Aristotle argues, must find a way to come together in order to creatively instill pleasure, pity, and fear in the audience (Aristotle and Barnes p. 2320). The juxtaposition between the two contradictory elements, seriousness and pleasure, is prevalent in Barry Lyndon. The entirety of the film is highly serious; its narrator speaks honestly and neutrally, each micro-theme is rooted in sensitive European history, and characters rarely speak with deliberate humor. Yet each “serious” aspect of the dialogue is precisely what makes the film so judiciously pleasurable. The narrator’s blunt nature constantly brings the audience back into reality by highlighting the pitiful actions that prevail throughout the film. Certain themes that reveal themselves such as forbidden homosexuality and prostitution intentionally remind audiences that this story, although sensibly quixotic, perpetually manifests itself in modernity and is critical to a deepened understanding of human nature. Secondly, what one might deem as a lack of witticisms, is in fact a deliberate embedding of humor that exists within the epochal language and context of the film are used to transcend the underlying basis of Aristotle’s argument: that both the seriousness and pleasurable aspects of a tragedy are to be explicitly presented, hand in hand.

Aristotle proposes the idea that each tragedy must be centralized around a fixed subject, who must also be the embodiment of action. Aristotle explains that “the action involves agents, who must necessarily have their distinctive qualities both of character and thought” (Aristotle and Barnes p. 2320). Agents in this case do not refer to one character in particular, but anyone or anything that furthers the plot line. Stanley Kubrick applies this ambiguous idea not only to his characters but to the structure of the film. The most common agent of a tragedy is its protagonist, which in the case of Barry Lyndon, is Redmond Barry. The beginning of the film depicts Redmond Barry as a man of a middle-class family who likes to dabble in card games and slight romance. By the first quarter of the film, audiences understand Redmond to be a character of moderate significance whose only outlandish trait is his unreasonable jealousy. As the story progresses, however, it languidly becomes understood that what seemed to be boyish immaturity were early signs of Redmond’s voracious and manipulative tendencies. Evidently, Kubrick thoughtfully focuses on Redmond’s nuanced character in preference to a general action, which results in two outcomes: Redmond being Barry Lyndon’s most important agent and adherence to Aristotle's argument. 

Other agents present in this film are the supporting characters, and the cinematography itself. To be granted the role of an agent within the context of this specific film, it is imperative that there be a relationship between them and Redmond Barry. Nonetheless, this relationship does not have to be an extensive one. There is one scene in particular that catalyzes Redmond’s entire course of life in a single fifty-five-second moment. While walking back to army grounds, Redmond comes across two horses tied up against a large tree. Upon further investigation, he quickly spots two men together in the lake below with seemingly homosexual intentions. He realizes that one of the men happens to be Lieutenant Fakenham, a man of high rank in the army. Instinctively, Redmond steals Lieutenant Fakenham’s coat, horse, and entire identity. In this case, there was no explicit connection between the lieutenant and Redmond, but if it were not for chance, the rest of the film—2 hours and 10 minutes—would cease to exist. Here is where Aristotle's ideas on chance come into the conversation. Aristotle states that “incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another; there is more of the marvelous in them than if they happened of themselves or by mere chance” (Aristotle and Barnes p. 2323). Every scene preceding this one is of complete consequence of the last, suggesting that Kubrick believed there to be sense in Aristotle’s argument.

Stanley Kubrick and Aristotle both communicate an idea imperative to the understanding of a tragedy: its philosophy. The art of making a successful tragedy requires its creator to explore human emotion. Aristotle points out that, “[All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality. Character gives us quality, but it is in our actions that we are happy or the reverse.]” (Aristotle and Barnes p. 2320). This exact notion of character is what makes Barry Lyndon such a strong film. The entirety of the story is based on a character Redmond Barry and how his own actions decide his fate. What touches audiences is the uncomfortable tangibility of these actions. Presenting a story that ends in tragedy due to highly natural causes is the antidote for gravely upsetting how an audience receives a story; people feel uncomfortable with the fact that this very fate is a possibility for themselves. Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon is able to achieve this by making the subject of the film, not Redmond Barry, but his cognitive framework. As the story progresses, audiences are compelled to use their own minds to dissect the fluctuation of Redmond’s character. People are slowly able to notice how his personality is not only unstable but a manufactured facade. Redmond Barry cunningly leeches off of the personalities of other characters. By subtly embedding this personality disorder within the greater more dramatic aspects of the film, Kubrick subjects audiences to a subconscious feeling of deception, furthering the sense of disgust. Through an abstract analogy of beauty, Aristotle explains how important it is for a story to have a beginning, middle, and end. Although Barry Lyndon spends three hours following what seems like the beginning and the middle of the life of Redmond Barry, there is no explicit ending to the story. All stories come to an end, as does the film; however, the ambiguity of its “ending” adds yet another element of anxiety and apprehension to be felt. The movie is separated into two parts: “Part 1: By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon” and “Part 2: Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters of Which Befell Barry Lyndon”. Consequently, the “end” of Redmond Barry becomes apparent within the second part of the film. The explicit nature of these two parts is utilized to warn audiences of what they are about to watch. This is why its ending is arguably predictable, as it should encapsulate “an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters of Which Befell Barry Lyndon”. Be that as it may, predictability does not dictate the future. Audiences do not know what could happen to Redmond after his final scene comes to a close. Kubrick leaves audiences wondering how Redmond Barry will decide to live the rest of his life—a question with no answer. Its enigmatic ending forces audiences to do one thing: put themselves in the shoes of Redmond Barry. Kubrick takes the general basis of Aristotle's idea about plot timeline and augments it to exceed the basic expectation for a tragedy by creating an atmosphere from visuals and melody that subjects audiences to question their own inherent nature. 

Any written opinion on Stanley Kubrick and his work is not thoroughly complete without great focus on the art of his talent. Throughout Poetics, Aristotle puts great emphasis on the importance of melody to a tragedy. In fact, Aristotle says that “the Melody is the greatest of the pleasurable accessories of Tragedy” (Aristotle and Barnes p. 2321). It is plausible that Kubrick would agree with this leg of Aristotle’s argument, as his use of sound within his corpus of films is potent. The majority of his movies are accompanied by famous classical music. Some of the composers that he repeatedly includes in his work are Bach, Mozart, and Vivaldi. The reason behind these decisions is simple: the drama. Every single one of Kubrick’s films illustrates dramatic and tragic themes, and by incorporating music that encapsulates those very feelings, he unlocks in his audience yet another critical way of experiencing certain themes. Within the context of Barry Lyndon, Kubrick strategically chooses to play one distinct song throughout. This particular melody is utilized within the film as an indication of an atmospheric shift. Kubrick also plays with volume when working with certain musical compositions. In an important transition during “Part 2” of the film, Kubrick hits audiences with this melody at an unbelievably unsettling volume. Kubrick’s application of rhythm, volume, and melody agrees with Aristotle’s stance on melody and serves as a critical aspect of the creation of Barry Lyndon. 

Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon underscores the few fallacies in Aristotle’s criteria for a tragedy. After arguing that there are only 6 elements that make up a tragedy—plot, characters, diction, thought, spectacle, and melody—Aristotle claims that, “there is nothing else besides these six” (Aristotle and Barnes p. 2320). In the case of Stanley Kubrick’s revolutionary Barry Lyndon, however, this is deemed untrue. Barry Lyndon not only adds a new element to Aristotle's pre-existing list but finds an element that ingeniously encapsulates each of the other ones respectively, and that is production. Kubrick’s ability to create art with the utmost attention to detail is the sole characteristic of how he and his work revolutionized how 20th-century (and 18th-century for that matter) art was consumed. Stanley Kubrick was a perfectionist; if the shot did not come out the way he wanted, it would have to be reshot until his vision was realized—even if this meant traumatizing actors for overworking them. This aptitude, however, is what makes Stanley Kubrick one of the most imitated and valued directors of all time, Barry Lyndon being its epitome. Aristotle argues that what is more important than the production of a tragedy is a visceral audience reaction. This argument can certainly be applied to the majority of tragedies, except for Barry Lyndon. It is clear that the story of Barry Lyndon reaches audiences in a way that makes them question the inherent nature of man, but what sets it apart, is how it portrays this macabre concept. Barry Lyndon is objectively one of the most beautiful films ever created; each scene of the movie is reminiscent of a Renaissance painting. Once Kubrick understood that the best art to research for the creation of a period piece was Renaissance paintings. Kubrick and his team took many steps in order to get this film to reach the highest level of historical and aesthetic perfection. He instructed his costume designers to study paintings from the 18th century and to replicate whatever they saw, used real paintings as the basis for the majority of his scenes, and finally, had NASA create special cameras for production so that he could shoot in all-natural lighting (Kubrick by Kubrick). Kubrick believes that the only way to reach complete accuracy is via an absolute submersion in a certain atmosphere. By restricting himself to only using natural lighting, Kubrick puts himself in the position of the great artists before him. Prodigies like Caravaggio and Leonardo DaVinci are other examples of the few artists who revolutionized the way humans understand art, quite literally, in the dark. Interestingly enough, Aristotle makes a comparison between the soul of a tragedy and the act of painting. He states that “the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of tragedy is the plot: and that the characters come second—compare parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black and white sketch of a portrait” (Aristotle and Barnes p. 2321). That is what Stanley Kubrick does: take a story from printed black and white pages and recreates it with the most beautiful colors.

Stanley Kubrick’s transformative ability to illustrate emotion, depth, and dramatics in his 1975 film Barry Lyndon is what challenges Aristotle’s extensive criteria for a tragedy. Kubrick not only creates a film that incorporates each of Aristotle's six tragic elements: plot, characters, diction, thought, spectacle, and melody but explores other realms of storytelling through acute artistic expression and philosophical narratives. Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon pioneers a new standard for tragedy, deeming him the Aristotle of the 20th century. 

References:

Aristotle, and Jonathan Barnes. The Complete Works of Aristotle : The Revised Oxford Translation. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1984.

Barry Lyndon . Directed by Stanley Kubrick , Warner Brothers Pictures, 11 Dec. 1975.

Kubrick by Kubrick . Directed by Grégory Monro , 2020.