When this movie came out, you mentioned that it had a lukewarm reception, and it was often used as kind of an exhibit A in the case for Kubrick as a cold director.

I don't think he is, but, you know, the movie ends with that title card that says epilogue.

It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled.

Good or bad, handsome or ugly,

rich or poor, they are all equal now. You know, the movie has that kind of pitying God's eye view on the spectacle that it depicts. And so obviously a lot of people took that and regarded

the film as cold and inhuman. But I was surprised on this

viewing how moved I found myself by that section in the second half of the film about Barry

Lyndon's young son who dies untimely. And there's that really excruciating and powerful scene

where Barry and his wife are with the son on his deathbed,

and Ryan O'Neill cries and, you know, tries to comfort the child, and the child ends up comforting

his parents. It's a remarkable scene because Barry Lyndon is depicted throughout the movie as,

you know, like Ebert said, you know, somebody with no, they're there, they're narcissistic and self-pitying.

And importantly, I think a man to whom things simply happen, right?

In Will's earlier summary, he mentioned the duel, which first sends Barry on his journeys

because he thinks he's killed this English captain Quinn.

But he later finds out, this is over the love of a woman, but of course

he later finds out that the woman's family actually orchestrated the duel. His pistol was

never loaded with anything that could kill Captain Quinn, and the whole death has been

faked simply because the family wants to get rid of Barry so that their daughter can marry Captain

Quinn, who of course is a man of much greater fortune than he is. But in that scene in the second half, in that death scene, this is where

Kubrick's particular humanity comes out, where, you know, he may have a God's eye view. He may

ultimately regard everybody in the frame as being, you know, future ash, basically. And he pities that,

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