film

A chance to kick back and wallow in three of the finest hours of cinema ever committed to celluloid here as Mooby Aribau continues to partially plug the Phenomena-shaped hole in the city's cinema landscape with a screening of the Stanley Kubrick classic Barry Lyndon. Adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel, it follows the rise and fall of Redmond Barry, an Irish outsider in 18th-century Europe who reinvents himself as Barry Lyndon through opportunism, charm and calculated social climbing. 

As a meditation on power, fragility and the quiet cruelty of fate, Barry Lyndon is unbeatable, its anti-hero's emptiness teased out with slow inevitability and masterful storytelling skill. As a visual feast it is similarly outstanding, with Kubrick's use of natural light and candlelight and ultra-fast, Nasa-developed Zeiss lenses giving the interiors a warm, velvety glow and making every moment feel like a painting. Put those two factors together and you have one of the great treats of cinema history.