'' BARRY LYNDON '' BANNER : FILM HONOURS

Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, which marks its 50th anniversary this year, struggled at the box office when it was released. It remains one of the director's most under-appreciated films.

Unlike 2001 : A Space Odyssey or The Shining, which have been endlessly dissected in books and essays, Barry Lyndon has received relatively little scholarly attention - just a single book.

Perhaps its cool reception can be traced to its slow, contemplative pacing, meticulously crafted but emotionally restrained storytelling, or its three-hour runtime.

It also arrived at an inopportune moment, in the same year as Jaws, a film that would reshape Hollywood forever.

Yet, Barry Lyndon deserves a second look, not only as one of Kubrick's most visually striking films but also as an intensely personal project that offers rare insight into the director himself.

The film follows the rise and fall of Redmond Barry, an ambitious Irishman who reinvents himself as Barry Lyndon in his pursuit of wealth and status. After fleeing his homeland, following a duel, Barry navigates the treacherous world of 18th-century Europe.

He serves as a soldier, a gambler and ultimately marries into aristocracy. However, his social ascent is marred by personal missteps, betrayals and the cold realities of high society.

The project was born out of failure. Kubrick had spent years preparing for a grand epic about Napoleon, amassing an enormous archive of research and developing meticulous pre-production plans. But no studio was willing to finance the project.

Unwilling to abandon his obsession with the late 18th-century, he turned instead to The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a lesser known 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray.

The choice of Thackeray was in keeping with his taste for English writers such as Arthur C. Clarke [200] and Anthony Burgess [ A Clockwork Orange ]. But this was a leap.

Those previous writers were contemporaries, and Paths of Glory and Spartacus apart, nearly all of Kubrick's previous films took place in the recent past, near present, or the future.

Now he would try his hand at what would essentially be a costume drama. He would be recreating the past rather than creating the future.

Some saw Barry Lyndon as a mere consolation prize. The film critic Alexander Walker called it a project '' born on the rebound'', while production designer Ken Adam described it as '' dress rehearsal '' for Napoleon.

But Kubrick's fascination with the Napoleonic era was evident in the film's DNA.

But Barry Lyndon is also unexpectedly, one of Kubrick's most emotional films. For all its detachment, it contains what might be his most heartbreaking scene, namely Barry's devastation at the death of his son.

In this moment, the film's rigid, painterly composition softens, revealing a rare vulnerability in Kubrick's work.

Ultimately Barry Lyndon was more than a historical exercise. It was a deeply personal film, pursued at great financial and artistic risk. Kubrick created a film that is as much about social mobility and exile as it is about 18th-century Europe.

If 2001 is a space odyssey, Barry Lyndon is a spatial odyssey, a film that turns the past into something mesmerising yet achingly real.

The World Students Society thanks Professor Nathan Abrams, of Film Studios at Bangor University, in the UK.