So for a very long time, I was under a complete misapprehension regarding this movie. For reasons I am not entirely clear on — maybe the name “Lyndon” reminded me of Lyndon B. Johnson — I thought that this was a satirical film about a politician in the 1970s.

But no! It’s actually a movie based on a 19th century Thackeray picaresque about an 18th century adventurer and nobleman. If I had known this earlier, I probably would have watched it forever ago, because I love Kubrick movies and am fond of non-cheesy period pieces, so the combination of the two would have been irresistible.

And so it proved to be. The first act of the movie (“By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon”), is about the early life of the roguish protagonist and his rise to the head of a noble and wealthy house. It was actually really fun in a way that you never think of Kubrick movies as really being. There’s an early scene with a highwayman that is an absolute delight, full of florid politeness even as the victim is being relieved of his money and horse; it’s the sort of thing that could have inspired The Phoenix Guards. And if it’s all still somewhat distant in that Kubrickian way — a distance helped along by the presence of a narrator, who works in that 19th century omniscient-with-lots-of-foreshadowing mode — it’s surprisingly human and even a little warm.

The second act (“Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon”) is, as you’d gather from the name, considerably less fun. Lyndon turns out to be something like a cat who catches the toy it was chasing, and doesn’t know what to do with it, and things go poorly for him in a way that is reminiscent of the back half of Hamilton only without all the actually-accomplishing-anything parts. This part of the movie is all frigid formality and coldness, punctuated by moments of explosive rage and grief. Barry Lyndon is a three-hour movie, but it only feels its length during some of the more excruciating scenes in the second half.

But throughout the movie, it is absolutely visually stunning. Exterior shots often look like something that could have come from a Hudson River School artist, and interior shots look like paintings from the Dutch masters. Part of this is that Kubrick was using either natural light (or candles) for many of the interior shots (aided by a special f/0.7 lens developed for NASA), and lit scenes naturalistically when he did use electric light. Part of it is that Kubrick is Kubrick and all his movies are full of stunning visual composition; it’s kind of his thing.

So yeah, this is really good; I actually came out of this one thinking this movie is under-appreciated and should be better-considered than it is — but of course the part where it’s in a “top 100 greatest movies of all time” list means that probably definitionally it’s not under-appreciated. (It is interesting, though, that it’s much less famous than The Shining or Dr. Strangelove, neither of which makes this list. I think I agree with the list that this movie is better than those are.)