The film is a comedy in that devious, oblique, droll way that is characteristic of Kubrick films. There isn't a laugh in the whole film that would work anywhere else.

You feel no expense or effort has been spared in exhibiting things with formal correctness. You feel called upon to murmur approval of the extreme decorum and esthetic detail, yet the over-all effect is excruciating.

[Lyndon] is very Gen Z, essentially sympathetic but aware that he’s perpetually at the mercy of aristocrats, scoundrels, brigands and army captains alike.

Barry Lyndon is 2001 in reverse -- a visual poem of haunting beauty which, through its freedom from the rooted-in-time artifice of dialogue, magically evokes the sensation of being in the past in the same way 2001 evoked the future.