My biggest fears about the movie pretty much came true. There's no ultimate resolution to just about anything in the movie, it's like a terminal case of blue balls.
Barry wins a duel. Nope, that guy lived and got what he wanted, Barry never meets him again.
Barry leaves with the last of his widowed mothers money? Nope, robbed. Robbers never seen again.
He joins the army, a chance at making a second life for himself? Dude from earlier shows up and tells him about the duel being a setup, get completely emotionally wrecked Redmond Barry Lyndon. But hey, at least we see this guy again! And him and Barry seem to be good friends. Something has a happy endi oh wait he gets shot and killed in the war.
Barry runs away to some widow? Then he leaves her and we never see her again. And so on.
Maybe if ol' Barry had been more of a villain this wouldn't have bothered me as much, but I just kind of felt bad for him for most of the movie. Thing was gorgeous, sound was great, narrator was wonderful, acting was fine, but it was just too much of the same thing happening with no real climax. Was kind of like reading collections of those pulp fantasy stories collected from older magazines but each one of the stories has the last 10% of the word count just chopped off.