Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I believe the foreshadowing is a nod to Thackeray’s novel, The Luck of Barry Lyndon, on which the screenplay is based. Descriptive chapter titles are a trope of 19th century literature, especially among those works which, like Barry Lyndon, were published serially.

I’m not sure what you mean about the ending. The freeze frame is the last scene in which Lyndon appears, but it is not the end of the film. The films ends with the charming and poignant epilogue:

It was in the reign of King George III that the aforementioned personages lived and quarreled; Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now.

🍿