THE SHINING (1980)Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Joe Turkel, Philip Stone
R for unspecified reasons (disturbing violent images, some graphic nudity, language and intense terror.)
SCAREmeter: 9/10
GOREmeter: 7/10
OVERALL: 3.5 out of 4 stars
Stanley Kubrick is one of the most legendary filmmakers in the history of the medium, and of his film, perhaps the most legendary productions is the story of his Stephen King adaptation, THE SHINING. The story of the Torrance family's tormenting in the Overlook Hotel defies simple explanation and any certain resolution, but it teases the brain as well as any movie ever could.
Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is an aspiring writer who has recently quit his teaching job on the East Coast to live with his family in the Overlook Hotel as the winter caretaker, nestled deep in the Rocky Mountains, where the winter snow buries the roads in twenty feet of snow from autumn until May, isolating the hotel from the civilized world for several months and requiring a caretaker to run the pipes periodically and prevent weather damage from turning severe. Coming with Jack are his loving wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their little boy, Danny (Danny Lloyd); Danny has ESP, explained as "shining," by the hotel chef, Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers), who shares Danny's secret ability, which Danny expresses through an imaginary alter ego he calls "Tony".
The Overlook Hotel is soon snowed in by one of the worst snowstorms in years, and the phone lines fail, leaving a two-way radio as the only communication to the outside world. Jack has isolated himself in the already-isolated environment, sitting in front of a typewriter with nothing to show for it, leaving Wendy to fulfill most of the caretaker's responsibilities, while Danny witnesses nightmarish visions of the hotel's past (like Danny and Mr. Halloran, some places, including the hotel, can "shine"). When Danny appears with a bruised neck, which he attributes to a strange woman in one of the rooms, Wendy suspects Jack of abusing him, recalling an incident in which Jack accidentally hurt Danny during a drunken outburst years ago. Having had been sober since then, and increasingly frustrated with his writer's block, Jack becomes severely embittered and witnesses his own ghostly "hallucinations," sharing his darkest thoughts and feelings with Lloyd (Joe Turkel), the ominous apparition of a bartender from the hotel's glory days in the 1920s, while sousing himself in bourbon. The hauntings become increasingly intense, and Jack's grip on reality (or what was thought to be reality?) becomes dangerously loose, with threatening implications for Danny, and by default, Wendy.
As with any Kubrick film, the stories of how THE SHINING, the film, came to be are common knowledge and legendary amongst film aficionados. As most lovers of cinema would be able to inform you, Kubrick, the famously eccentric and reclusive writer/director/auteur, was greatly disappointed by the response to his previous film, BARRY LYNDON, a deliberately-paced art-house period epic, and stormed into his office with a large stack of books, loudly throwing each one aside periodically (as reported by his secretary), when after a while, it came to a stop as Kubrick had come across The Shining, written by an up-and-coming horror novelist named Stephen King. King was by no means the household name then that he is today, with the first film to adapt his work, CARRIE, only to be released in the year of Kubrick's discovery, and THE SHINING would be the second theatrical film version of one of his books, following a television movie of SALEM'S LOT in 1979.Kubrick, probably the most notorious perfectionist in the history of cinema, would call up King while mortals could only be sleeping, to ask him personal queries, the best-known was to ask if King believed in God, trying to crack the code of King's story as he penned the script with Diane Johnson (one of the few cases in which he shared writing credit). In the end, King was famously displeased with Kubrick's interpretation, accusing it of being too technical and visually-based, describing Kubrick as a man who "thinks too much and feels too little," referring specifically to what King believed was Kubrick's intrusive skepticism toward the
supernatural.
There are many in the know who consider THE SHINING to be the "scariest film of all time," and in terms of film criticism, it is often considered one of the greatest horror films of all time, ranking alongside THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and the great classics of German Expressionism during the silent era. Personally, I don't know for sure about that, but there is little doubt that it is without a noteworthy challenger outside of German Expressionism in terms of "cerebral horror". There are not many outright scares; Kubrick is much too coy for that; but it is a very methodical, deliberate journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind. It was Kubrick's first use of the Steadicam, which only first came into use in 1976; mounted on a stabilizing harness worn by the operator, the Steadicam allowed for smooth tracking shots over uneven surfaces, and eliminated a great many of the hindrances that plagued creative use of previous mounted cameras such as space constraints. Much of THE SHINING is a bit like seeing the genius at work with a new toy worthy of his talents, but it works to the film's advantage too, rather than being distracting. A frequent motif in the film is the presence of maze-like structures, present in the hotel hallways, the colossal hedge maze in the courtyard and even the pattern of the carpets (which, by the way, has a cameo in TOY STORY 3 during the scenes in the daycare security cameras room), which parallels the figurative aspects of the movie, based heavily in the terrifying mazes of the mind, where one is liable to get lost. The Steadicam is used to follow eerily behind Danny as he speeds through the hallways on his big-wheel tricycle, and as Jack chases Danny menacingly through the hedge-maze, winding effortlessly (and unnaturally) through the intimidating structures, never knowing what may lie around the countless corners. Kubrick takes the Steadicam to the its fullest potential, with the camera's inventor frequently acting as the camera's operator on-set.The heavily-marketed image of Jack Nicholson leering through the splintered door is one of the most iconic in cinema (as are several other moments in the film), but the shots prior to that are my personal favorite; as Jack swings the fireman's ax repeatedly into the door blocking his way to his wife, the camera follows the ax, back as Jack pulls back, and into the door as he swings forward.
The film has multiple masterfully-crafted iconic images (a good example of counter-cinema may be Zack Snyder's 300, which is packed with cheesy and overblown pre-packaged "iconic moments") that stick in the mind like a virus, from the elevators opening to let forth very literal gallons of blood in slow-motion as it sweeps through the hall like a tidal wave, to the Grady twins (played by twins and commonly referred to as such, but specified as two years apart in the film's dialogue) who stand like mannequins in their blue and white dresses, beckoning Danny to "Come play with us". If you watch movies and/or television regularly, there is little doubt that you've seen a film/TV show reference imagery from THE SHINING directly.
The most powerful aspect of THE SHINING though is what will make it or break it for a great many viewers. It is the most superior so-called "mind-f*ck" in any film ever, taking the viewer deep into a cerebral state of dreadfully uneasy calm, teasing with all kinds of speculative possibilities and symbols, before finally concluding with an eerie revelation that defies any certain reconciliation. At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, the documentary ROOM 237 premiered, examining the various opinions on what the film actually "means". The documentary's title refers to the single most menacing room in the Overlook Hotel, where Danny was assaulted and Jack was seduced by a mysterious nude siren before she suddenly turns into a geriatric old woman with patches of rotting flesh. In the documentary, fans, academics and Kubrick enthusiasts offer their wide-ranging analysis on the "hidden meanings" of THE SHINING, including the film as an allegory of the Holocaust, the genocide of Native American tribes and Apollo 11 moon-landing conspiracies (a popular conspiracy theory is that Kubrick oversaw a the supposed staged televised moon-landing), among other things.
There is no "official" interpretation of THE SHINING, although the suggestion of one is irrefutable, but Kubrick would never offer any resolution about it. This lends great benefit to the film as horror, because what is the most integral ingredient to all fear? Uncertainty. While I, personally, don't see any merit to the suggestions of the moon-landing theories or the specific Holocaust suggestions, there may be something to the Native American genocide suggestions, with the hotel's heavy use of Native American-inspired patterns and other such imagery, and the back-story in which the hotel is built on a sacred burial ground, requiring Indian attacks to be fought off during the construction in 1906.
To some extent, I think there is no "real" answer to the teasing symbols and themes of THE SHINING, because Kubrick would have realized the value of chaotic uncertainty in inducing terror. On the other hand, I believe the Holocaust and Native American genocide theories have some potential when combined. Jack represents white Anglo-Saxon men, obsessed with personal career ambitions, and left to his own devices, is prone to alcoholism, abuse, infidelity, misogyny and madness. Embittered after Wendy accuses him of hurting Danny, Jack orders a bourbon from the ghostly bartender, piggishly referring to his wife as "the old sperm bank"; he meets with the ambiguous butler Delbert Grady, who indicates that Danny is attempting to bring an outside party, "the nigger cook," into the situation, with Jack later killing Halloran and attempting to kill Danny. The final shot of the film shows Jack front and center of a photo marked "July 4, 1921."
By my reckoning, all this adds up to Jack representing the angry lashing out of the dying power of the Caucasian male; the peak of his powers are suggested to be of the post-Great War America, but his obsession with ambition and success has put him at odds with the evolving world where women, youth and racial minorities are moving forward despite as he stands ignorant in his isolation. Jack finds himself most at home in the Overlook Hotel, a monument founded in a cruel act of defiance towards the humanity of others, but the Overlook is snowed in, cut off from the world that now is. The ghosts of a time gone by instruct and assist him in his attempt to kill Danny in a sort of Oedipal struggle, Danny being the younger generation that threatens the existence of the archaic system, but the mother, Wendy, the giver of life, is there to assist Danny. In the end, after his futile pursuit of Danny, Jack is shown having frozen to death in the hedge-maze, as if frozen in his own time gone by. Anyway, that's my reading of it. King's intentions in regards to his novel are much more obvious and he is open about it, as a cautionary tale of alcoholism, career obsession and isolation.
THE SHINING was Kubrick's third-to-last film out of thirteen total (although he usually began the count with what was actually his actual third film, but his first produced professionally), and after the infamously-arduous shoot, the spaces between his last films were much further spread, with THE SHINING coming out five years after BARRY LYNDON, FULL METAL JACKET seven years after SHINING, and his last film, EYES WIDE SHUT twelve years after that. THE SHINING forever cemented Kubrick's legendary reputation as a perfectionist who clashed with his actors, taking dozens upon dozens of takes and consistently delivering last-minute script changes. Nicholson would throw away his scripts in anticipation of the changes he would have to learn minutes before shooting and Duvall, who reportedly argued with Kubrick constantly resulting in poor health and hair loss (oddly, considering her generally sweet demeanor in the film, but consistent with her more hysterical later scenes), reportedly was made to do 127 takes of the same scene.
Kubrick is consistently ranked as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and funnily enough, in most cases, as with THE SHINING, his films would be technically-acclaimed upon release but with otherwise mixed response, and with the passage of time, all of his major movies would become classics. After repeatedly clashing with his star, Kirk Douglas, on SPARTACUS, Kubrick swore to never again relent total control on a film, and it was a promise he kept, although, ironically, when EYES WIDE SHUT was released after his death, the studio made cuts that he surely would have fought, in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. THE SHINING, while not actually his greatest film, is probably the most extreme example of Kubrick on film, where every frame of it oozes with his ominous touch; the auteur with his most potent influence. If you think you have THE SHINING completely figured out, you can only possibly be wrong, because the great magician Kubrick never intended the film to be understood. That's not the point. It is a perfection of cinematic teasing, dropping dozens of hints every which way, more than enough to make an answer so clearly apparent, but once any closer inspection is made, no matter how slight, it falls apart. That's what is truly frightening about THE SHINING; it is a puzzle in which the very last piece doesn't quite fit.
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