The Shining

I am not a Stanley Kubrick fan. Period. And I understand that from a film fan’s point of view, a nice way to put it would be "ignorant," and from a film critic's point of view, I'd better have a damn good reason for it. 

Well, I'm not here to defend my reasoning (I'll say it right here though: the man was in SERIOUS need of an EDITOR). Rather, I'm going to discuss "The Shining," the film that proves, in my opinion, that maybe everybody else is on to something when they say that Kubrick knew what he was directing about. 

It's a bit unfair perhaps to use "The Shining" as my crutch for Kubrick, since it is a horror flick, and because of my fondness for Stephen King and Jack Nicholson. But hey, a film is supposed to be greater than the sum of its actors, and despite taking the story from King, the final product had very little to do with the novel anyway. Besides, "2001: A Space Odyssey" is considered a classic of science fiction, another genre that I have a soft spot for, and I hated its guts. So let's dive in. 

The Shining is a movie that's almost guaranteed to cause controversy from day one. Mr. Kubrick's working relationship with Mr. King could be described as rancid at best. The two men never saw eye to eye about the project; not sure why. Could have something to do with the fact that Kubrick basically junked everything but the names of the characters and the fact that it took place in a hotel before shooting the movie. 

Even on set, Kubrick was supposed to have played the part of a monster. His attitude during the shoot is the stuff of cinematic legend, or nightmares; he encouraged Nicholson to overact and purposefully bullied Shelley Duvall into a whimpering, sniveling mess. Kubrick defended his motives, stating that Duvall was a prima donna who had to be put in her place. As for Nicholson...how hard is it really to get him to overact? The truth may never be known.  

  The jury's still out on Nicholson's acting...  

But there's more to it than that. Beyond production, the film itself has too many anomalies to avoid critiquing. For one thing, it tends to piss off King fans who claim it deviates too far from the book. Others have noted what seem to be glaring errors in the script and set design. The hotel's too big, the maze disappears, windows and doors appear at will. Not to mention the whole Charles/Delbert Grady fiasco...

Who ARE you?!?

But Kubrick was notorious for being anal about filmmaking, like all the greats really. So those mistakes? They can't REALLY be mistakes. There's something more going on here, something we're missing...

As a result, various film analysts and internet nutters have made claims about the apparent depth and meaning of the film. Theories range from "intriguingly plausible" (the film isn't a haunted house story at all, but rather psychological horror; a sort of late 70s "Turn of the Screw") to "stretching it" (the idea that the film is really about the massacre of Red Indiansat the hands of United States manifest destiny types) to "they've got to be kidding, right?" (the infamous "Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing for NASA, and now they're out to get him" theory, which spills into most, if not all, of Kubrick's films, "The Shining" being no exception).  

Were I a trained film analyst, I myself could launch into some kind of fancy pants bit of theory where I could, say...suggest that how Kubrick frames other every shot in the picture to show symmetrical figures in pairs (the two girls, Jack's cigarettes and ashtray perfectly bordering his typewriter, the two ghosts in the hotel room having a "good time"), and his liberal use of mirrors as props, all suggest a dual nature of reality. Then, I might apply a conservative knowledge of...oh, Cartesian philosophy (just to prove that I went to college), and say that it all syncs up with the script's depiction of Jack Torrence as someone who is pulled between two worlds—the Overlook Hotel of 1980 and the Overlook Hotel of 1921—which appear to exist, simultaneously and impossibly, alongside each other. 

Nothing...

is...

REAL.

But I'm not that smart. 

All I can say for sure is that Kubrick had a couple of things going for him. He knew how to set up a shot. And he knew how to set up a movie. Everything you need to know about "The Shining" you are told before the Torrence family settles into the hotel for a peaceful winter of '79. Namely, the two themes that no theory about the film can ignore: isolation and survival. 

Survival is a subtle theme that is introduced when Jack and the gang are driving to the hotel, and the Donner Party is referenced. If you don't know who they are, we can have Jack explain it to you in person: 

Kubrick changed the book from a pure ghost story to a psychological study. Each of the people in that car represents a character type that will have to survive the winter, a season that is mythically as much a natural force as it is a supernatural one. Duval’s character is, for example, is almost painfully childlike throughout the film. She only gets worse as events progress.

By the looks of things though, Jack's gonna be just fine.

The isolation theme is even more obvious. It's mentioned boldfaced in Jack's interview with the hotel staff. The Overlook is a place where people tend to...well, go a little crazy and hack each other to bits. No one mentions hazard pay. 

But even before that, in that simply gorgeous, kinda Ridley Scott-esque, opening shot, we see miles and miles of empty, cold natural void surrounding one tiny little car. That car is the hotel in the winter as much as it's the Torrences in the hotel as much as it is a vehicle on a road. In short, it's the entire movie wrapped up in a single shot, and it’s an idea that will be visually repeated over and over again throughout the course of the film. Small people in the middle. Big open spaces all around. And it's that vision that makes the movie so effective. 

There's a car in there...somewhere...

Of course, it's important to mash all that other stuff I mentioned earlier into the equation too. The spatial mistakes, along with the chilling, vast emptiness of the environment, all make for scenes where something just ain't right, but you as a viewer can't put your finger on it. Which adds to the ambiguity. Which allows for those theories about what the movie's really "all about." 

Except of course for the fact that everybody "knows" what the movie's all about. It's a coming of age dramedy about finding yourself. 

But you already knew that, right?