The Shining (1980)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Shining (1980) -- S. Kubrick

Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall agree to act as caretakers to the Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the winter.  Their son Danny comes with them and his psychic powers are immediately enflamed because of the Hotel’s scary past – a previous caretaker had murdered his wife and two daughters with an axe.  Stephen King, author of the source novel, notoriously hated this film version because of the transgressions that Stanley Kubrick made when transposing the book to the screen.  There is no doubt either that this is a Kubrick film, dominated by his obsessional production design and odd touches – and endless tracking shots (in the hotel’s hallways and in the giant hedge maze outside).  I never noticed during previous viewings just how slow and dream-like the acting can be.  For example, when Jack sits with Danny on the bed, telling him how he wishes they could stay in the hotel forever (and ever and ever), the camera hangs expectantly and the scene takes a few beats longer than it should.  Moreover, when Jack meets Delbert Grady in the red and white men’s room the pauses between each line seem enormous and when they are shown in a two-shot, it feels like a staged Jeff Wall photograph (as does the earlier shot in the bedroom and the shot with the scary naked women in Room 237).  But truly it is the soundtrack, dominated by Penderecki, that makes even mundane scenes feel creepy and even horrifying. But how mundane is the film, really?  On the simplest level, this is a film about a breakdown in a family, with Nicholson perhaps feeling hemmed in and restricted by his wife and son (this is less overt in the 113-minute international cut of the film that I watched).  However, there may be deeper levels – and in fact that wormhole can be very deep (try googling The Shining and conspiracy – or watch the outrageous documentary Room 237) with a range of experts putting together the evidence from Kubrick’s changes, ellipses, mistakes, and perhaps intended clues and contradictions (particularly in “telling” continuity errors and the jumbled physical geography of the hotel).  Of course, it seems believable that Kubrick wanted to comment on family and relationship issues which can easily elicit anxiety and horror when trust slips, but was he also encoding messages about the Holocaust or genocide of the Native Americans?  Has he left clues that he faked the Apollo 11 moon landing footage?  On this pass through the film, I could find no real evidence of these “deeper” things, even though I was looking.  However, I didn’t try to unpack the evidence closely.  I am willing to believe that Kubrick was deliberately trying to disorient us and that things in the film are there for a reason.  Yet, I just let the dream imagery wash over me and I prayed for Scatman Crothers to come to my rescue.