Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” is so eerie that it makes the viewer disturbed. The three protagonists are found hopelessly trapped in the film’s playground which happens to be chilly and forbidding in nature and with its focus on their own little paradigms, the film shifts all the more exasperating as the strong immersion into this particular world of theirs turns out to be rather appalling than reliable. The outcome is on the other hand confusing and on the other hand horrible up to the last scene.
This was quite disappointing if I may say regal although ironic considering how unrelenting and incurious the film is cracks down on the insanity of its protagonists. The hero who is the astronaut finds himself stuck in a small sparsely furnished room after the beautiful odyssey of the journey that he has endeavored, only to find the metamorphosis in that room as if he is being watched from shapes that are far beyond his (and our) vision. In the instance of the film “The Shining”, three of its main characters are embedded in a large hotel which is located in some secluded mountains of Colorado. At times, they seem more like guinea pigs waiting to be distributed under the control of an unseen eye that looms somewhere in the hotel.
Kubrick, as evident from the first scene, does not conceal his evil intent. Having all the ominousness of the synthesizer performance of ‘Dies Irae’ in the background, this eerie first scene creeps towards a close up of a small car moving towards the hotel. Inichiro soratyni. It is soon followed by a rather mundane interaction between hotel staff and Jack Torrance, played by the talismatic Jack Nicholson, who is recruited as the seasonal caretaker of the hotel when it is temporarily shut down. The hotel manager modestly reminds Jack, ‘You can completely lock this hotel from the rest of the world for days at a stretch during the snowy winter months and low lying clouds, and you have heard the story of its previous weather.’ Jack comforts the hotel manager with an assurance that they will be alright when his wife and child accompanying him. “And as far as my wife is concerned, I am sure she will be captivated when I am relating the story to her. She is a diehard fan of ghost tales and horror movies.”
This time Jack’s wife (Wendy) and their little son Jack (Danny Lloyd) are also introduced. Contrary to all expectations, Danny possesses a kind of second sight, and his imaginary friend sits him down and shows him scary things that will happen in the hotel.
In the next exposition where Wendy is interviewed by another physician treating or rather checking on Danny, she speaks with a casual irresponsibility and discloses that Jack is married to an alcoholic. And how that particular vice, which she so despises, caused them both trauma sometime back to a very dangerous extent for her and Danny.
From the moment Jack enters the Overlook together with his family, continuous references in the film about how enormous the hotel seems from inside will be recurrent throughout the film especially when they are the only patrons in the hotel after the day of closing. While the camera is in a position to track and follow the movements of its primary characters in the hotel as they go about their business, their quiet surroundings tend to be like the background of the film ‘2001: a Space Odyssey’ which was called outer space. At a point in time, they look to be helpless for example when the camera is positioned above and capturing Wendy and Danny who seem to be lost in a large and complex maw ot the hotel’s hedge maze.
At that stage however, Jack still goes mad, so we rely mostly on Danny and Wendy’s view of things. Still, neither is very reliable either, as they too end up being enigmatically cut off socially in their own style. Locked in one specific room of the hotel, Danny may bear the stains of terror that are much worse than before, and those terrifying images of his soon come all too true to his horrified head. As for Wendy, she gives it all her best to keep the few things in order on the rare occasion that it is even possible, but such moments in time are limited and soon she will feel ‘lost’ in her own fear, anxiety and despair.
Kubrick makes everything Bela cool, and sheer distance, as he did in many of his films which makes the film all the more horrifying. Although its three lead protagonists are two dimensional figures, also their retreat into mania is impressive due to the total anxiety inducing tightness. As if they are fated to remain in their separated status, they are less prone to boredom in this case, which must have been the reason why the director purposely ordered the two leads to act closer to the edge. While Nicholson tames his alternating poses to whatever is required, in this instance, tone does what she tames, rates to the extreme. Her strenuous efforts here in this film deserve more appreciation especially as the director himself treated her quite harshly during the shooting rather enjoying her performance.
At the same time, we have to say that we were also surprised at the dreaded vagueness regarding the warped notions of the main protagonists. Let us ask ourselves. Is there really some sort of supernatural presence in the hotel? Or does Jack and his family just get to know the sights and sounds inside their head which are caused by the power of Danny? In regard to this, there is a flashback sequence taking place in a storage area later on in the picture where it can be concluded that there are in fact spirits in the hotel. But the film does not come out and confirms that there is no such conclusion until the very last end shot of the picture, there’s still lots of doubts and more questions.
The most provided hence far to these sceptic perspectives comes through the character of Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers), the dining room attendant who works in the same hotel and possesses the same psychic ability as Danny, providing a voice of reason if Janet Scott cannot perform that function. He prepares the grounds for a later mental assistance regarding the rescuer: He, particularly, foresees the dangers hidden in the architectural body of the hotel with which he is about to communicate. Still, I would like to recommend that the film itself does allow such interpretation.
As an aside, I would like to say that ‘The Shining’ is an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name. He hated this movie for understandable reasons. Much to this consternation of King, Kubrick and his co writer Diane Johnson did a number on the human aspect of King’s original novel, which the latter wished was infused into the film. Rather, he clamped down on the oppressive features of King’s tale for his one track vision and such a vision has far reaching effects on a number of epicenter horror films including Ari Aster’s first feature, Hereditary, 2017, which has its roots in The Shining.
Incidentally, it was also where King made an effort to cool off readers of his novel from the harsh reminder of Kubrick’s film with a sequel to it entitled “Doctor Sleep.” However, frankly speaking, it was quite amusing to realize that the next movie directed by Mike Flanagan, based on the novel, was not free of Kubrick’s film either. That is a great deal of respect to the inescapable nature of Kubrick’s film that demands understanding imparted by going into a film.
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