STARRING: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson, Joe Turkel, Philip Stone and Lisa & Louise Burns. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson. Cinematography John Alcott, music by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Budget $19 million. Running time 143 minutes. Originally released in October 1980.
A wannabe writer, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) accepts a five-month job as the out-of-season winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel situated deep in mountains of Colorado. There he takes his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and their son Danny 'Doc' (Danny Lloyd), Jack's looking forward to working on his great American novel (once he can think of something to write about), Wendy's looking to spend quality time with her family and trying to keep her husband's barely concealed rage in check, and little Danny just wants to eat P&J white-bread-sandwiches, watch cartoons and play with his firetruck. The last thing he wants is to be chased round a giant hotel by an axe-weilding maniac who just so happens to be his dad. However, shit gets real when they become snowbound and Jack promptly goes mad. Whether it's the isolation, the hotel's ghostly inhabitants, or his deeply annoying family who drive him there is anyone's guess, although my money's on wife and kid, no one wants that sort of emotional anchor when you're trying to be creative. They just drag you down!
This marks the film's 45th anniversary, although time has not dulled it one iota, it still looks mostly as fresh today as it did back then, only the costumes looks a tad outta wack.
This marks the film's 45th anniversary, although time has not dulled it one iota, it still looks mostly as fresh today as it did back then, only the costumes looks a tad outta wack.
This one surely polarises people who've seen it, me I fucking love it. Frankly it's one of the most unsettling and uncomfortable films I've ever seen, and god knows I've seen it a lot. This time round it's the full-length version, all 143 minutes, which I've only ever seen on Blu Ray. So it's sudden arrival at my Cineworld made for the best pre-Christmas gift E-VER!
There's been a lot written about this film, about its deeper hidden meaning, it's social interpretations and the such and it's staggering just how much utter guff has been written about it, from theories claiming it an 'allegory of American imperialism.' that it addresses 'topics of toxic masculinity, sexism, corporate America and racism', some read it as an 'Oedipal struggle not just between generations but between Jack's culture of the written word and Danny's culture of images' while other talk about it being a 'metaphor for the genocide of Native Americans', or that it contains a subtext about the holocaust. None of this is true, those elements people claim were always there, but just not labeled, Jack is clearly a wife abuser and we know he physically abused his son, but that doesn't make this film a study of toxic masculinity or sexism, it's just who Jack is.
I once went to a Fortean Times Convention back in the 1990s and remember a talk by a small group of people who had tracked a hidden network of leylines between standing stones that crisscrossed the United Kingdom and I realised that if you want to find evidence of something you believe in you will. The Shining is the perfect example of that, because it allows every crackpot out there to 'discover' the truth or hidden agenda in the film, and it does that by being extraordinary empty to such an extent that people need to fill the voids. Kubrick isn't interested in all that, he set out to make the best horror film ever made and he did. In the same way he set out to make the best science fiction film of all times in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In The Shining it's clear that he sat down and deconstructed the horror film, learning all it's tropes and tricks, then threw them out and started from scratch. And in doing so he made one of the scariest films of all times. It's a film that's lost none of its power.
He focused on a small group of characters trapped in a single location, a classic horror trope, and in the Overlook hotel Kubrick created not only a location that seems alive. Those miles of corridor, the cavernous ballrooms, the blood red bathrooms, the tapestries, the carpets, the rugs, the bizarre geometry the Overlook feels and looks so alive you'd want to visit in the real life.
Added to that is the otherworldliness of the story, is Jack bedevilled by supernatural powers or by mental breakdown? I believe it's the former, although the later is needed for it to work. And that last slow shot into the photo of the 1921 Independence party with Jack front and centre, which some theories claim means that Jack is original Grady, once again I don't, all I think it means is that Jack has now become apart of the Overlook, lost in some distant past awaiting his opportunity to serve his master.
To add more tension, he had a music landscape created by Wendy Carlos that is deeply unsettling, it just helps to up the tension and the paranoia, the whole film is designed to get under your skin, the sharp sound effects, the roar of the Danny's bike's wheels across rug and floor, the silence of the slumbering hotel, coupled with unsettling flashes of the supernatural, the wall of blood the haunting "Hello Danny, come and play with us." all it helps to build an overwhelming sense of jeopardy and impending disaster. And at its centre Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance. Watching him come apart at the seams is a masterclass in acting and I don't think Nicholson has ever been more handsome or more terrifying.
There's been a lot written about this film, about its deeper hidden meaning, it's social interpretations and the such and it's staggering just how much utter guff has been written about it, from theories claiming it an 'allegory of American imperialism.' that it addresses 'topics of toxic masculinity, sexism, corporate America and racism', some read it as an 'Oedipal struggle not just between generations but between Jack's culture of the written word and Danny's culture of images' while other talk about it being a 'metaphor for the genocide of Native Americans', or that it contains a subtext about the holocaust. None of this is true, those elements people claim were always there, but just not labeled, Jack is clearly a wife abuser and we know he physically abused his son, but that doesn't make this film a study of toxic masculinity or sexism, it's just who Jack is.
I once went to a Fortean Times Convention back in the 1990s and remember a talk by a small group of people who had tracked a hidden network of leylines between standing stones that crisscrossed the United Kingdom and I realised that if you want to find evidence of something you believe in you will. The Shining is the perfect example of that, because it allows every crackpot out there to 'discover' the truth or hidden agenda in the film, and it does that by being extraordinary empty to such an extent that people need to fill the voids. Kubrick isn't interested in all that, he set out to make the best horror film ever made and he did. In the same way he set out to make the best science fiction film of all times in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In The Shining it's clear that he sat down and deconstructed the horror film, learning all it's tropes and tricks, then threw them out and started from scratch. And in doing so he made one of the scariest films of all times. It's a film that's lost none of its power.
He focused on a small group of characters trapped in a single location, a classic horror trope, and in the Overlook hotel Kubrick created not only a location that seems alive. Those miles of corridor, the cavernous ballrooms, the blood red bathrooms, the tapestries, the carpets, the rugs, the bizarre geometry the Overlook feels and looks so alive you'd want to visit in the real life.
Added to that is the otherworldliness of the story, is Jack bedevilled by supernatural powers or by mental breakdown? I believe it's the former, although the later is needed for it to work. And that last slow shot into the photo of the 1921 Independence party with Jack front and centre, which some theories claim means that Jack is original Grady, once again I don't, all I think it means is that Jack has now become apart of the Overlook, lost in some distant past awaiting his opportunity to serve his master.
To add more tension, he had a music landscape created by Wendy Carlos that is deeply unsettling, it just helps to up the tension and the paranoia, the whole film is designed to get under your skin, the sharp sound effects, the roar of the Danny's bike's wheels across rug and floor, the silence of the slumbering hotel, coupled with unsettling flashes of the supernatural, the wall of blood the haunting "Hello Danny, come and play with us." all it helps to build an overwhelming sense of jeopardy and impending disaster. And at its centre Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance. Watching him come apart at the seams is a masterclass in acting and I don't think Nicholson has ever been more handsome or more terrifying.
As to the film's true meaning, that's simple.
It's a film about writer's block. Jack is one of those wannabe writers, he'll tell anyone he meets he's an 'author', it's probably what bagged him Wendy back in the first place. But truth is, he's not a writer he just dreams of being one. His home in Boulder is strewn with thin paper backs, westerns, and the kind scattered randomly around the apartment, but the thing is these aren't the books of a true writer, just a failed one or a wannabe. One who spends more time telling everyone who'll listen that he's a writer, that he's just waiting for the right time to write, and so when the Overlook job comes up he deludes himself into thinking this is the answer to his prayers, the perfect opportunity to write and off he goes. Trouble is once he's there he has no more excuses as to why he's not writing. Wendy asks him how's it going and he says he's been thinking about a couple of ideas but nothing working just yet. Once again, bullshit! He's run out of excuses as to why he's not writing. Truth is he can't, he was never a writer, he was someone who loved the idea of it, but not the hard work. When he's sat at that goddam typewriter with the blank sheet of paper he's utterly lost and to keep his wife off the scent he starts typing, probably as a joke at first, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." In his head, he's doing this until the 'story' arrives, trouble is it never will. And finally when his deceit is discovered he lashes out at his family blaming them for his inability. And that's my take on The Shining. All that other stuff about ghosts and spirits, that's just all his rejected ideas that he couldn't make work.
Anyway, enough guff. the score as if you needed telling is without a doubt.
10/10
It's a film about writer's block. Jack is one of those wannabe writers, he'll tell anyone he meets he's an 'author', it's probably what bagged him Wendy back in the first place. But truth is, he's not a writer he just dreams of being one. His home in Boulder is strewn with thin paper backs, westerns, and the kind scattered randomly around the apartment, but the thing is these aren't the books of a true writer, just a failed one or a wannabe. One who spends more time telling everyone who'll listen that he's a writer, that he's just waiting for the right time to write, and so when the Overlook job comes up he deludes himself into thinking this is the answer to his prayers, the perfect opportunity to write and off he goes. Trouble is once he's there he has no more excuses as to why he's not writing. Wendy asks him how's it going and he says he's been thinking about a couple of ideas but nothing working just yet. Once again, bullshit! He's run out of excuses as to why he's not writing. Truth is he can't, he was never a writer, he was someone who loved the idea of it, but not the hard work. When he's sat at that goddam typewriter with the blank sheet of paper he's utterly lost and to keep his wife off the scent he starts typing, probably as a joke at first, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." In his head, he's doing this until the 'story' arrives, trouble is it never will. And finally when his deceit is discovered he lashes out at his family blaming them for his inability. And that's my take on The Shining. All that other stuff about ghosts and spirits, that's just all his rejected ideas that he couldn't make work.
Anyway, enough guff. the score as if you needed telling is without a doubt.
10/10
