Although our week of King reviews is over, we decided to throw another one out there!
Loosely based on the novel by Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is among the very first true epics of the horror genre, so vast in scope and ambition the running time can barely contain, let alone explain, the experience projected onscreen. The story concerns Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a writer and former alcoholic, who accepts a job to be the caretaker of the massive and isolated Overlook Hotel for the Winter. His wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) move in with him for the season and are snowed in. Danny seems to have psychic abilities called “shining” and begins to receive visions of the hotel's violent past. Reportedly the last caretaker of the hotel, Delbert Grady, murdered his family before taking his own life. Soon after, Jack and his family find themselves snowed in before Jack begins to follow in Mr. Grady's footsteps.
Loosely based on the novel by Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is among the very first true epics of the horror genre, so vast in scope and ambition the running time can barely contain, let alone explain, the experience projected onscreen. The story concerns Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a writer and former alcoholic, who accepts a job to be the caretaker of the massive and isolated Overlook Hotel for the Winter. His wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) move in with him for the season and are snowed in. Danny seems to have psychic abilities called “shining” and begins to receive visions of the hotel's violent past. Reportedly the last caretaker of the hotel, Delbert Grady, murdered his family before taking his own life. Soon after, Jack and his family find themselves snowed in before Jack begins to follow in Mr. Grady's footsteps.
Seemingly
disconnected and anecdotal before slyly linking all the details together, The
Shining finds Kubrick at his most labyrinthine. Though the scenes of
Jack Nicholson axing the bathroom door down with the infamous line “Here's
Johnny” are familiar, you can watch The Shining dozens of times and
still come up with a new questions which remain unanswered. Is Jack
Torrance really the caretaker from 1921 and is the Overlook his ghostly
Hell? Are there really supernatural occurrences taking place or are they
merely hallucinations? How much of the film, if not all, takes place
within Jack or Danny's head? Is it about the horrors of alcoholism
terrorizing a family, or something far more sinister? Can Danny and the
chef Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) really “shine”? When pondering the
prospect of the afterlife or spirits wandering the Earth, as with 2001: A
Space Odyssey, Kubrick shows far more than he tells.
Germane
to Kubrick's work are his enormous set pieces filmed with precise care.
Among his greatest are the war room in Dr. Strangelove, the centrifuge
in 2001, and most notably, the Overlook hotel in The Shining.
Filled with seemingly endless corridors with a penchant for red wallpapers,
it's as though the walls have been painted with more blood than what flows from
the elevator in Danny's visions. Stronger still is the operatic use of
the Steadicam, gracefully careening through the halls and stairwells of the
Overlook. It's as though we're gliding through a maze with no exit.
Kubrick's gloriously surreal lighting give the walls and chandeliers an eerie
glow, furthering a sense of either the supernatural or delirium.
Avant-garde Polish composer Krzyzstof Pendercki's terrifying strings find themselves
at perfect home here when the terror levels are turned up higher.
Considered
a failure by famed author Stephen King for Kubrick's free use of creative
license, as well as Jack Nicholson's spectacularly over-the-top performance of
a man's gradual descent into maniacal sociopathy, The Shining for many
years was considered Kubrick's first artistic failure. Kubrick himself
responded to the public reaction to the film by withdrawing the film one week
after the world premiere to remove a coda which he felt offset the impact of
the finale. Further still, in Europe the film was shorted by Kubrick
again by 25 minutes, while curiously leaving the US version at the initial 144
minute length. Further still, King himself would mount his own
unexpurgated television miniseries adaptation which is closer to the source
material’s intentions and events unfolding but dated by weak CGI and a still
cornball cameo by King himself in the Gold Ballroom.
Still, whatever your interpretation of the film is (and there are many, enough to fill the conspiracy theorist documentary Room 237), this is one of the lushest and richest horror films ever made, if not the fullest of ideas. Watching the film and attempting to discuss it will have viewers chasing their tails for decades trying to make sense of what we think we're seeing onscreen. Perhaps Kubrick meant for his film interpretation of Stephen King's novel to reflect the process of really trying to ponder the notion of spiritual entities and a dimension far beyond our realm of comprehension. Much like 2001, it aims to open the door wide and keep it from being closed.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki