Stanley Kubrik’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel starring Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall, originally blasted by critics, has come to be regarded as a masterpiece because of its overarching themes of abuse and domestic violence. The Shining is one of the most haunting films of all time because of how isolated it makes you feel. The film draws you in so that you as the audience believe that you are in Swindler, Colorado with the tormented Torrance family.
THE OPENING
The opening sequence in The Shining is haunting, visionary and masterful. When I think of the opening scene, I immediately think of the soundtrack, written by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind. This theme is composed of long haunting notes in different keys. The music is adapted from “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” from Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. The draining non-melody drags on and is paired with a shot of a yellow car slowly moving along a vacant highway. The highway runs through raw wilderness and there’s a sense of isolation. The helicopter shot is a precursor to the drone shots of our time. The theme and the shot really lure you into the movie. This mirrors the action on screen, as Jack Torrance willfully drives into the deathtrap of the Overlook Hotel, where he and his family will spend the winter alone. The whole sequence suggests that the Torrance family is the next in line to be tormented by the spirits that haunt the hotel. This is reflected when in Doctor Sleep (2019),when Danny returns to the Overlook. The movie recreates this iconic opening scene shot-for-shot, and the iconic theme song will haunt the movie and filmgoers even after the final credits roll.
JACK NICHOLSON’S PERFORMANCE
Jack Nicholson has done everything. He’s been the president. He’s been the Joker. He’s been cooped up in an insane asylum. He’s been a private detective. And in his best role, he is possessed and tries to kill his family. In The Shining, Nicholson is terrifying as Jack Torrance.
His performance in The Shining is one of the scariest performances ever. Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic with a history of domestic abuse. He’s also a writer with a short temper, who has been hired to act as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in Swindler, Colorado. Jack Nicholson plays the role masterfully that it makes me wonder what the actor was going through during the filming of this movie.
Look at this video of Jack Nicholson warming up for this role. What do you see? I see an actor who has taken method acting as far as it can go. Jack is jumping around with a real ax, shaking and muttering furiously about how he is going to kill anyone he comes across. It’s hard to understand his “words,” but it sounds like he might be saying “ax murder kill them” or “ax murder killer.” What’s shocking is that he is the same person in the movie and on the set. Jack Nicholson is Jack Torrance. When he says “come on Jack”, he seems to have channeled and given over to the spirits in the movie.
It is disturbing to see a human being go that far. Whenever you see him on screen, it makes you feel uncomfortable. There’s something about the look in his eyes. It always seems like he’s staring past your eyes and into the darkness in your soul. The expression on his face is truly evil, and it shows pleasure in wreaking havoc on his family. It’s almost as he’s looking into the darkness inside all of us.
KUBRICK’S LABYRINTH
The Overlook Hotel is iconic and Gothic. It is one of the most horrifying things in film history. I believe it was constructed to remind the viewer of the inescapable quality of pure evil. The Overlook feels like a never-ending maze. In the scene where Danny is scooting in the halls of the Overlook, he rides in a “circle” but he doesn’t end where he began. It’s as if the Overlook has abducted Danny. When he turns the final corner, he sees the ghosts of the Grady twins begging him, “Hello Danny. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Danny. Forever… and ever… and ever.” But Danny has a very powerful version of the titular gift—“the shining”—which means that he has psychic abilities ranging from getting a good grade on a test he did not study for to clairvoyance and telepathy. Because of this, he is able to see and resist the spirits that haunt the Overlook Hotel. His father Jack Torrance is not that lucky.
The hotel has the power to control people like it manipulates the ghost of Charles Grady (and will come to manipulate the ghost of Jack Torrance in Dr. Sleep, 2019). I believe this detail of the hotel trying to abduct Danny is Kubrick telling the audience what will happen to Jack. The depiction of the Overlook is a reflection of Kubrick’s pure and simple genius. Everything in the movie—from the wardrobe to the props and paintings—is purposeful. All of these calculated decisions tangle together and make an inescapable labyrinth of thought. This is shown both figuratively and literally. Outside the Overlook Hotel, there is an enormous hedge maze that has been infinitely referenced in pop culture. Kubrick chose to replace the topiary animals of Stephen King’s original book because the CGI technology of that time was not great and it would look like a total joke. In one of horror’s most defining conclusions, Danny lures Jack into the hedge maze, loses him in the bushes, and uses his shining to navigate out of the torment. In the end, Jack gets trapped in a horrifying situation of his own contriving. He is literally frozen in time.
The interior set of the Overlook and the hedge maze makes the audience feel that they too are lost in the horrifying snowy grounds.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
Kubrick was notorious for his direction style and the way he treated his actors on set. He would use any means to get the performance he wanted. The most famous example of this was the way he “tormented” Shelly Duval in order to extract the feeling of pure fear and horror. In the book The Complete Kubrick, Duval says “Stanley pushed me and prodded me further than I’ve ever been pushed before.” The famous scene in which Wendy is trying to fend off Jack with a baseball bat on stairs reportedly required 127 takes, which left Duval exhausted and mentally unstable. But by tormenting Duval, Kubrick managed to capture one of the most emotionally distraught scenes in cinema history.
Perhaps the most unsettling image in the whole film occurs towards the end as Wendy is navigating the labyrinth. She runs up the stairs, looks into a room, and sees something indescribable: a creature in a bear suit and mask, performing a sexual act with a man in a tuxedo. Wendy and the creature make eye contact, the shot zooms in on the beast’s face, and the audience cannot imagine who or what could be behind his impenetrable mask. Because Kubrick offers no explanation, the audience is left to fill in the blank. It is like a terrifying Mad Libs. It gives you the feeling that you are imagining the whole thing.
Things that are omitted are unsettling, and Kubrick built his whole career on not explaining things to the audience. He keeps secrets from the viewer. I think that we will never solve the puzzles in his films, most especially in The Shining. The day we do figure out what Kubrick meant in this film is the day we attain his unattainable mastery. And this will never happen because Kubrick’s genius was decades ahead of his time. When you compare The Shining to other films from the 1980’s it pushes the limitations and transcends the status quo of the era. The Shining is so good that it sets the tone for decades to come
VERDICT
Overall The Shining is my favorite horror movie and is horrifying on all the right levels. It is suspenseful, psychological, intense, and intelligent. Even if the ghosts in The Shining are not real, Wendy and Danny are still haunted by Jack Torrance’s alcoholism and violent tendencies. This relates to Wendy and Danny’s feelings of dread, isolation, and intimate contact with their tormentor. The film captures the feeling of unease, the feeling of not knowing if you’ll ever escape. And all of this is closed with a shot of a photograph of Jack in the gold room with the caption Overlook Hotel July 4th Ball dated 1921, this reflects that after Jack’s death in the hedge maze he is immortalized as another spirit of the Overlook Hotel. Jack’s open arms in this image is as if he is welcoming you into the horrors that have taken place that cursed winter. This image will be burned into the heads of viewers forever. It has been dissected and analysed hundreds of times, but my view of this shot is that it is Kubrick showing the audience that the answer to why Jack is exploited by the ghosts of the overlook was right under our noses the whole time. The last piece of the puzzle Kubrick created hidden in plain sight.
I WILL GIVE THE SHINING 10/10! “a masterpiece of modern horror.”
Levi Jacobson Reviews 