King's novel is from the implicit POV of Jack, as a 'there but for the grace of God go I' worst-case scenario of his own alcoholism (which he claims not even to have realized until several years after writing it). Kubrick's film is from the implicit POV of Wendy and Danny, as they slowly realized they're trapped with this lunatic patriarch in a place that increasingly seems to be an ever-shifting extension of him. As someone who grew up very much like Danny, I prefer the film.
I'd never made the Ripper/Mandrake connection before, but that's brilliant - the only way that situation in Strangelove could be more awkward is if they were married.
I've wondered before if the hotel/general geography and time goofiness of this coming from Danny's perspective. Kids (well, my kid, and also when I was a kid) don't really track this stuff in a legible way and it stands to reason that the stuff not lining up/making sense clues us in to Danny's perspective.
I remember one of the AV Club old-timers (Cookie Monster? Zodiac MFer?) making a similar observation a while back and it really holds, and for what it's worth the gloss you offer in the back half of the comment here is basically also how I've always "read" the film. Kubrick uses violence so much more effectively than King does, too, precisely because the style is so cerebral and elegant and clean. And I think there's a great parallax effect between the "emotional grotesquerie" of the acting (Jack's screaming, Shelly Duval's wimpering) and the icy precision of the film-making. That's kind of a theme in Kubrick, now that I think about it, depersonalizing emotion by showing how the protagonists are both produced by and swallowed up by their surroundings.
Yeah, I absolutely understand why King does not care for this, because it turns his tragic POV character into the monster, and I think King identifies a lot with Jack Torrance.
I still prefer the book, but rewatching this as an adult was like "oh, yeah, that's the horror of growing up with an alcoholic, no wonder it terrified me as a kid."
Totes agree with the thinking that this movie is a real shape-shifter. I've always loved it but as I've gotten older, I've had a number of different takes.
- at one point, I definitely agreed with the notion that "nah, Nicholson seems nuts right away" but as I've gotten older, I've shifted back to being really impressed by it as a performance and also as a directorial choice. We all run into folks who do a bad job of pretending to keep it together and Nicholson's performance nails that vibe in a way that really works.
- the last time I watched this (post having a kid) was definitely the time I realized just how amazing Duvall's performance is in this. Similarly in an earlier age I thought HER performance was too big and too nuts-from-the-start but it's completely in-line with Nicholson, it's hella empathetic and similarly, we've all known folks who have a 'they're doomed but they're trying to get thru it' vibe like she has here
- how is this movie both incredibly over the top AND incredibly subtle? That's the Kubrick Touch BABY
Duvall getting needlessly put through the wringer by Kubrick probably contributed to the false impression of a 'bad' performance, but I've never understood that - it's perfect from beginning to end. The 'turn' scene, where Jack goes from attempting self-pitying martyrdom as one last 'rational' justification (especially hilarious, given that he's done basically no work) to fully embracing his gleeful impulses would not work without her.
King has also made comments about how Kubrick's movie turned Wendy from a strong, resilient woman into a terrified, victimized woman nearly always on the verge of hysterics. He probably doesn't like that portrait of his wife any more than he likes Jack Nicholson as his self portrait, but I think it's a massive improvement over the book. I agree that Duvall is pitch perfect. That scene with the doctor in their boulder apartment is wonderful: the doctor's increasingly forced smile as Wendy makes excuses for her awful husband.
Couldn't agree more. That's an aspect to The Shining that doesn't get discussed enough but is there in Wendy's face. Abuse. Both Wendy and Danny are terrified of Jack, right from the start. It's not just Native Americans who are the "white man's burden," it's a wife and child. You sense the verbal abuse has been part of the marriage from the start. ("Wendy. Life of my life!") Duvall paints a portrait of an abused wife, rationalizing her husband's behavior until she can't anymore.
Obviously there's a lot of baggage now about how Duvall's performance was managed by Kubrick on set, but she's so exceptional for the reasons you mention. That walking-on-eggshells quality to Wendy, where she pushes optimism as a kind of defense mechanism against Jack's explosive mood changes, feels so real and human against all of the film's supernatural horror.
Dr. Sleep is my favourite King novel of this century. I enjoy how hard the movie tries to be a sequel to both King's book and Kubrick's movie. That aspect doesn't per se "work", but it's a valiant effort!
Was very surprised at how much I liked it UNTIL they got to the Overlook. Sounds like I should probably save this until tomorrow, but: they used the music really well in a way that didn’t just seem like unearned ‘memberberries. Had the courage of its convictions in showing how evil these people really were; (SPOILER) was almost stunned to see the movie cruelly murder that kid. Great understanding/portrayal of alcoholism.
Then they get to the Overlook, a place with a hundred ghosts and a thousand awful occurrences to relive, and they just replay scenes beat for beat? Man, they were doing so well.
Felt like they wanted to do the book ending to the Shining too much and it hurt the movie. I prefer the Dr Sleep book ending and how they handled the finale
That brief glimpse of the dog-suited man with his well-dressed companion is definitively evocative, is it not? I don’t know how much there is to unpack, there, though. It’s a simple recognition of the fact that when some people get their freak on, they really get their freak on.
I have a friend who loves the movie and refuses to read the book solely because he never wants that scene explained. (And the book does provide context for it, so... I get it.)
I understand where he's coming from. It's like not knowing who the Gimp from PULP FICTION is. The person inside the suit is immaterial. They are the Gimp.
I first watched this when I was in 5th/6th grade and plowing through King's novels, then watching the movies after. Checked this out from the library, and I definitely liked it, but not sure I "got" it.
Shortly after that I saw 2001, and Clockwork Orange, and realized they were all from the same director, and have pretty much considered Kubrick my favorite filmmaker since then.
The last time I saw it (and only time theatrically) was a SHINING FRONTWARDS/BACKWARDS screening where my friend does a live score. One of the biggest cheers I've ever heard at a movie was when the images finally synced up, but there's definitely a lot of mirroring and fore/past-shadowing that does seem to make it "work". Here's the score: https://coreyjbrewer.bandcamp.com/album/the-overlook-hotel
Oh yeah, I think I read pretty much everything he wrote through Needful Things and saw almost all the film adaptations, or mini-series in the cases of It and Tommyknockers. I could definitely tell that THE SHINING (and CARRIE and STAND BY ME) was on a whole other level of filmmaking than CAT'S EYE or PET SEMETARY or CUJO.
Also keep in mind, I was like 11 & 12 when I read all those books and watched those movies, there's definitely a lot that went over my head at that age!
I was reading King at a ridiculously young age too, and didn't get a lot of it for that exact reason. "Apt Pupil", for example, read to me when I was a kid as the story of this one old man blackmailing this other old man - it's much scarier now when I'm coming up 40 and Todd reads not even as a teenager but as a precocious tween like the kids from "Good Boys".
Great takes, Scott and Keith! Thank you! I've spent kind of a lot of time reading criticism of this movie (and the book), but you've made points here I've never heard before.
I believe there are basically three versions of THE SHINING: the novel King wrote, the film Kubrick made, and the novel King thinks he wrote (which was later made into a TV movie with the guy from Wings). In King's book, Jack is a monster from the jump---the first words of the book are him seething in barely-controlled rage because someone has the temerity to offer him a job---but he doesn't go "crazy" until the very end. Like, literally the last few pages. But that said, King's post-facto "Jack Torrance was a GOOD MAN WHO LOVED HIS FAMILY, Stanley Kubrick DEFAMED MY WONDERFUL CHARACTER" routine simply has no roots in the novel King actually wrote. I mean, things Kubrick didn't include are that King's Jack Torrance lost his teaching job for assaulting a student, and probably killed another kid in a drunken stupor. He's not Ward Cleaver.
The novel is much weirder and creepier than it gets credit for - there are Lynchian fever-dream moments about Wendy's parents and the kid Jack assaults - in the same way that Kubrick's movie is weird and creepy. That theme of abuse as fundamentally disorienting---as it rendering things backwards---is the constant between the book and the movie.
All of that said, I do empathize with King, because the difference between his Jack and Kubrick/Nicholson's Jack is not how "good" he is; it's whether or not he's a cartoon character. The complex, spiky, self-loathing, family-loathing Jack who King wrote was fundamentally autobiographical - it would not be a fun time at the movies to see yourself represented as Jack Nicholson's performance in this movie.
Jack's cartoonishness, for me, makes it a difficult movie for me to evaluate. I do think it's Kubrick having some fun - taking the piss at the expense of Jack Nicholson's established persona (not dissimilar to what he'd later do to Cruise and Kidman) and gleefully subverting what you expect of a Stanley Kubrick Film - but, I don't know. When the Steadicam is doing its thing, this is probably a top-ten movie for me. The music, the set design, the sense of time and space...all next-level perfect. "Here's Johnny!" and then Nicholson's face in the door? That's some Razzie shit.
It's some Razzie shit maybe in that the Razzie's often lampoon singular performances I GUESS but in general, thinking of Nicholson in this as a cartoon is something I'm pretty over
I mean, I think Nicholson is *very deliberately* a cartoon - I think Kubrick is saying in a million ways, big and small, that the entitlement and rage of violent men is laughable. I disagree with those who think Nicholson tried to give a "good" performance and missed - I think Kubrick wanted this performance (in places) to be straight-up ridiculous.
Good call on the Razzies, though as far as cartoons... as many times as we see cartoon characters (on shirts, on posters, on the TV), it's kind of inescapable. Down to Danny pulling a Bugs Bunny trick to get away from Jack in the maze.
I think the key difference between Jack in the book (who has indeed done monstrous things) and Jack in the movie is that in the book, Jack's final moments find him horrified at what he's done and pleading with Danny to save himself. Jack in the movie never regains any clarity, if he had it in the first place, and the book very clearly makes a distinction between Jack the shitty-but-redeemable human and Jack the vessel for the hotel (who ends up smashing Jack's face with a roque mallet to explicitly erase Jack's humanity in the end). Cherry on top is Jack's spirit in Doctor Sleep once again saving the day.
Also your comment of Jack as a cartoon makes me realize that Nicholson's performance here has some remarkable similarity to Robert Mitchum's in Night of the Hunter — another "cartoonish" villain who is nonetheless terrifying.
It's actually very similar to what Carpenter does with Christine - IIRC he adds that final shot of Artie reaching past his girlfriend to touch Christine as he dies. Idc, I think it's (genuinely) interesting how directors see Stephen King protagonists as worse than they're written, maybe digging into the quote-unquote toxic masculinity in ways King ultimately flinches from
Haven't seen Christine in decades so I don't recall that scene — but that's a great example, because the book has a moment where it's clear Arnie dies fighting the ghost of LeBay. (Who himself is also a much bigger presence in the book, as I recall.)
Yeah Carpenter junks the idea that Christine is haunted by LeBay, he becomes just another one of her victims.
But yeah, I think the fundamental difference in these stories is that King sees his protagonists as flawed people who can be redeemed but are destroyed by an external malignant force (the addiction metaphor as written by someone in the throes of addiction), whereas Carpenter and Kubrick see the supernatural element as tapping into and enabling the sickness that was already in their hearts. I haven't read much later Stephen King so I do wonder if he reflects on that at all
Rarely has one film inspired so many takes, and not only that have all of them landed. Great writing as always.
In _my_ last rewatch I was struck by how despite its reputation, this is the anti-modern horror movie. I'd go so far as to say that at a certain point horror films actively sought to distance themselves from The Shining. All the tropes found here are pretty much verboten in modern films: Indian burial grounds! Magical Negros sacrificing their lives for a white child! the scream queen wife! The boy with visions! If any film had any of these they'd be pilloried as old-fashioned and cliched. It makes for an interesting keystone film for a genre in that inspires filmmakers to *not* follow its lead.
The Shining doesn't quite rise above its tropes but I've come to see it in terms of Kubrick working with what he was raised on. That horror could be serious, bleak, and aimed solely toward adults was a concept that was only 12 years old in American film when The Shining was conceived and filmed. It's better to see this as raised in the lineage of James Whale's The Old Dark House. The best of those films always found room for a sweaty, heavy-handed performance or two in lieu of special effects.
There are dozens of YouTube dissections of the Shining but my favorite one recreates the sets in miniature to prove that nothing in the hotel ever exists in physical space. That means that even in that early interview we're in the thick of it....
One interpretation I've seen (but, don't remember where) was that this movie is lampooning 'horror' in general. Something about Kubrick's style makes at least SOMEone pretty much thing any area of his focus is being lampooned (like the Coens) - I dunno if I buy it for this movie but it's an interesting lens to view it thru.
Thinking of this movie through the lens of the Coens is really interesting, so thank you for that.
Dick's death in this film is very, very Coen to me in its darkness and almost meta-humour, and, of course, the theme of "here's a guy getting involved in some nasty shit, let's see how that plays out for him". One of the worst things about Stephen King is his love of the Magical Negro. Not only does Dick Hallorann literally have magical powers that he uses to help white people---the word King uses to describe them is even a racial slur (albeit a lesser-known one that's fallen out of favor). Not having been born in 1980, I don't know if this issue of King's was on anyone's radar yet (he'd already given us Dick Hallorann and Mother Abigail), so I don't know if my reading is accurate, but I've always read Dick's death as Kubrick saying, "You think the magical Black guy's going to save the day? With his...shine? Fuck you, Steve!"
I don't know that that's what Kubrick intended----I don't know that Dick (or Mother Abigail) seemed as egregious and Magical Negro-y in 1980 as they do today. But it's an interpretation I enjoy.
Also, a fun fact: everyone talks about how hard Kubrick was on Shelley Duvall, but I just read this weekend (in Robin Means Coleman's new book) that Kubrick shot Dick's death scene countless times, including a shot of Dick falling and hitting his head on the floor, and then didn't even use the head-hit shot. So basically he made Scatman Crothers take dozens of hard hits to the head for a shot he didn't even use.
The story I’ve heard that sticks with me was Scatmans next movie was with Clint Eastwood and when he realized he only had do to like 3 takes he started crying with relief
I seem to recall an interview from Kubrick where he said, "well, I assumed people going into the movie had read the book. So I wanted to throw people's center of expectations off and kill someone who doesn't die in the book. Because then they really don't know for certain what's going to happen for the rest of the book."
He also apparently really liked the book, but thought the final parts were (last third?) were schlock.
I don't know, I think it plays better in the movie than the way the trope plays out in other movies (maybe because I'm biased because I like the movie). But you've got someone who isn't, like, at any point, willingly sacrificing themselves. And he's kind of in a tough spot of, what else is he going to do (other than, IDK, possibly bring some form of self-defense, but that probably wouldn't have helped him given how he's surprised)? I imagine he'd have a hard time sleeping at night if he just didn't try to get involved, and then gets the news that the family was butchered and he was the only person who could have helped them (I think a lot of the build up of him trying to pursue other options, like contacting the lookout tower got cut out of the shortened UK release).
And the Native American burial ground was kind of a backdrop of a lot of other horrible things that were implied to have happened there. As opposed to Poltergeist, where it was presented as, "The Reason," why the haunting happened (IIRC. Honestly, it's been a long time since I've seen Poltergeist).
Like I said, I'm biased because I like the movie, but it does feel like it plays differently here than in a lot of other movies where they appear.
Exactly! He does save the day, even if he doesn't survive.
I also think it's narratively important to show that Jack is capable of killing someone. He's not just screaming or in a rage, he has passed into homicidal maniac territory. Wendy can't placate him out of this. They can't hide in some out of the way room and wait for this to pass.
I can definitely see elements of Kubrick thumbing his nose at the idea of serious horror here. It's important to look at the atmosphere when this movie was made. It was deep into a golden age of horror films, but someone of Kubrick's generation would have been raised to think of this stuff as the worst kind of dreck. It would take another two decades before these films got their full due. I don't know if he could take it completely seriously if he wanted to.
Yeah, that's a great point (context). IIRC it was also a time where he was having a hard time getting funding and that he perhaps initially kind of held his nose when he agreed to do it.
I still do love the reveal about the window in the manager's office, as that has the feeling of perhaps being intentional, but so many of these examples of "doors to nowhere" are truly just artifacts of standard filmmaking. You take the shots that you can get and the work for your needs.
I think it's somewhat in the middle. A lot of the set design was deliberately obtuse, especially coming from a perfectionist like Kubrick (part 2 has some receipts to this effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfJ8rK7eJeQ). So in a way the film never exists in objective reality. We never see the "truth". What's especially cool is that the eye picks all this up even without building 3D models. We may not know why, but the overall effect is we're untethered while watching.
On the other hand there'd be no way to know that in a couple decades people would be trying to recreate the sets in Duke Nukem, or that YouTubers would spend time mapping out all of these. Maybe a film made today would hide some clues and reward sleuthing but I don't think any film from 1980 was seriously thinking about it.
With regard to King's annoyance with this film, I think there's also something to Kubrick asserting himself as The Guy in a way that other directors had not and would not. Kubrick took what he wanted from the book and dispensed with the rest, which is a rare and exceptionally assertive approach to adaptation. He doesn't even really care about honoring "the spirit" of the text, which has to be humbling to an author of King's stature quite beyond his connection to Jack as a character.
Of course, Godard's bit about criticizing a movie by making another one really didn't work out for King, because the TV miniseries version of The Shining is bad even by network miniseries standards. Woof.
Kubrick (at least according to King) was famously uninterested in this being a ghost story, and King's version is all about some kind of ghost taking advantage of a human's weaknesses.
The bit I always remember is King talking about how Kubrick would call him every so often with comments or questions, and one time he asked, "Do you believe in God?" King said yes, and Kubrick said no. The movie version of The Shining very obviously does not believe in God. (I love the movie, but I don't have a problem with King hating it, and neve really understand why folks try to argue against King's opinion. His career was just taking off at that point, and while he hit heights the rest of us can only dream of, it would've had to have sucked to have one of the greatest living directors take your story and basically mock everything in it that you cared about. It's especially rough given how warmly De Palma adapted Carrie.)
Yeah, there's an awkward tension in that Kubrick's movie is much, much more famous than King's book (I bet if you asked 100 people about the scariest part of The Shining without specifying whether you meant the book or the movie, 100 would say something that's not in the book), but King is much, much more famous than Kubrick. So it's not just that people think Kubrick's version is the definitive version---which would sting on its own---it's that people think Kubrick's version is King's version.
And the other thing is how autobiographical The Shining is. I think De Palma's Carrie diverges from (and improves upon) King's book in huge and important thematic ways that might theoretically stick in an author's craw....but there's a difference between "I'm going to turn Margaret White, inspired by some woman you worked with in a laundromat, up to 11" and "I'm going to turn a version of YOU up to 11."
So, yeah, I disagree with everything King's ever said about Kubrick's film, but I get it.
"She’s constantly having to mollify him while finding the strength to protect herself and Danny and work her way through this awful situation. So much of the film’s horror is reflected in Duvall’s sad, exhausted, widened saucer eyes. "
on my most recent viewing, one of the key takeaways for me was how much a portrayal of domestic violence it is, even more so beyond a supernatural horror story. as you say, she's just trying to hold everything together and not set him off.
One area where I think Kubrick improves on King is in his understanding of what effect Jack's anger (I'm talking in their day-to-day lives, not after he Goes Crazy) might have on Wendy. I think there's *some* truth in how King writes Wendy (like many people who live with violent alcoholics, she compartmentalizes, rationalizes, walks on eggshells, hopes for the best, and doesn't know she's scared of him), but he also pulls his punches in places. I think when King wrote The Shining, he was reckoning with what his alcoholism was doing to him and with what he was scared it would do to his kids---I don't know that what it might do to his wife was quite on his radar yet, or, if it was, it didn't show in the book.
Yeah, my favorite interpretation of the final section where Wendy sees the ghosts of the hotel is that she's finally appreciating how much Jack had abused her and Danny. Whether she comes to this realization herself or if Danny is projecting is another question...
I think one of the reasons The Shining invites so many conspiracy theories, in addition to shiftiness you both describe so well, is that it doesn't fit into any easily graspable dramatic arc. Jack technically changes, but there's never any doubt that he'll succumb to the hotel's charms, and no tension whatsoever in regards to him turning on his wife and child; typically possession stories (and this is a kind of possession) spend time contrasting the possessee's personality before and after coming under the influence of the Horrors, but there's no particular difference between Jack pre and post Overlook. If anything, the hotel just helps him become what he already was, and while there are moments of uneasiness (like the Grady conversation) where he seems to wonder who's really in control of what's happening, they're fleeting, and in no way do they engender our sympathies. There isn't a single redeeming moment for Jack in the entire film--it isn't even presented as a possibility that he might have other desires beyond getting rid of his annoying familial obligations and being a Genius. (It's doubtful that he even gives much of a shit about being a "genius" beyond feeling entitled to the status as a red-blooded White Man--the "All work and no play" reveal is at once hilarious and terrifying, but it's not as though we've ever gotten even the slightest hint at what Jack was "supposed" to be working on.) If you want a deeper theme, there's probably _something_ there about white male Imperialism and Manifest Destiny and all that bullshit--but for me, ultimately, it comes down to that hateful empty grin, like a snicker in the middle of a funeral. Wendy and Danny may survive, but there's no real hope here, and certainly no mercy. Jack is just an empty space defined by resentments and petulant self-regard. He isn't corrupted because you can't corrupt a void. You can only be consumed by it.
Outstanding analysis and writing, Zack - thank you for this.
One thing that I think the book and the movie both get right - because I think it might have been an anxiety of King's - is the chasm between Jack's self-professed artistic ambitions and his actual commitment to, you know, writing anything. His ambitions shift throughout the book in ways that are fundamentally incoherent, and I think that's King's point---that this guy's ambitions aren't real, beyond being Somebody.
One of the weirder aspects of the book, which I used to hate when I took it more literally but which actually works as horror if you view it as an abstraction, is the Jack-wants-to-write-about-the-Overlook subplot. Jack wants to be an author of fiction---a creator. But early in the book, he finds a bunch of old newspaper clippings in the hotel about nefarious stuff that's happened there - so "stuff that's already been published and is commonly known" - and decides he wants to write a book about this. He's going to blow the lid off this place, by...repeating the stuff that's already been published! He's not planning to *create* anything anymore. Then his patron tells him he can't, and it's, "No one tells ME what to do!" The petulance is the point. Then, of course, later, Jack develops a weird fixation with taking on some nebulous "management" position within the hierarchy of the hotel, which, again, can't be interpreted literally - so, what, he wants to be the little girl ghosts' boss? But this guy just wants to be somebody.
The whole "you've always been the caretaker" piece feeds into that, because, of course, "caretaker" has a dual meaning here - Jack's ego wants to read it as "you've always been the Provider, the hero of the story, the star of the show, the one who Takes Care Of His Family like an even-more-malignant proto-Walter White", but being the "caretaker" of the hotel is also a fundamentally demeaning job. When the hotel is telling him "you've always been the caretaker", it's kind of saying, "Hey, you think you're Norman Mailer, but actually you'll always be the janitor", and he's too arrogant to even hear it that way.
Kinda of interesting to think of Jack is the mirror of Kubrick himself. Instead of trying to distance himself from his family to placate this genius, Kubrick surrounded himself with his family, and made his home into an Overlook of sorts where he could do most aspects of filmmaking besides the actual production. I've always thought EWS was in conversation w/ THE SHINING re: marriage, etc.
Still the scariest movie I've ever seen. So scary that I've only seen it once in its entirety. The Shining may be many things, but one thing for sure -- it is absolutely a horror film. I mean there are literally Katrina-flooding-levels of blood...!
As great as Nicholson is in his unhinged role, the MVP of the movie is Shelley Duvall. Brilliant casting.
I always thought the underlying reason why King hated the movie is because he's a writer and Kubrick is a filmmaker. As much as King is the king of written horror, words simply can't bring the shock that moving images can, and do. As someone who loves many of King's novels, I'd be the first to admit that not even his books can rival the visceral scares of sight and sound. It's not a fair fight, and it never will be...
This is the comment I came here to make. This was THE horror film of my childhood. It scared me at a level I hadn't previously experienced (except maybe for the trailer for the 1978 film Magic). I couldn't sleep without the lights on for weeks. And it was all because of those goddamned twins.
The performance of the kid playing Danny also was a part of The Shining's effect on me. Those nearly black eyes and his catatonic stare. Better than any "creepy kid" role you see in other horror movies, and he wasn't even creepy.
If you were traumatized by the MAGIC trailer you should watch the first (and sadly only) episode of PRIMAL SCREEN, a pilot ROOM 237 director Rodney Ascher shot for Shudder. It interviews a bunch of MAGIC trailer- and TV ad-survivors. (It's on Shudder here: https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/primal-screen/cc1ef0db07d6601c)
This is one that, when I finally got to see it on the big screen I think last year or maybe the year before actually dropped in my estimation. As nightmarish as many of the images Wendy bears witness to in the third act are, it really does just become her ping ponging from frightening thing to frightening thing without much context or effect on the story and it felt repetitive in a way it never had before.
I mean, we're talking going from a 4.5 to a 4, so everybody will be just fine, but after over twenty years of worshipping at this film's altar it was odd to start finding issues now after all this time.
Not exactly the phenomenon you're describing, but this piece made me want to go back and revisit some of the most famous scenes in the movie. Watching the scene with the twins, it's like:
The music and general sense of foreboding just before Danny sees them: 10/10
Their underwater voices: 10/10
Them being kept far away/out of focus and then gradually coming closer with every jump cut: 10/10
Something kind of odd about their appearance that I can't quite put my finger on: 10/10
Four (4) cuts to their dead bodies so you know they're ghosts: 2/10
We get that they're ghosts! We get it from how weird and ethereal they are! We get it from knowing what movie we're watching! And if we want it hammered home that Danny is also seeing their corpses simultaneously with seeing them, we'd get that from from one shot of their dead bodies. It's a big, "Okay, enough already, Stan" moment for me.
So we’re talking about humor and Halloran, and fail to make hay with the velvet paintings of naked ladies from the 70s? Has anyone ever seen that and not chuckled a little? Wondered if people came to visit Dick and either thought nothing of it because this might’ve been the norm in some late 70s social circles, or if they busted his chops, or laughed behind his back? Probably just me; I’ve given this way too much thought.
Dark humor from dad: any time I’m talking to my fellow Gen X friends who are familiar with this movie, and mention either teaching my son something or my son getting in trouble, I always note that I . . . corrected him. “Randall Jr tried to sneak his Nintendo Switch to school in his backpack, but I found it and I . . . corrected him.” (You have to roll the r’s almost imperceptibly to really make it sing.)
Re: Dick, this is something I'll have to keep an eye out for on my next watch: is that his place? Is that his art? I had assumed he was just crashing somewhere.
The art above Dick’s bed is a photograph not a painting. Specifically it’s a poster called “Supernatural Dream” and the model is Azizi Johari. She can be seen on a few album covers to and she also worked as an actress, most significantly in THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE. (It was a Wikipedia trail from that film that led me to this discovery.)
King's novel is from the implicit POV of Jack, as a 'there but for the grace of God go I' worst-case scenario of his own alcoholism (which he claims not even to have realized until several years after writing it). Kubrick's film is from the implicit POV of Wendy and Danny, as they slowly realized they're trapped with this lunatic patriarch in a place that increasingly seems to be an ever-shifting extension of him. As someone who grew up very much like Danny, I prefer the film.
I'd never made the Ripper/Mandrake connection before, but that's brilliant - the only way that situation in Strangelove could be more awkward is if they were married.
I've wondered before if the hotel/general geography and time goofiness of this coming from Danny's perspective. Kids (well, my kid, and also when I was a kid) don't really track this stuff in a legible way and it stands to reason that the stuff not lining up/making sense clues us in to Danny's perspective.
I remember one of the AV Club old-timers (Cookie Monster? Zodiac MFer?) making a similar observation a while back and it really holds, and for what it's worth the gloss you offer in the back half of the comment here is basically also how I've always "read" the film. Kubrick uses violence so much more effectively than King does, too, precisely because the style is so cerebral and elegant and clean. And I think there's a great parallax effect between the "emotional grotesquerie" of the acting (Jack's screaming, Shelly Duval's wimpering) and the icy precision of the film-making. That's kind of a theme in Kubrick, now that I think about it, depersonalizing emotion by showing how the protagonists are both produced by and swallowed up by their surroundings.
Yeah, I absolutely understand why King does not care for this, because it turns his tragic POV character into the monster, and I think King identifies a lot with Jack Torrance.
I still prefer the book, but rewatching this as an adult was like "oh, yeah, that's the horror of growing up with an alcoholic, no wonder it terrified me as a kid."
Totes agree with the thinking that this movie is a real shape-shifter. I've always loved it but as I've gotten older, I've had a number of different takes.
- at one point, I definitely agreed with the notion that "nah, Nicholson seems nuts right away" but as I've gotten older, I've shifted back to being really impressed by it as a performance and also as a directorial choice. We all run into folks who do a bad job of pretending to keep it together and Nicholson's performance nails that vibe in a way that really works.
- the last time I watched this (post having a kid) was definitely the time I realized just how amazing Duvall's performance is in this. Similarly in an earlier age I thought HER performance was too big and too nuts-from-the-start but it's completely in-line with Nicholson, it's hella empathetic and similarly, we've all known folks who have a 'they're doomed but they're trying to get thru it' vibe like she has here
- how is this movie both incredibly over the top AND incredibly subtle? That's the Kubrick Touch BABY
Duvall getting needlessly put through the wringer by Kubrick probably contributed to the false impression of a 'bad' performance, but I've never understood that - it's perfect from beginning to end. The 'turn' scene, where Jack goes from attempting self-pitying martyrdom as one last 'rational' justification (especially hilarious, given that he's done basically no work) to fully embracing his gleeful impulses would not work without her.
King has also made comments about how Kubrick's movie turned Wendy from a strong, resilient woman into a terrified, victimized woman nearly always on the verge of hysterics. He probably doesn't like that portrait of his wife any more than he likes Jack Nicholson as his self portrait, but I think it's a massive improvement over the book. I agree that Duvall is pitch perfect. That scene with the doctor in their boulder apartment is wonderful: the doctor's increasingly forced smile as Wendy makes excuses for her awful husband.
Couldn't agree more. That's an aspect to The Shining that doesn't get discussed enough but is there in Wendy's face. Abuse. Both Wendy and Danny are terrified of Jack, right from the start. It's not just Native Americans who are the "white man's burden," it's a wife and child. You sense the verbal abuse has been part of the marriage from the start. ("Wendy. Life of my life!") Duvall paints a portrait of an abused wife, rationalizing her husband's behavior until she can't anymore.
Obviously there's a lot of baggage now about how Duvall's performance was managed by Kubrick on set, but she's so exceptional for the reasons you mention. That walking-on-eggshells quality to Wendy, where she pushes optimism as a kind of defense mechanism against Jack's explosive mood changes, feels so real and human against all of the film's supernatural horror.
Folks we may as well discuss Dr. Sleep too. Pretty good movie! Except for The Shining Sequel parts, those are bad.
I think you might like tomorrow's content.
That's a pretty safe bet even if it DOESN'T actually have anything to do with my comment, but hell yeah
I was hoping for a revisit to Ready Player One's take on the movie. (OK, not really.)
Dr. Sleep is my favourite King novel of this century. I enjoy how hard the movie tries to be a sequel to both King's book and Kubrick's movie. That aspect doesn't per se "work", but it's a valiant effort!
Was very surprised at how much I liked it UNTIL they got to the Overlook. Sounds like I should probably save this until tomorrow, but: they used the music really well in a way that didn’t just seem like unearned ‘memberberries. Had the courage of its convictions in showing how evil these people really were; (SPOILER) was almost stunned to see the movie cruelly murder that kid. Great understanding/portrayal of alcoholism.
Then they get to the Overlook, a place with a hundred ghosts and a thousand awful occurrences to relive, and they just replay scenes beat for beat? Man, they were doing so well.
Felt like they wanted to do the book ending to the Shining too much and it hurt the movie. I prefer the Dr Sleep book ending and how they handled the finale
That brief glimpse of the dog-suited man with his well-dressed companion is definitively evocative, is it not? I don’t know how much there is to unpack, there, though. It’s a simple recognition of the fact that when some people get their freak on, they really get their freak on.
One of the few movie related t-shirts I have is a DIY screened shirt of that moment!
I have a friend who loves the movie and refuses to read the book solely because he never wants that scene explained. (And the book does provide context for it, so... I get it.)
I understand where he's coming from. It's like not knowing who the Gimp from PULP FICTION is. The person inside the suit is immaterial. They are the Gimp.
There is enough explanation in the movie. Danny is seen sleeping under blankets that have that dog design on them.
In 2023, the film is associating furries with decadence and evil. The glimpse amounts to kink shaming. Problematic.
I’m kidding, but someone isn’t.
I first watched this when I was in 5th/6th grade and plowing through King's novels, then watching the movies after. Checked this out from the library, and I definitely liked it, but not sure I "got" it.
Shortly after that I saw 2001, and Clockwork Orange, and realized they were all from the same director, and have pretty much considered Kubrick my favorite filmmaker since then.
The last time I saw it (and only time theatrically) was a SHINING FRONTWARDS/BACKWARDS screening where my friend does a live score. One of the biggest cheers I've ever heard at a movie was when the images finally synced up, but there's definitely a lot of mirroring and fore/past-shadowing that does seem to make it "work". Here's the score: https://coreyjbrewer.bandcamp.com/album/the-overlook-hotel
"Checked this out from the library, and I definitely liked it, but not sure I "got" it."
Did you continue doing this up through the books he wrote later in the '80s? So far, I definitely liked your comment, but I'm not sure you got "It".
Oh yeah, I think I read pretty much everything he wrote through Needful Things and saw almost all the film adaptations, or mini-series in the cases of It and Tommyknockers. I could definitely tell that THE SHINING (and CARRIE and STAND BY ME) was on a whole other level of filmmaking than CAT'S EYE or PET SEMETARY or CUJO.
Also keep in mind, I was like 11 & 12 when I read all those books and watched those movies, there's definitely a lot that went over my head at that age!
I was reading King at a ridiculously young age too, and didn't get a lot of it for that exact reason. "Apt Pupil", for example, read to me when I was a kid as the story of this one old man blackmailing this other old man - it's much scarier now when I'm coming up 40 and Todd reads not even as a teenager but as a precocious tween like the kids from "Good Boys".
Underrated joke here!
Great takes, Scott and Keith! Thank you! I've spent kind of a lot of time reading criticism of this movie (and the book), but you've made points here I've never heard before.
I believe there are basically three versions of THE SHINING: the novel King wrote, the film Kubrick made, and the novel King thinks he wrote (which was later made into a TV movie with the guy from Wings). In King's book, Jack is a monster from the jump---the first words of the book are him seething in barely-controlled rage because someone has the temerity to offer him a job---but he doesn't go "crazy" until the very end. Like, literally the last few pages. But that said, King's post-facto "Jack Torrance was a GOOD MAN WHO LOVED HIS FAMILY, Stanley Kubrick DEFAMED MY WONDERFUL CHARACTER" routine simply has no roots in the novel King actually wrote. I mean, things Kubrick didn't include are that King's Jack Torrance lost his teaching job for assaulting a student, and probably killed another kid in a drunken stupor. He's not Ward Cleaver.
The novel is much weirder and creepier than it gets credit for - there are Lynchian fever-dream moments about Wendy's parents and the kid Jack assaults - in the same way that Kubrick's movie is weird and creepy. That theme of abuse as fundamentally disorienting---as it rendering things backwards---is the constant between the book and the movie.
All of that said, I do empathize with King, because the difference between his Jack and Kubrick/Nicholson's Jack is not how "good" he is; it's whether or not he's a cartoon character. The complex, spiky, self-loathing, family-loathing Jack who King wrote was fundamentally autobiographical - it would not be a fun time at the movies to see yourself represented as Jack Nicholson's performance in this movie.
Jack's cartoonishness, for me, makes it a difficult movie for me to evaluate. I do think it's Kubrick having some fun - taking the piss at the expense of Jack Nicholson's established persona (not dissimilar to what he'd later do to Cruise and Kidman) and gleefully subverting what you expect of a Stanley Kubrick Film - but, I don't know. When the Steadicam is doing its thing, this is probably a top-ten movie for me. The music, the set design, the sense of time and space...all next-level perfect. "Here's Johnny!" and then Nicholson's face in the door? That's some Razzie shit.
Anyway, thanks for a great article.
It's some Razzie shit maybe in that the Razzie's often lampoon singular performances I GUESS but in general, thinking of Nicholson in this as a cartoon is something I'm pretty over
I mean, I think Nicholson is *very deliberately* a cartoon - I think Kubrick is saying in a million ways, big and small, that the entitlement and rage of violent men is laughable. I disagree with those who think Nicholson tried to give a "good" performance and missed - I think Kubrick wanted this performance (in places) to be straight-up ridiculous.
Definitely agree that it's a good performance and FWIW it's a very your-mileage-may-vary performance - it has certainly varied for me over the years.
Good call on the Razzies, though as far as cartoons... as many times as we see cartoon characters (on shirts, on posters, on the TV), it's kind of inescapable. Down to Danny pulling a Bugs Bunny trick to get away from Jack in the maze.
I think the key difference between Jack in the book (who has indeed done monstrous things) and Jack in the movie is that in the book, Jack's final moments find him horrified at what he's done and pleading with Danny to save himself. Jack in the movie never regains any clarity, if he had it in the first place, and the book very clearly makes a distinction between Jack the shitty-but-redeemable human and Jack the vessel for the hotel (who ends up smashing Jack's face with a roque mallet to explicitly erase Jack's humanity in the end). Cherry on top is Jack's spirit in Doctor Sleep once again saving the day.
Also your comment of Jack as a cartoon makes me realize that Nicholson's performance here has some remarkable similarity to Robert Mitchum's in Night of the Hunter — another "cartoonish" villain who is nonetheless terrifying.
It's actually very similar to what Carpenter does with Christine - IIRC he adds that final shot of Artie reaching past his girlfriend to touch Christine as he dies. Idc, I think it's (genuinely) interesting how directors see Stephen King protagonists as worse than they're written, maybe digging into the quote-unquote toxic masculinity in ways King ultimately flinches from
Haven't seen Christine in decades so I don't recall that scene — but that's a great example, because the book has a moment where it's clear Arnie dies fighting the ghost of LeBay. (Who himself is also a much bigger presence in the book, as I recall.)
Yeah Carpenter junks the idea that Christine is haunted by LeBay, he becomes just another one of her victims.
But yeah, I think the fundamental difference in these stories is that King sees his protagonists as flawed people who can be redeemed but are destroyed by an external malignant force (the addiction metaphor as written by someone in the throes of addiction), whereas Carpenter and Kubrick see the supernatural element as tapping into and enabling the sickness that was already in their hearts. I haven't read much later Stephen King so I do wonder if he reflects on that at all
Thanks for voicing my own opinion better than I could have, while adding insights I hadn't thought of (about just how bad Jack is in the book).
Rarely has one film inspired so many takes, and not only that have all of them landed. Great writing as always.
In _my_ last rewatch I was struck by how despite its reputation, this is the anti-modern horror movie. I'd go so far as to say that at a certain point horror films actively sought to distance themselves from The Shining. All the tropes found here are pretty much verboten in modern films: Indian burial grounds! Magical Negros sacrificing their lives for a white child! the scream queen wife! The boy with visions! If any film had any of these they'd be pilloried as old-fashioned and cliched. It makes for an interesting keystone film for a genre in that inspires filmmakers to *not* follow its lead.
The Shining doesn't quite rise above its tropes but I've come to see it in terms of Kubrick working with what he was raised on. That horror could be serious, bleak, and aimed solely toward adults was a concept that was only 12 years old in American film when The Shining was conceived and filmed. It's better to see this as raised in the lineage of James Whale's The Old Dark House. The best of those films always found room for a sweaty, heavy-handed performance or two in lieu of special effects.
There are dozens of YouTube dissections of the Shining but my favorite one recreates the sets in miniature to prove that nothing in the hotel ever exists in physical space. That means that even in that early interview we're in the thick of it....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sUIxXCCFWw
One interpretation I've seen (but, don't remember where) was that this movie is lampooning 'horror' in general. Something about Kubrick's style makes at least SOMEone pretty much thing any area of his focus is being lampooned (like the Coens) - I dunno if I buy it for this movie but it's an interesting lens to view it thru.
Thinking of this movie through the lens of the Coens is really interesting, so thank you for that.
Dick's death in this film is very, very Coen to me in its darkness and almost meta-humour, and, of course, the theme of "here's a guy getting involved in some nasty shit, let's see how that plays out for him". One of the worst things about Stephen King is his love of the Magical Negro. Not only does Dick Hallorann literally have magical powers that he uses to help white people---the word King uses to describe them is even a racial slur (albeit a lesser-known one that's fallen out of favor). Not having been born in 1980, I don't know if this issue of King's was on anyone's radar yet (he'd already given us Dick Hallorann and Mother Abigail), so I don't know if my reading is accurate, but I've always read Dick's death as Kubrick saying, "You think the magical Black guy's going to save the day? With his...shine? Fuck you, Steve!"
> "You think the magical Black guy's going to save the day? With his...shine? Fuck you, Steve!"
With this one sentence you completely flipped my interpretation of Hallorann's death. I thank you.
I don't know that that's what Kubrick intended----I don't know that Dick (or Mother Abigail) seemed as egregious and Magical Negro-y in 1980 as they do today. But it's an interpretation I enjoy.
Also, a fun fact: everyone talks about how hard Kubrick was on Shelley Duvall, but I just read this weekend (in Robin Means Coleman's new book) that Kubrick shot Dick's death scene countless times, including a shot of Dick falling and hitting his head on the floor, and then didn't even use the head-hit shot. So basically he made Scatman Crothers take dozens of hard hits to the head for a shot he didn't even use.
Gotta say that last sentence is not making me think more highly of Kubrick's treatment of people.
I have previously read that Kubrick hated Carothers and was hated by him in return, but never heard this particular detail. Quite a psychodrama.
Yeah, I love Kubrick's work, but should our paths ever cross in some future life, I would probably pass on appearing in any movie he's directing.
The story I’ve heard that sticks with me was Scatmans next movie was with Clint Eastwood and when he realized he only had do to like 3 takes he started crying with relief
I seem to recall an interview from Kubrick where he said, "well, I assumed people going into the movie had read the book. So I wanted to throw people's center of expectations off and kill someone who doesn't die in the book. Because then they really don't know for certain what's going to happen for the rest of the book."
He also apparently really liked the book, but thought the final parts were (last third?) were schlock.
I don't know, I think it plays better in the movie than the way the trope plays out in other movies (maybe because I'm biased because I like the movie). But you've got someone who isn't, like, at any point, willingly sacrificing themselves. And he's kind of in a tough spot of, what else is he going to do (other than, IDK, possibly bring some form of self-defense, but that probably wouldn't have helped him given how he's surprised)? I imagine he'd have a hard time sleeping at night if he just didn't try to get involved, and then gets the news that the family was butchered and he was the only person who could have helped them (I think a lot of the build up of him trying to pursue other options, like contacting the lookout tower got cut out of the shortened UK release).
And the Native American burial ground was kind of a backdrop of a lot of other horrible things that were implied to have happened there. As opposed to Poltergeist, where it was presented as, "The Reason," why the haunting happened (IIRC. Honestly, it's been a long time since I've seen Poltergeist).
Like I said, I'm biased because I like the movie, but it does feel like it plays differently here than in a lot of other movies where they appear.
I always thought, a little bit, that Dick did in fact save them by providing the only functional snowmobile after Jack had wrecked the hotel's one.
Exactly! He does save the day, even if he doesn't survive.
I also think it's narratively important to show that Jack is capable of killing someone. He's not just screaming or in a rage, he has passed into homicidal maniac territory. Wendy can't placate him out of this. They can't hide in some out of the way room and wait for this to pass.
I just want to know what was going on with that painting above Hallorann's bed in Florida.
I can definitely see elements of Kubrick thumbing his nose at the idea of serious horror here. It's important to look at the atmosphere when this movie was made. It was deep into a golden age of horror films, but someone of Kubrick's generation would have been raised to think of this stuff as the worst kind of dreck. It would take another two decades before these films got their full due. I don't know if he could take it completely seriously if he wanted to.
Yeah, that's a great point (context). IIRC it was also a time where he was having a hard time getting funding and that he perhaps initially kind of held his nose when he agreed to do it.
I still do love the reveal about the window in the manager's office, as that has the feeling of perhaps being intentional, but so many of these examples of "doors to nowhere" are truly just artifacts of standard filmmaking. You take the shots that you can get and the work for your needs.
I think it's somewhat in the middle. A lot of the set design was deliberately obtuse, especially coming from a perfectionist like Kubrick (part 2 has some receipts to this effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfJ8rK7eJeQ). So in a way the film never exists in objective reality. We never see the "truth". What's especially cool is that the eye picks all this up even without building 3D models. We may not know why, but the overall effect is we're untethered while watching.
On the other hand there'd be no way to know that in a couple decades people would be trying to recreate the sets in Duke Nukem, or that YouTubers would spend time mapping out all of these. Maybe a film made today would hide some clues and reward sleuthing but I don't think any film from 1980 was seriously thinking about it.
With regard to King's annoyance with this film, I think there's also something to Kubrick asserting himself as The Guy in a way that other directors had not and would not. Kubrick took what he wanted from the book and dispensed with the rest, which is a rare and exceptionally assertive approach to adaptation. He doesn't even really care about honoring "the spirit" of the text, which has to be humbling to an author of King's stature quite beyond his connection to Jack as a character.
Of course, Godard's bit about criticizing a movie by making another one really didn't work out for King, because the TV miniseries version of The Shining is bad even by network miniseries standards. Woof.
Kubrick (at least according to King) was famously uninterested in this being a ghost story, and King's version is all about some kind of ghost taking advantage of a human's weaknesses.
I mean, you've got the dude from Wings instead of late 70s Jack Fucking Nicholson, like come on Stephen!
The bit I always remember is King talking about how Kubrick would call him every so often with comments or questions, and one time he asked, "Do you believe in God?" King said yes, and Kubrick said no. The movie version of The Shining very obviously does not believe in God. (I love the movie, but I don't have a problem with King hating it, and neve really understand why folks try to argue against King's opinion. His career was just taking off at that point, and while he hit heights the rest of us can only dream of, it would've had to have sucked to have one of the greatest living directors take your story and basically mock everything in it that you cared about. It's especially rough given how warmly De Palma adapted Carrie.)
Yeah, there's an awkward tension in that Kubrick's movie is much, much more famous than King's book (I bet if you asked 100 people about the scariest part of The Shining without specifying whether you meant the book or the movie, 100 would say something that's not in the book), but King is much, much more famous than Kubrick. So it's not just that people think Kubrick's version is the definitive version---which would sting on its own---it's that people think Kubrick's version is King's version.
And the other thing is how autobiographical The Shining is. I think De Palma's Carrie diverges from (and improves upon) King's book in huge and important thematic ways that might theoretically stick in an author's craw....but there's a difference between "I'm going to turn Margaret White, inspired by some woman you worked with in a laundromat, up to 11" and "I'm going to turn a version of YOU up to 11."
So, yeah, I disagree with everything King's ever said about Kubrick's film, but I get it.
"She’s constantly having to mollify him while finding the strength to protect herself and Danny and work her way through this awful situation. So much of the film’s horror is reflected in Duvall’s sad, exhausted, widened saucer eyes. "
on my most recent viewing, one of the key takeaways for me was how much a portrayal of domestic violence it is, even more so beyond a supernatural horror story. as you say, she's just trying to hold everything together and not set him off.
One area where I think Kubrick improves on King is in his understanding of what effect Jack's anger (I'm talking in their day-to-day lives, not after he Goes Crazy) might have on Wendy. I think there's *some* truth in how King writes Wendy (like many people who live with violent alcoholics, she compartmentalizes, rationalizes, walks on eggshells, hopes for the best, and doesn't know she's scared of him), but he also pulls his punches in places. I think when King wrote The Shining, he was reckoning with what his alcoholism was doing to him and with what he was scared it would do to his kids---I don't know that what it might do to his wife was quite on his radar yet, or, if it was, it didn't show in the book.
Yeah, my favorite interpretation of the final section where Wendy sees the ghosts of the hotel is that she's finally appreciating how much Jack had abused her and Danny. Whether she comes to this realization herself or if Danny is projecting is another question...
The family dynamic is really chilling, very obviously a threadbare union. I appreciate the theory that Jack is further abusing Danny, laid out comprehensively here: https://www.collativelearning.com/the%20shining%20-%20chap%2016.html
It’s an interesting analysis that explains the eerie bear-costume tableau too
I think one of the reasons The Shining invites so many conspiracy theories, in addition to shiftiness you both describe so well, is that it doesn't fit into any easily graspable dramatic arc. Jack technically changes, but there's never any doubt that he'll succumb to the hotel's charms, and no tension whatsoever in regards to him turning on his wife and child; typically possession stories (and this is a kind of possession) spend time contrasting the possessee's personality before and after coming under the influence of the Horrors, but there's no particular difference between Jack pre and post Overlook. If anything, the hotel just helps him become what he already was, and while there are moments of uneasiness (like the Grady conversation) where he seems to wonder who's really in control of what's happening, they're fleeting, and in no way do they engender our sympathies. There isn't a single redeeming moment for Jack in the entire film--it isn't even presented as a possibility that he might have other desires beyond getting rid of his annoying familial obligations and being a Genius. (It's doubtful that he even gives much of a shit about being a "genius" beyond feeling entitled to the status as a red-blooded White Man--the "All work and no play" reveal is at once hilarious and terrifying, but it's not as though we've ever gotten even the slightest hint at what Jack was "supposed" to be working on.) If you want a deeper theme, there's probably _something_ there about white male Imperialism and Manifest Destiny and all that bullshit--but for me, ultimately, it comes down to that hateful empty grin, like a snicker in the middle of a funeral. Wendy and Danny may survive, but there's no real hope here, and certainly no mercy. Jack is just an empty space defined by resentments and petulant self-regard. He isn't corrupted because you can't corrupt a void. You can only be consumed by it.
Outstanding analysis and writing, Zack - thank you for this.
One thing that I think the book and the movie both get right - because I think it might have been an anxiety of King's - is the chasm between Jack's self-professed artistic ambitions and his actual commitment to, you know, writing anything. His ambitions shift throughout the book in ways that are fundamentally incoherent, and I think that's King's point---that this guy's ambitions aren't real, beyond being Somebody.
One of the weirder aspects of the book, which I used to hate when I took it more literally but which actually works as horror if you view it as an abstraction, is the Jack-wants-to-write-about-the-Overlook subplot. Jack wants to be an author of fiction---a creator. But early in the book, he finds a bunch of old newspaper clippings in the hotel about nefarious stuff that's happened there - so "stuff that's already been published and is commonly known" - and decides he wants to write a book about this. He's going to blow the lid off this place, by...repeating the stuff that's already been published! He's not planning to *create* anything anymore. Then his patron tells him he can't, and it's, "No one tells ME what to do!" The petulance is the point. Then, of course, later, Jack develops a weird fixation with taking on some nebulous "management" position within the hierarchy of the hotel, which, again, can't be interpreted literally - so, what, he wants to be the little girl ghosts' boss? But this guy just wants to be somebody.
The whole "you've always been the caretaker" piece feeds into that, because, of course, "caretaker" has a dual meaning here - Jack's ego wants to read it as "you've always been the Provider, the hero of the story, the star of the show, the one who Takes Care Of His Family like an even-more-malignant proto-Walter White", but being the "caretaker" of the hotel is also a fundamentally demeaning job. When the hotel is telling him "you've always been the caretaker", it's kind of saying, "Hey, you think you're Norman Mailer, but actually you'll always be the janitor", and he's too arrogant to even hear it that way.
Kinda of interesting to think of Jack is the mirror of Kubrick himself. Instead of trying to distance himself from his family to placate this genius, Kubrick surrounded himself with his family, and made his home into an Overlook of sorts where he could do most aspects of filmmaking besides the actual production. I've always thought EWS was in conversation w/ THE SHINING re: marriage, etc.
Still the scariest movie I've ever seen. So scary that I've only seen it once in its entirety. The Shining may be many things, but one thing for sure -- it is absolutely a horror film. I mean there are literally Katrina-flooding-levels of blood...!
As great as Nicholson is in his unhinged role, the MVP of the movie is Shelley Duvall. Brilliant casting.
I always thought the underlying reason why King hated the movie is because he's a writer and Kubrick is a filmmaker. As much as King is the king of written horror, words simply can't bring the shock that moving images can, and do. As someone who loves many of King's novels, I'd be the first to admit that not even his books can rival the visceral scares of sight and sound. It's not a fair fight, and it never will be...
This is the comment I came here to make. This was THE horror film of my childhood. It scared me at a level I hadn't previously experienced (except maybe for the trailer for the 1978 film Magic). I couldn't sleep without the lights on for weeks. And it was all because of those goddamned twins.
The performance of the kid playing Danny also was a part of The Shining's effect on me. Those nearly black eyes and his catatonic stare. Better than any "creepy kid" role you see in other horror movies, and he wasn't even creepy.
If you were traumatized by the MAGIC trailer you should watch the first (and sadly only) episode of PRIMAL SCREEN, a pilot ROOM 237 director Rodney Ascher shot for Shudder. It interviews a bunch of MAGIC trailer- and TV ad-survivors. (It's on Shudder here: https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/primal-screen/cc1ef0db07d6601c)
Jesus how have I never saw that trailer before? Nightmare fuel indeed.
Is the movie itself any good? I'm a reasonably big horror nerd and it's never been on my radar.
This is one that, when I finally got to see it on the big screen I think last year or maybe the year before actually dropped in my estimation. As nightmarish as many of the images Wendy bears witness to in the third act are, it really does just become her ping ponging from frightening thing to frightening thing without much context or effect on the story and it felt repetitive in a way it never had before.
I mean, we're talking going from a 4.5 to a 4, so everybody will be just fine, but after over twenty years of worshipping at this film's altar it was odd to start finding issues now after all this time.
Also, big Dr. Sleep fan.
Not exactly the phenomenon you're describing, but this piece made me want to go back and revisit some of the most famous scenes in the movie. Watching the scene with the twins, it's like:
The music and general sense of foreboding just before Danny sees them: 10/10
Their underwater voices: 10/10
Them being kept far away/out of focus and then gradually coming closer with every jump cut: 10/10
Something kind of odd about their appearance that I can't quite put my finger on: 10/10
Four (4) cuts to their dead bodies so you know they're ghosts: 2/10
We get that they're ghosts! We get it from how weird and ethereal they are! We get it from knowing what movie we're watching! And if we want it hammered home that Danny is also seeing their corpses simultaneously with seeing them, we'd get that from from one shot of their dead bodies. It's a big, "Okay, enough already, Stan" moment for me.
The Shining is such a masterpiece I have rewatched Ready Player One for Spielberg's Shining Tribute
I am mildly curious what Keith's, apparently horror-immune, daughter thought of the movie. Beyond, "not scary."
So we’re talking about humor and Halloran, and fail to make hay with the velvet paintings of naked ladies from the 70s? Has anyone ever seen that and not chuckled a little? Wondered if people came to visit Dick and either thought nothing of it because this might’ve been the norm in some late 70s social circles, or if they busted his chops, or laughed behind his back? Probably just me; I’ve given this way too much thought.
Dark humor from dad: any time I’m talking to my fellow Gen X friends who are familiar with this movie, and mention either teaching my son something or my son getting in trouble, I always note that I . . . corrected him. “Randall Jr tried to sneak his Nintendo Switch to school in his backpack, but I found it and I . . . corrected him.” (You have to roll the r’s almost imperceptibly to really make it sing.)
Re: Dick, this is something I'll have to keep an eye out for on my next watch: is that his place? Is that his art? I had assumed he was just crashing somewhere.
The art above Dick’s bed is a photograph not a painting. Specifically it’s a poster called “Supernatural Dream” and the model is Azizi Johari. She can be seen on a few album covers to and she also worked as an actress, most significantly in THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE. (It was a Wikipedia trail from that film that led me to this discovery.)
Taking a moment to point out Groundskeeper Willie's Scottish lass https://frinkiac.com/meme/S06E06/451183.jpg?b64lines=
Connection between Chungking Express and The Shining - a lot of canned food in both. The former was primarily pineapple though.