The Shining

You can draw so many theories from The Shining that you can write a book about them. You can certainly make a documentary even if some the theories are so crackpot that even Alex Jones would be sceptical about them. The tiniest detail from the carpet patterns to the Apollo 11 jumper Danny wears is dissected to an inch of its life and provided as evidence for their own personal and overreaching theory.

Watching The Shining at the BFI was the first time I watched the US version. All the two or three other times I watched the film it has always been the shorter, European version because Kubrick felt European audiences needed less context and background to the story (meaning we’re smarter). The European version clocks in at a concise two hours whilst the US version is 20 minutes longer and adds emphasis to Jack’s alcoholism and abuse of Danny (plus creepy skeletons and cobwebs).

Watching the American version after the European version makes the film feel a little padded. The context Stanley Kubrick gives us during Wendy’s conversation with the doctor feels unnecessary because we already know Jack’s abusive past, but it does go some way in explaining the distant relationship Jack and Wendy have and Danny’s Love/Fear relationship of his father. For first time viewers, this way work, repeat viewings makes it feel padded.

Yet repeat viewings do not weaken the film. Stephan King said he didn’t like the casting of Jack Nicholson because Jack Nicholson looks like the type of guy who would lose his marbles rather than looking like an ordinary Joe who’d never be the type to chop up his family. The film works because, from the offset, he looks like the type of guy who would butcher his family. It gives the film that feeling of unease as we wait for the moment his mind finally snaps.

The maze of corridors make the Overlook hotel a formidable beast determined to let the solitude and isolation get to you despite it being perfectly easy to get lost. Despite the sheer size of the hotel the feeling of being trapped inside the boundaries of the hotel becomes too much. The weather doesn’t help, restricting the caretakers to the confines of the hotel - it’s quite easy to see why someone would go a little crazy. The isolation is how Kubrick grabs your attention from the first second, that ominous music and lone car travelling on an empty road in the middle of nowhere is a perfect start to a movie about the mental strain of loneliness and isolation.

Stephen King has never been a fan of Kubrick’s version of the story. He doesn’t see it as a faithful adaptation of his work, but as a separate work of art it regarded as a classic of modern horror - another example of Kubrick excelling in a different genre. It is an incredible film, the use of long takes allows the tension to linger uncomfortably, working perfectly with the loud obtrusive music which assaults the audiences’ senses. People say good editing and good music occurs when you don’t notice it, but with Kubrick it’s the opposite - you can’t not notice the music pummelling the ear drums.

Kubrick was a notoriously demanding director, and one thing that has sat uncomfortably with a lot of people was his treatment of Shelley Duvall. Reports from set and interviews on the documentary (and the fact that he made Duvall do the bat scene 127 times) make it clear that, at some point, Shelley Duvall stopped acting. It was wrong of Kubrick to put Duvall through such a terrible ordeal, but the end result was a performance of such powerful rawness that it helps makes the final act of the film such a tense and terrifying finale.

What the film is about one can’t be entirely sure. Perhaps each ghost is part of the hotel’s notorious past (the book divulges information on these characters whilst Kubrick’s leaves it ambiguous). Perhaps is a tale on abuse or perhaps it actually is Kubrick apologising for faking the moon landing. Whatever the theory, however crackpot, The Shining is always going to be a classic that will be endlessly parodied and referenced for a long, long time

4.5/5