The Shining Rarely does film and literature combine to produce two great works of art. Usually when people see a film based on a book, it is always "the book is better" being said. Many of Stephen King's novels and stories have been adapted into films and television series, most of which are easily forgotten. There are a few which stand out, and one such adaptation is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. A modern ghost story that blends the paranormal with human psychology, The Shining is a landmark film in the horror genre as well in the library of masterpieces filmed by Kubrick. While many have said the book is far better than the film, there are some in the film community who disagree, myself included Whether or not it is good as the book, it still remains an important film worth analyzing. The film opens with a helicopter shot of mountains and windy roads while we come closer to Jack Nicholson's character, Jack Torrance, driving to the Overlook Hotel. Kubrick says on the opening shot that "It was very important to establish an ominous mood during Jack's first drive to the hotel- the vast isolation and eerie splendor of high mountains, and the narrow, winding roads which would become impassable after heavy snow." (Ciment 190) Jack accepts a job as winter janitor at the hotel, which is closed for the season due to winter weather and roads having to be closed down. The manager warns Jack that in 1970 there was a problem with the family caretaking the hotel, which was built on Indian burial ground. Grady, the winter janitor then, sliced and diced his family up with an ax right before doing himself in. Jack doesn't see a problem with this, and phones his wife Wendy, played by Shelly Duvall, back at home to tell her the good news. Jack is a writer, and figures the isolation and wide open spaces of the Overlook Hotel will spur new ideas in his head. Jack and Wendy have a son, Danny, who has a friend named Tony, who lives in his mouth and speaks to him in his head. In a key opening scene, we see Danny talking to Tony in the bathroom mirror and Tony tries to forewarn Danny of the horrors of the Overlook Hotel. Danny passes out and we learn through Wendy speaking to the doctor that Jack used to have a bad alcoholic temper that led him to dislocate Danny's shoulder after a domestic argument. Kubrick said about Danny's character that "Danny has had a frightening and disturbing childhood. Brutalized by his father and haunted by his paranormal visions, he has to find some psychological mechanism within himself to manage these powerful and dangerous forces. To do this, he creates his imaginary friend, Tony, through whom Danny can rationalize his visions and survive." (Ciment 192) Jack, Wendy and Danny head off to the Overlook Motel to live for the winter and as they arrive the Head Cook Hollorann, played by the always reliable Scatman Crothers, discovers Danny and him both have voices in their heads. Hollorann warns Danny of the evils that lurk in Room 237, and tells him that the events from the past at the hotel leave traces that can be dangerous to those with "the gift." The film then moves a month into the future as we find Danny riding his low-rider tricycle down the long hallways of the motel where he encounters two girls who don't just want to play. Jack is already suffering from writer's block as Wendy does upkeep around the hotel. Frustrated by lack of ideas and his nagging wife, Jack starts to frequent the hotel's lounge and has conversations with the apparition of the bartender named Lloyd who serves Jack "the hair of the dog that bit me." Tension starts to build as Danny suddenly has a mysterious wound on his neck that he said he got by going into room 237. Wendy thinks Jack did it, which only frustrates Jack more as he goes to investigate the room. He encounters another apparition of a hardbody in the shower and makes a pass at her only to realize she's a walking corpse with a serious decay problem. To make matters worse, Jack ends up in the motel lounge where suddenly we find ourselves back in the twenties at a ballroom dance. Jack enters the bathroom to find the apparition of Grady who advices Jack to discipline his family more, preferably with the same ax treatment he used on his family. Taking the advice of Grady, Jack becomes very violent with the wife and kid. Wendy discovers that Jack has only been typing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over again on his typewriter just in time for Jack to enter the room. Wendy lets Jack have it with a Louisville slugger as Danny contacts Hollarann with "the gift" to come and save him and his mother. "He doesn't have very much further to go for his anger and frustration to become completely uncontrollable. He is bitter abut his failure as a writer. He is married to a woman for whom he has only contempt. He hates his son. In the hotel, at the mercy of its powerful evil, he is ready to fulfill his dark role." (Ciment 194) The pace of the film starts to pick up more as Wendy passes out from the excitement at hand as Danny writes "Redrum" on the bathroom door and Jack gets the ax ready. In one of cinema's trademark moments, Jack beats the bathroom door down with the ax to announce his "Here's Johnny!!!" tag-line. Wendy pushes little Danny out the window and stabs Jack in the hand with a knife. Just as Jack is about to let Wendy have it with the axe, Hollarann shows up to save the day until Jack gives him a welcome back pat on the back with the sharp end of his ax. Push leads to shove as Jack chases Danny around the Hedge Labyrinth in the hotel's court while a snowstorm attacks. Danny outsmarts Jack in a game of hide and seek, and Danny and Wendy escape in the snowmobile. Jack winds up frozen in the Labyrinth as the film ends with a picture of Jack at a ballroom dance at the Overlook Hotel, dated 1921. Filmed in 1979, all the interior shots were filmed on a soundstages in London. "The exterior of the hotel was filmed at the Timberline Lodge, near Mount Hood, in Oregon. It had a room 217 but no room 237, so the hotel management asked me to change the room number because they were afraid their guests might not want to stay in room 217 after seeing the film." (Ciment 186) Working with Diane Johnson, Kubrick altered King's novel and changed the ending to better suit Kubrick's vision. All the interior shots of the hotel were built on soundstages. Kubrick had his art director travel around to hotels in the United States and had him take photos of interiors to base the sets on. "I wanted the hotel to look authentic rather than like the traditionally spooky movie hotel." (Ciment 186) Casting the film, Kubrick has Nicholson in mind from the very start to play the demented Jack Torrance. "Jack is particularly suited for roles which require intelligence. He is an intelligent and literate man, and these are qualities almost impossible to act. In The Shining, you believe he's a writer, failed or otherwise." (Ciment 188) Kubrick utilized the Stedicam into many of his shots to cut down on jumpiness and shakes and allow for long tracking shots. When Danny rides his tri-cycle down the hallways and when the shots from the maze occur, Kubrick incorporate the Stedicam giving the viewer a deep perspective into the film as the tracking shots take place. Kubrick hired Garrett Brown as his Steadicam operator, mostly because he was the man who invented it. "Most of the hotel set was built as a composite, so that you could go up a flight of stairs, turn down a corridor, travel its length and find your way to still another part of the hotel. It mirrored the kind of camera movements which took place in the maze. In order to fully exploit this layout it was necessary to have moving camera shots without cuts, and of course the Stedicam made that much easier to do." (Ciment 190) There is a certain amount of duality throughout the film. Many of Kubrick's film rely on the use of mirrors, and The Shining is no exception. There are numerous occasions when Jack is talking to a mirror to give us what he is thinking inside. This is how he talks to Lloyd at the lounge bar, to Grady in the bathroom and how we see that he is making sweet love to a corpse instead of a hardbody in the bathroom. Danny talks to Tony at the beginning of the movie in the bathroom mirror and Wendy sees that Danny has written "murder" on the bathroom door with the use of a mirror. The fact that Jack and Danny both have two sides to them comes out during the film as well. Jack appears at first to be a stable father and husband, but things go downhill once the family moves in the motel. Danny becomes a different person towards the end as well as Tony takes over his body. Since the film was adapted from a horror novel, the film has an expectation to meet. Many critics claim the film is not scary at all and doesn't do the novel justice. Stanley Kaufmann says in his review of the film that the film "is a grab bag of spook stuff with no rhyme or reason of its own. The film fails because it has flunked the elemental test for a horror film: The Shining doesn't scare. The only bang in it is that it's another step in Kubrick's descent." (Kauffman, 26) Pauline Kael wrote a long review basically tearing the movie to shreds. "Visually, the movie often feels like a cheat, because most of the horror images are not integrated into the traveling shots; the horrors involved in the hotel's bloody past usually appear in inserts that flash on like the pictures in a slide show." (Kael 3) Kael tries to emphasize that the theme of the film is man's quest for immortality and immortality of evil. Kubrick said on the immortality of the film that "I think the unconscious appeal of a ghost story for instance, lies in its promise of immortality. If you can be frightened by a ghost story, then you must accept the possibility that supernatural beings exist. If they do, then there is more than just oblivion waiting beyond the grave." (Ciment 181) Kael also complains that Kubrick uses too much daylight in what is supposed to be a scary film and that Nicholson's character doesn't come across as convincing. "Nicholson is all too snugly, and his performance begins to seem cramped, slightly robotized. There's no surprise in anything he does, no feeling of invention. This is true of everyone in the film- the actors appear to be merely Kubrick's tools, and you get the feeling that they have been denied any free will." (Kael 3) The movie fits well right into the times of the late 1970s. Stephen King was at his prime and Kubrick brought the film about at the right time. "By taking a book by an author who is at the center of the craze for the supernatural and turning it into a refusal of and subtle comment on that loopy cultural phenomenon. Kubrick has made a movie that will have to be reckoned with on a higher level." (Schickel, 69) There is really no topical reason the film would be as popular as it was in the 1970s. Kubrick utilized two very important actors of the 1970s that crowds liked to see in movies. Nicholson played a variety of roles throughout the 1970s and this character I feel identifies most with his character of Randall MacMurphy out of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." I find the film to be very powerful and one of Kubrick's finer films despite the negative criticism. Jack Nicholson is in one of his better roles here and I enjoy his character the most in the film. The setup is wonderful and the ending is miraculous. Works Cited Ciment, Michel. Kubrick. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. Kael, Pauline. Taking It All In. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984. Kauffmann, Stanley. New Republic. Issue: June 14, 1980. Pages: 26-27. Schickel, Richard. Time. Issue: June 2, 1980. Page: 69. |
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