If Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is not the best haunted house movie ever made, it is certainly among the most intricately constructed. Renowned mostly for Jack Nicholson’s cartoonish outbursts and for its often traumatizing imagery, the film is yet another of Kubrick’s analyses of the effects of a system on the mind and humanity of the individual. In The Shining, the system is an architectural one, and the individual a weak and pliant figure, emasculated by his failures as a husband, father, and writer.
In adapting Stephen King’s equally horrifying novel, Kubrick wisely excluded some of the more preposterous elements (such as the murderous topiary) and made the story entirely his own, incorporating it into his obsessive, systematic body of work. Kubrick regulars György Ligeti and Wendy Carlos provide a semi-intellectual reading of a typical horror movie score, and once again the intricacies of the production design correlate with the complex structures of the script, with the maze-like circuitry of the Overlook Hotel’s corridors that mirror the protagonist’s descent into madness.
The Shining is also characteristic of Kubrick’s visual style. John Alcott’s cinematography emphasizes Renaissance perspective with consistent zooming and symmetrical compositions, and with the pioneering use of the steadicam. These formal aspects suggest that the camera itself has a perspective, that it is an authorial eye that watches over—or “Overlook”’s—the action.
This pervasive deliberation and sense of control in the film’s narration and acting is the aspect of Kubrick’s style that many viewers find hardest to tolerate. The maddeningly rigorous adherence to shot-reverse shot editing of dialogue, the dispassionate performances, and the unconcealed exposition in the early part of the film (the maze, the Indian burial ground) make the film appear to be one large deus ex machina. As Jack Torrance says to his wife, “It was as if I knew what was around every corner.” (He then imitates spooky horror-movie music.)
In fact, these characteristic Kubrick elements would seem to better suit horror than another genre. Horror film audiences are accustomed to thinking of film characters as idiots who brashly ignore countless warnings of impending doom. And while the characters of this film are not arrogant teens entering an old haunted house, there is an air of determinism that structures the film and makes its truly macabre tableaux—creepy twins, elderly full frontal, oceans of blood, Nicholson’s eyebrows—that much more shocking.
Leo Goldsmith / © 2004 notcoming.com
Sthepen Kings’ writings have been fodder for the movie-makers since the success of “Carrie” and “Christine”. Reading “The Shining” gave me the impression that he had Stanley Kubrick in mind while writing only because it seems to explore the frailities of the human condition so compleatly. Kubrick relished this no doubt.
I don’t think that is true. Stephen King famously criticized Kubrick’s version of the story, and later went on to assist in a TV version Ñ which was typically poor.
Stephen King is a fine writer, but he’s had very little luck with screen adaptations. Aside from a handful Ñ Carrie, Christine, The Shining, IT Ñ they’ve varied between being merely sub-par or outright bloody awful.
Of those successful adaptations, The Shining is far and away the best. I find it interesting that Kubrick was able to impress his own meaning on the story without changing it’s essentials.
I never get sick of watching it. Regardless of what Kubrick was using the film to express, it’s just flat out creepy.
The Shining is about the genocide of the American Indians. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.
After coming back to this review, (and the movie, too) I see how I was wrong about King’s motives for the book. Kubrick can never be replaced. He truly had the gift of dedicated vision.
I would like to know how the slaughter of the real fore-fathers of this country affected Stephen King’s direction in his writings. This is not demonstrated in the film. Should it have been?
To Mark Hughes: Yeah, it is…and a plethora of other things. That is just one of several subplots.
Apparently Kubrick screened ‘Eraserhead’ for the cast to portray the kind of ambiance he wanted to create. ‘The Shining’ is in many ways a ‘head’ film. It truly shines despite Olive Oil’s horrendous acting…Good God is she bad!
Have you read Professor Cocks’ “The wolf at the door”? A wonderful book which says the film is about genocide, be it of the holocaust, the african slave trade, the red indians etc. A great read and lots of symbolism he writes about.
Directed by
Stanley Kubrick
Source
Cinemax
features: October: 31 Days of Horror
Posted on
29 October 2004
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marky
30 September 2007
3:41 PM