Stanley Kubrick - The Shining

Not too long ago someone came over and suggested we watch a movie. While browsing the seemingly endless pile of foreign films that most normal people have never heard of this friend said "I like scary movies". I mentioned that The Shining was by far the best, and when this friend admitted to never having seen it, the case was settled. The Shining was for years an annual stop in the Halloween season. The film is cold, it is winter on film, and more than just some spook show the picture is genuinely and literally "chilly". It is a blatant genre picture and one that doesn't try in the least to re-write the book on horror. Instead it plays into the genre conventions and cliches, but does it so beautifully. Kubrick is beating them at their own game, on their terms. A big budget studio picture, still made with his complete privacy and control, it takes everything that had culminated in independent horror since Night of the Living Dead and made a polished and perfected masterpiece of the genre.
Some things however had to be done. The story is a somewhat lengthy one, at least in terms of horror films. People who put in a "scary movie" expect to be shocked and jumping within moments otherwise they'll lose interest. The same can be said for Westerns, and therefore the staple of the first scene shoot out became standard. Here however Kubrick doesn't go for the throat at the beginning. Instead he attempts to captivate us with some of the most awe inspiring scenic photography yet captured on film. The camera literally flies through the air in these scenes scaling mountains, penetrating fog, and endlessly winding roads. John Alcott is the man responsible for the photography, and I will go down to say that never in film has a photographer gotten so much out of a steadicam. Kubrick was known for his perfectly balanced compositions and exquisite tracking shots (after all he was a photographer himself), but Alctott takes the bar just one step higher here, using the still new Arriflex camera.
Setting up suspense is usually crucial in horror films. Frequently this done with music, and Kubrick returned to Wendy Carlos whose synthesized Beethoven made the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange so memorable. He borrows from plenty of other composers, but it is this early music that is most distinct, and helps to propel the film. Kubrick takes care early on to balance his frame in threes. During the interview, Jack is seated to the left and two distinctions are made. First of all, he is a little "Left of center" and would make great sense as to why he's not on the manager's right. The second distinction comes from makeup. A perfectionist like Kubrick would have noticed this and fixed it immediately, but there is a piece of hair sticking up in the back of Nicholson's head throughout the scene, and is visible through each perspective of the camera. His slightly askew hair is subliminally planting in our minds the fact that he is not completely put together. These two devices are used without even drawing attention to them, but it prepares us for what's to come.
Another comment that might seem ironic is made on the trip up to the hotel with the family. While riding Wendy (Shelly Duvall) asks if this is where the Donner party got snowed in. Jack then tells the story of the Donner's and what they had to do to survive (ate each other for those unaware), classic foreshadowing. Danny then says "I know all about cannibals, I saw it on the TV". Jack's tone is condescending and something to note "Its alright, he saw it on the television", taking care to annunciate each syllable. TV pops up a few times in the film, and every time it is Wendy or Danny watching it. She watches the news, he watches cartoons, they watch a western, and Dick also watches the news, which I'll get to later. The point however is that Jack never once is seen watching a TV or even occupying the same room as a television. There are a few reasons for this. First of all he's a literary person. He adopts the attitude that television is responsible for the death of literacy, at least in his tone to Danny learning from TV rather than a book about cannibalism. Second, Jack is not from this time. The film goes to elaborate on why he's "always been the caretaker". The last shot of the film shows him at the 4th of July Party in 1921, and in case someone needs a history book, this is several decades before the TV was even invented. So of course he's not going to be near a TV, and the details lead us to believe he almost never has. Also extremely important to mention is the aspect ratio of the film. Like Full Metal Jacket after it, The Shining was intentionally shot in an aspect ratio already formatted to fit TV. So it seems ironic then that once Jack has freely given into madness he arrives with the line "Here's Johnny", a line which did not appear in King's book.
Now the connection between Dick and Wendy both watching the news might seem at first a practical choice. There is a storm raging, and naturally they need to know. In addition we the audience have to understand the severity of the weather as it plays a huge roll in the plot. Kubrick however sets up the nature of the beast earlier during the interview when Jack is told why the hotel is closed at all during the skiing season. So the connection here is that Wendy and Dick share a bond. Obviously Danny and Dick are connected through their shining, but the connection with Wendy has to be implied rather than made explicit. This is when Kubrick returns to the source material. No mention is made of it in the film, but in the novel when Dick is explaining to Danny the gift, he mentions that all mothers have it, at least a little of it. So this is in my opinion the reason why Wendy and Dick are both watching the news, because after all, Kubrick needed not be so obvious with the weather, especially from Dick's perspective.
Now to keep us slightly entertained and awake Kubrick gives us a few flashes of what's to come. A couple of premonitions that unfortunately have been so absorbed into popular culture that they may be forever lost on new audiences. This sets up the pattern of numbers once more. Now instead of three, the emphasis is on two. The blood pours through the elevator where two elevators are framed, and flashes of Grady's two daughters filter in throughout. However the 3 is always present. The Torrance family has been in Boulder for 3 months, there are three members of the family, Grady kills 3 people in his family, Danny rides a tricycle, and for added effect Jack quotes The Three Little Pigs as he's about to chop down the bathroom door. That scenes' triple motif is repeated as Jack uses three cliches "Wendy I'm home", "Here's Johnny", and the aforementioned 3 Little Pigs. Jack enters the Gold Room three times, once during the tour, once when he effectively sells his soul for a drink, and the final when the room is populated by the ghosts of the hotel.
Just as the number three is associated with Jack, two seems to have Wendy's name all over it. She repels Jack's attacks twice, once with a bat and the other with a knife. During the first encounter on the stairs she strikes Jack twice. She attempts to radio twice, and is the object of Jack's scorning twice at the hands of his writing. She belittles him saying that "It's just getting into the habit of writing again", and then later when Jack openly tells her to stay out of the room, in which he again says things in triplicate "Whether you hear me typing, or not typing, or whatever the fuck you hear me doing that means I'm working". So of course Wendy is left with just Danny. In the end you can say two's company, three's a crowd. Jack is dead to them, and when Dick attempted to usurp his place, he was dealt with in the "harshest way possible". Danny also has his own little double motifs, having the two part visions, and of course two personalities his and Tony's. Danny also is seen in the maze twice, once with Wendy and the second time running from Jack, where he winds up outwitting him.
It is after the first attack that the film marks a very clear change. The ghosts of the hotel have appeared already, Danny's seen them, and encountered them. Jack has the run in with the lady from the bathtub in 237, he meets Lloyd, and Delbert Grady (again three for Jack). However he is the only one who bears a direct encounter with these spirits. Danny claims to be attacked by the woman in 237, and we assume he has, but we haven't seen it. We see her through Jack's eyes, and this sets up the contrast. Kubrick is remaining ambiguous at this point in time to judge whether or not Jack is going crazy, or these spirits are real. The deciding factor is after Wendy locks him in the storage pantry. He gets out because Grady unbolts the door, which he heard and saw Wendy lock. There is no way out from inside the room, so it is at this point that Kubrick is declaring that these spirits are indeed real. I find it confusing and even dumb that the reference to the hotel being built on ancient Indian burial grounds is in the story. This was an element from King's novel, and serves as a retardedly obvious reference to future disaster later, although not as obvious as Poltergeist. The confusion lies in the particular spirits, none of which bearing any resemblance to Native Americans, literally all the ghosts are white. It is ironic that in the British cut of the film all the previous references to Grady were removed, yet the line about the burial ground stayed in, a point far less crucial to the story.
It is also after this transformation that Wendy starts to have her own revelations. It is odd that Kubrick did not keep the books ending which involved the hotel destroying itself. As the spooks begin to run wild and one mutilated unexplained victim says "Great party isn't it?" you feel that everything is culminating. The lobby is populated with spiderwebs and skeletons, Wendy even sees the elevator of blood, and hears the music coming from the Gold Room. This is all building up to a final takeover by the hotel, but in Kubrick's version, the Overlook is simply content with evicting its tenants rather than returning to the soil. Wisely however Kubrick avoids the epilogue involving Danny and Wendy removed from the Overlook. We see them get away, and the film has a much more potent ending with that photograph of the 4th of July Ball. I had a slight resentment for the book when it didn't end with the destruction of the hotel, but continued on for a few more seemingly unnecessary pages. Kubrick's film all told probably has about 4 or 5 different versions circulated at one point, the current and supposedly definitive being the 142 minute US cut. The original cut was apparently 146, and included a scene at the end of Danny and Wendy being congratulated by the hotel manager on having survived the ordeal. As it stands, The Shining is the supreme accomplishment that the horror genre has offered.