The Shining (1980)

Dir: STANLEY KUBRICK
Country: UK/USA

I will open this review by saying that I don’t like Stephen King’s novel The Shining (1977). It is held in very high regard, and I can understand to a certain extent, why that is. But to compare it to Salem’s Lot (1975) the novel that preceded it and The Stand (1978) the novel that followed it is like comparing horse manure to ice cream. I think even at this point it was possible to see through the pop culture murk to what lay beneath - in this case a pretty standard haunted house narrative. The key difference here is a lack of restraint in plot construction and an over-reliance on generic tropes. Although King’s novels have always suffered from this, I feel The Shining suffers more than most - it is King’s most accessible novel, and as a result his least adventurous. ESP, ghosts, and haunted buildings are the clichéd pegs King chooses to hang his principal themes of parental/patriarchal failure, family, and alcoholism on. The family unit in King’s novel is challenged, but it essentially survives the threat. It emerges at the end redeemed, but not without a note of caution. In other words this is essentially a tale of familial conservatism. By contrast Stanley Kubrick (who along with co screenwriter Diane Johnson improve upon the novel immeasurably) constructs a vision that is far more bitter and cynical. The family doesn’t survive the events of The Overlook Hotel. Instead a broken family wearily trudge through the snow to an uncertain future. Kubrick and Johnson offer a more radical take on the material and use the iconography and conventions of the horror genre to subvert and challenge one of our most scared ideological institutions.

Kubrick begins this sense of dislocation and disruption by introducing the recurrent motif of the maze. The opening aerial tracking shots, breathtaking in their malign beauty, follows Jack Torrance’s (Jack Nicholson) insignificant car through serpentine mountain roads - it is a mere insect on a sublime landscape - and an early clue that modern industrial technology will be enveloped by the primal might of the topography on view. The plodding atonal synthesised music of Wendy Carlos gives the otherwise beautiful vista a sinister primal quality as if to say mankind has no place there. Individual human beings become maze like constructions - inscrutable, complex, and unpredictable, with a myriad of internal hiding places. The interior of The Overlook continues this visual/thematic strategy; with its winding corridors, spiral patterned carpets, and geometrically ornate wallpaper. The hotel is an uncanny space long before the supernatural tension is introduced. But the films standout uncanny moment is one in which Kubrick shows both his awareness of the horror genre and his dedication to cinematic technology. We follow Danny (courtesy of a steadicam) around a corner only to be confronted by the butchered remains of the previous caretakers children. That they are twins only adds to the scene’s creepiness. This scene is exemplary of Kubrick’s fastidiousness - with camera placement, movement, composition, editing, and soundtrack all combining to create one of the most successful sequences in modern horror history.

The film is essentially a war between a father and a son for power and patriarchy within the Torrance family unit. The victor will be the one who is best able to understand and harness a psychic ability that the chef Halloran (Scatman Crothers) refers to as ‘The Shining’. Both Jack and Danny have this power, for the former it becomes a destructive force that rekindles his alcoholism and preys on his vanity and insecurities. For the latter it is something to be feared, but eventually becomes a means of empowerment that helps to enable him to outsmart and survive his father. Jack begins a regression toward childhood as Danny embarks on a rites of passage into adulthood. The much criticised histrionics and over-acting of Nicholson are perfectly in keeping with a character undergoing such a reversion. Unfortunately Nicholson succeeds in this so well that the remainder of the cast seem rather limp and lifeless - and one could argue that the result is an imbalance in the performances - quite simply the film is duller when Nicholson isn’t in it.

 

 

This is something Kubrick anticipated with his casting choices, and he allows Nicholson a space to explore this territory. However he doesn’t allow the rest of the cast the same opportunity, and in places the film is unconvincing due to this. As a horror film one could argue The Shining is a little too perfect. All the generic boxes are ticked with such proficiency that at times it feels like an academic exercise. Although it does have a radical subtext the film is more innovative in its cinematic construction - name a Kubrick film that isn’t? The use of the steadicam reaches a pinnacle here - giving the impression of an unseen and omnipotent force following and controlling the characters and preying on their antagonisms and vulnerabilities. Much of this is due to the brilliant setting - I’ve lost count of how many great horror films there are that rely on an isolated and inescapable location. The film ends on a typically downbeat and inscrutable note that gives a disquieting suggestion that the events somehow exist in a Last Year in Marienbad (1961 - an a major influence on this) time bubble. It leaves the audience with the same sense of uncanny dislocation they experienced in the films opening.

© Shaun Anderson 2010