I was watching it again with a friend when he pointed out something I hadn’t noticed.
99% of the movie works as a story about a hotel with an evil presence that drives people insane. Jack has weaknesses and inner conflicts, and the hotel tells and shows him things that push him over the edge (as was presumably the case with the earlier caretaker). Danny is sensitive to the hotel’s vibes and is able to call for help. Wendy’s just along for the ride. The story boils down to a contest of wills between Jack and the Hotel, set against Danny’s race to save his family.
Except for one thing: the ghost unlocks the freezer door! Once the forces in the hotel show that they’re capable of actually doing things, the need to drive Jack to murder disappears: Grady can pick up his own damn axe and chop everyone to bits himself. I kind of deflates the rest of the story. Maybe the ghosts just had a bet going: “I’m bored with just killing them. Hey, wanna get the dad to do it?”
Also, it doesn’t help that the transition from “ordinary loving father” to “homicidal lunatic” is kinda hard to spot when you start off by casting Jack “batshit” Nicholson.
Stephen King AFAIK hated the Kubrik version. And the version he wrote and had control over was dreadful. As was every adaptation of his books where he’s been in charge. I know a couple of you liked the miniseries, but as a piece of film it’s awful. And at least for me as entertainment it is DULL. To me it just proves that the guy does not understand that film is a different medium that requires interpretation, not word for word faithful reproduction of what’s on the page.
The Kubrik version worked because Kubrik understood the themes and how to translate those into film. That involves jettisoning 98% of the plot and dialogue and just keeping those key evocative moments that crystallize the ideas. Or adding ones that did a better job in a visual medium than ones that worked well in narrative.
Part of the difference is that King is a verbose writer, but not a poetic one. It works well in the context of his novels, and he’s a great storyteller, but it’s not so great for film unless you like endless dialogue, flashbacks and voiceovers. And oh my god is there some meandering dialogue in the King version. But film is inherently poetic and requires a poetic imagination. And Kubrik is (was) probably one of the most poetic filmmakers out there which makes the contrast between the two versions even starker.
I loved it when I saw it as a kid, but I saw it again recently, and boy : it didn’t age well.
The pacing is just absurdly slow, (I especially hated the long, long shot of the car zooming down the road), and there is no feeling of urgency in it.
Jack Nicholson was overacting the whole way and I really can’t understand the man ever got a part again after this one.
I did like the scenes with just the kid in the hallway, but for the rest I was severely unimpressed.
I like the tv-series better, although the acting is quite bad.
Surely the music during that scene is fantastic? And as for the film being too slow-moving; looking after an empty hotel all winter would by its nature be less than action-packed, no?
The family is actually fighting against the Hotel. Grady isn’t an actual ghost with chain-rattling and axe-swinging capabilities, but just an illusion that the Hotel uses. Because the freezer door is an actual part of the Hotel, of course it can unlock itself. However, it would be unable to pick up a weapon.
In the book, Wendy avoids the elevator because she understands that the Hotel could trap them between floors.
Could someone please spoil the plot of the book for me? Specifically the ending? I have no desire to read the whole book, but I’ve always been curious about how the book ends.
From watching the movie, specifically the final picture that shows Jack at a party in 1923, I get it that there is some kind of reincarnation or something going on, and I gather that some kind of nasty stuff was going on at the hotel way back when, but I don’t really understand what happened.
I could, but it would break my heart. It’s one of my favorite books and I wish you would read it and enjoy it as much as I did. That said, I’m sure someone will be along shortly to spoil it for you.
One things for certain: Rebecca DeMornay was by far a much better Wendy than Shelley Winters. It’s been said before up top, but it’s worth repeating: who wouldn’t want to kill Shelley Winters in that role? Kinda suprised Jack didn’t off her much earlier, before he ever got to the hotel.
King can’t find a proper ending so after a long chace and some brutality he once again blows up things. This time it is a neglected boiler that does it.
I did like reading the book and was impressed how close the miniseries was to it but it was so dry and terribly acted that it didn’t hold up.
I just recently rewatched Kubrick’s version and fell in love with it again. Just a great atmosphere and no springloaded cats!! I finally noticed the one thing that I had always thought Kubrick’s version lacked. In the book Jack had found old journals with teh history of the hotel which gave it background. I had always assumed that too was jettisoned, when lo and behold in once scene while Jack is Writing [spoiler]ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
“All work and no pay makes Jack a dull boy,” all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and noplay makes Jack a dull boy.
“All work and no play,” Makes Jack a Dull boy.
All work
“and no Play”
Makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a Dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work. And no play. Makes Jack a dull boy all, work and no play. makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull.
Boy.
(whew had to get that out of my system)
speaking of which, in the days before word processing and what not, I have to wonder who had the ardiuos task of writing that manuscript Wendy leafs through[/spoiler]
He is looking through a scrap book of old newspaperclippings. A visual clue that he was writing the history of the Overlook without having dialogue state it.
There’s no reincarnation suggested in the book. The book is vague as to events at the party, and of course, the movie’s ending is open to interpretation. My interpretation is that the group photo with Jack in it signifies that the hotel has added him to its roster of spirits, and the next caretaker may very well find himself in conversation with the ghost of Jack Torrance.
What follows is a synopsis of the ending of the book.
One reason the hotel needs a caretaker in the offseason is to keep the boiler in the basement at the correct pressure. Towards the end of the novel, Jack has forgotten the boiler in his increasingly strenuous attempts to murder Wendy and Danny. Suddenly, when it seems sure that the end has come for the non-possessed Torrances, the boiler, which has been building up pressure far beyond its normal capabilities, starts making loud noises. Jack runs to the basement and Wendy Danny and Halloran run outside. Jack has his hands on the pressure valve wheel, but too late. The boiler explodes, the hotel burns down, Danny and Wendy and Halloran move to Florida. The end.
Every time I think of The Shining, I wonder exactly how conversations between the author and his wife went, usually while picturing Jack Nicholson as Stephen King:
“So what’s the latest book about, darling?”
“I’m glad you ASKED. Right now I’m up to the part about a WRITER who’s having a REALLY HARD TIME because he gets INTERRUPTED BY HIS WIFE asking him INANE QUESTIONS. I’m building up to the part, see, where her CURIOSITY finally leads her to take a PEEK and find out that he’s just been TYPING the SAME sentence OVER and OVER again, for DAYS and WEEKS, getting FRUSTRATED and going CRAZY, and so now he has to take a few SWINGS at her with his trusty AXE.”
Didn’t Stanley Kubrick basically turn The Shining into a statement against the way the United States had treated Native Americans? Here’s a small blurb from the official Kubrick FAQ:
Here is a more in-depth essay on the subject - it’s quite fascinating really, and not something I’d ever have picked up on my own.
When I was a baby, I slept through the night from birth. Always did love my sleep. Lucky parents of mine. As a kid, I would occasionally be scared by something outside my window but I would work it out on my own and never go into my parents’ room. It just wasn’t an option in our house. Lucky parents.
Until one day when I was 12 and we went to see The Shining. Holy crap that scared me, and when I went to bed I just kept imagining that guy with his ax in the corner of my room. The upshot being that for the first and only time, I had to wake my parents up and have my mom come sleep with me!! So it has become iconic in our house, and although it doesn’t scare me as much now, it certainly has vestiges of the overwhelming fear I had then.
God I’m glad I started this. I had never researched it much at all, and Kubrick’s ideas and desire to tie in the Native American atrocities come as a surprise- but make sense.
The Hotel is it’s own entity and so yes, in that framework of logic, it can pull the pin. Barely. ( I don’t respect that train of logic but I appreciate that it does work ).
At the end of the book, something large and black and swarmy lifts up from the exploded burning wreck of The Overlook…and hovers…and disperses. I always took it to be such a highly concentrated load of evil that it had a physical presence. What is scary about that is that diluted, that evil is everywhere.
In everyone. To me, that is what made Jack such a horrific character. It’s also what made reading it at 30 a very different experience from reading it at…uh… 13 ?
I just watched it two nights ago while sitting at my desk, doing mindless hand task work. Yes, those huge scrapbooks are on the desk but I suspect for very clear reasons, Kubrick chose NOT to have Jack even deliver a line or two about them, what is in them, etc. I do not know why, because throwing in a bit of that would have tied the history of evil in very nicely. It could have been a little montage of headlines from the clippings, whatever.
It was a clear choice though. I’d love to know if those lines existed, or if he just made a quick visual reference to the scrapbook by placing it there next to the typewriter.
Not for nothing, but I’m a devout pacifist and I might be tempted to take an axe to Shelly WINTERS.
I wanted to kill that snot-nosed, bucktoothed brat in the miniseries version much more than I wanted to kill Shelley Duvall and the original Danny. He totally ruined the whole thing for me. Otherwise it was okay, though it did drag out like most King miniseries do.
I absolutely freaking love Kubrick’s version. It’s one of my favorite films. The first time I watched it, it kept me up all night, thinking about those little girls in the hallway. shudders
My only real complaint about the miniseries version is the stupid little thing they say to each other: “Kissin’ kissin’/That’s what I’ve been missin’.” Putrid.
God I’m glad I started this. I had never researched it much at all, and Kubrick’s ideas and desire to tie in the Native American atrocities come as a surprise- but make sense.