Ok…we’ve all seen this so I am not ruining anything for any one.
Now I’ve seen this movie hundreds of time and (in the words of the ever wise BettleJuice) it keeps getting funnier, every single time I see it.
But one thing that has always left me somewhat confused is this:
That’s the storry with Jack Torrance? Was he the original care taker in the sence that he was phisically there, did his ‘deed’ and forgot? Or is it the implied ‘time travel’? Or reincarnation?
It’s not a big deal I guess, as the photo at the end of the movie puts that errie twist to it, but what is the general understanding of what was going on?
Thanks!
All work and no play makes Doubleclick a dull Doper.
All work and no play makes Doubleclick a dull
Doper. All work and no play makes
Doubleclick a dull Doper. All
work and no play makes
Doubleclick a
dull Doper.
When I read The Shining, I was left with the impression that Jack Torrance was overcome by the dark spirit that permeated the hotel and caused the original caretaker to commit the murders in 1921, or whenever. The caretakers weren’t evil, the hotel was. It’s been a while since I read the book, but I think there is a scene near the end where Torrance recognizes what is happening to him, regrets it, but is ultimately unable to stop it. The hotel is destroyed at the end of the story in order to expunge the evil from the world.
The movie version hit upon that somewhat, but at the end of it I was left a little confused as to the point Kubrick was trying to make, other than that Torrance simply went insane and killed some people. The Native-American connection is interesting, though.
The sense I got from the novel was that Jack was not a “reincarnation” of any of the hotel’s previous occupants – he was simply a man vulnerable to the hotel’s psychic pressure.
The hotel, as I understood it, sort of had a life of its own, which was fed by the forces of all the people who had met untimely ends there, or who participated in weird or perverted acts there. The woman in room 342 (room 142 in the book) who killed herself in the bathtob, the murdered family of Delbert Grady, and Grady himself - the mob bossess and henchmen that were shot there… the “Red Death” costume party… the obscene ballet dancer figures on the clock… and many others, all created this sort of “uber-creature” centered in the hotel. The things Danny Torrence sees in flashes are impressions left by these events; Danny’s abilities would have added immensely to the hotel’s power, had he been killed there, and so the hotel, through its various creatures, sought to influence Jack to do just that.
Jack, in the novel, struggles with a terrible temper - he’s lost a position teaching at a private school when he beats up a student, and he’s an alcoholic as well. He struggles to keep his rage and shame in check when he has to eat crap from a family friend who helps him get the Outlook job, and from the manager during the interview. For these reasons, he’s ideally suited to break under the hotel’s assault.
At the end of the book, the boiler explodes, and the hotel follows suit, and all the “charged” places destruct – the walls where Danny sees the brains of the shotgunned mobsters burst into flame, and the tub in room 132 cracks and noxious water runs out. I took this to mean that the uber-creature was destroyed.
In the Kubrick movie, we see Jack’s picture on the wall from way back when. I took this to mean that he was “absorbed” into the hotel, and had become a part of it – not so much that he was reincarnated or travelled back in time, but simply that the hotel had made him, retroactively, part of its history.
Book was pretty good. Hated the movie. Nickelson was not Kubricks first choice for Jack Torrence. I believe I read somewhere that he originally wanted Michael Moriarity (of Law and Order) for the film but he was relatively unknown then and not “bankable” like Nickelson. Other than “Scatman” the casting in that film sucked. And Kubricks ponderous direction didn’t advance the story line at all. Someone who hadn’t read the book would be completely lost.
This is little more than a WAG since I haven’t seen the movie in a very long time and never read the book. (I don’t like Stephen King; so sue me.)
I seem to remember reading or seeing an interview with King in which he said one of the inspirations for the book was a visit to an old hotel that was so spooky and atmospheric that it seemed to King to be almost malevolent. This gave him the germ of the idea for the book – about a hotel that is actually, itself, evil.
From this, I have always assumed the story unfolds along the lines Bricker laid out. I don’t have a cite for the interview because I barely even remember it, but I don’t think I would have made it up since, as a person who doesn’t like King and doesn’t care much either way for The Shining, I probably would not have ever given the isuse much thought – which is why I think I must have read it somewhere.
don - could it have been because it was so remotely located, they and their guests would have been completely cut off from the rest of the world when the weather got bad?
I guess that’s a really long way of saying “poor tourist access”…
The movie doesn’t suck…well, okay. Lemme be diplomatic here. If you’ve read the book, then the movie looks kind of bad IN COMPARISION. If you just see the movie, it looks great. That was my take on it. The book rocks. i’m rereading it…oh yeah. Better finish it.
As someone who never read the book I liked the movie. I understand about the Nicholson thing. He doesn’t strike me as a ‘father’ and I had a hard time accepting that. I saw Steven King’s adaptation a few years ago on TV and didn’t care for it. Of course I was basing it on Kubrick’s movie and not King’s novel and I didn’t read the novel.
One more question. What was the deal with the guys in the costumes near the end? I don’t know if this was in all versions. Was this some reference from the book that because of poor editing of the film seems out of place? I imagine it was some kind of sex party and these 2 were going off together to enjoy themselves.
Oblong…I posted a question some months ago about the same scene, which is probably on-screen for around a fifth of a second. Interesting how everyone who sees the movie remembers that flash of imagery, huh?
I think we all decided that the two men were guests at a costume party, and that the guy in the animal suit was about to administer oral sex to the man in the tux.
isn’t that a pretty popular theme with stephen king stories? i haven’t read a lot of them, but he seems to like the idea of some evil inanimate object (a car, a hotel, in the case of “IT,” a whole town) corrupting people. since i never read the shining, only saw the movie, i didn’t make the connection- i was young when i saw it, and i just assumed the main character went crazy, and the gory cut scenes were just random horror inserted into the movie to make it scary.
maybe king’s typewriter has a sinister influence on his life? hehe
