The Shining (1980)

 Director: Stanley Kubrick

Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers

Short Review, no spoilers

One of the greatest horror films of all time and an enduring masterpiece of filmmaking itself, this haunted hotel adaptation of Stephen King’s novel contains some of the most iconic images in the history of cinema, it’s centrepiece a glorious and artful portrayal of a maniac as delivered by star Jack Nicholson. Every element – music, cinematography, performance – is precisely and passionately realised to its fullest impact by genius of the medium, Stanley Kubrick.

Full Review (spoilers)

40 years of The Shining and 37 of me - it’s mine and The Shining’s birthday today and this weird coincidence that I stumbled upon recently is realised in the fact that it has been my favourite film of all time for years (I guess I’ve always been the caretaker). So, to celebrate the anniversary of its UK release, here’s my gushing review of a seminal film that has grown in stature since the wobbly critical reception it received in 1980:

As observed by Pauline Kael at the time - in a predominantly lukewarm response to the film - almost every scene takes place in cold, sunny daylight and interiors are starkly lit throughout. The ghosts are solid, appearing in very human and unnerving banality even as they darkly speak of and provoke diabolical violence. These disorientating aspects that work in direct opposition to traditional horror tropes only add to the eeriness of the film, and are offset by a remarkable soundtrack that amplifies the horror of the mundane mixed with mental disintegration and supernatural interference - the resounding echoes of a baseball thrown in isolated frustration; the relentless rhythm of a surround sound heartbeat bleeding in to a tinnitus ring as another ghostly encounter gradually unfolds. Soaring above it all is the score of nightmares, combining the doom-laden riffs of various pointedly chosen classical pieces with original music by synth whizzes Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind. A powerful element that is as integral to the film as anything else, without dialogue The Shining could be a lyric-less opera. The set design is equally stunning, with Kubrick having had rooms built to evoke the imposing grandeur of the hotel, interlinking them to exploit the possibilities of Steadicam technology, as little Danny Torrance weaves around on his humble tricycle.

The explosion of repressed family tensions and madness - so easily provoked by the evil spirits of the hotel - and Jack Nicholson’s shades of grotesque, as his deranged brooding develops in to all-out mania, is irresistible to behold. Criticised by some for overdoing it and by others for being too restricted by control freak director Stanley Kubrick, I think the balance is perfect - Nicholson’s natural gift for full-blooded craziness is expertly and subtly manipulated to keep it from spilling in to farce. Shelley Duvall as Wendy has also been similarly undervalued, again seen as victim of Kubrick’s dogged perfectionism and as left with nothing much to do but scream. However, just as no one has given us madness quite like Nicholson, no one has shown sheer terror as convincingly as Duvall, most exquisitely when Jack’s axe famously bursts through the bathroom door. With fear as powerful an emotion as rage, the best scream queen ever is a perfect foil to the screen’s best maniac. And speaking of scream queens, Wendy is also a nice twist on the cliché big-breasted-horny-teen-girl, instead a heroic mother in a dowdy dressing gown battling against weather, a raving husband and murderous ghosts to save the life of her son. It’s significant to note that Jack’s increasingly warped sense of responsibility as caretaker of the hotel is completely at odds with reality, which is that it is Wendy that does all the work. Scenes of Wendy carrying out various practical duties around the building seem banal but are actually pointed in their repetition. Jack is never seen outdoors until his demise, and is never seen doing any actual caretaking – this is all done by Wendy because he is in fact a prisoner of the hotel, heading inexorably to a dreadful eternal sentence. As such, and as always with Kubrick, the villains and heroes in his movies are presented as ‘us’ – ordinary and hugely fallible human beings with what turn out to be ridiculous ideas of self-possession and superiority over their natural and spiritual worlds.

In terms of style, The Shining is representative of a director who repeatedly realised his distinctive visions through various genres, including sci-fi, period drama, satire, war film and in this case horror, but always with every frame unmistakeably Kubrickian. Like other Kubrick films, it features cold, distanced but not inhuman performances and interactions between characters, which in fact heighten the tensions between them. Every set and shot is highly stylised and meticulously composed; and it explores the follies of deluded men that overstate a perceived power over their immediate environments, resulting in death, destruction, and their own demise. Although Kubrick may have turned to the source material of Stephen King’s typically pulp novel because he needed a hit following the commercial disaster of Barry Lyndon, my own (possibly controversial) opinion is that this film is his best. In an interview at the time, Kubrick pondered where the source of a films ability to engage lies - in the story or how a story is conveyed. It is perhaps his attention to this quandary that results in a film that in fact delivers so satisfyingly on so many levels: a tour-de-force in terms of aesthetic beauty and sonic audacity that taps in to our most primal fears, all to deliver a relatively simple but therefore relatable story of identity in crisis and family dysfunction. As one would expect, Kubrick cannot help but bring an audaciously artistic flair to a genuinely scary movie, while tapping in to Freudian fears of the uncanny through a story stripped to its most basic and impactful elements. I would argue that it’s got it all - a perfect combination of his characteristic obsession with aesthetics with an entertaining, accessible film that deals with deep-seated philosophical themes without getting bogged down in intellectualism. In seeming to regard The Shining as something of a sell-out, critics at the time appeared not to appreciate the beauty of the film, and that Kubrick going (relatively) commercial might not have been such a bad thing.