THE SHINING (1980)

Stanley Kubrick was a merciless storyteller. A diehard perfectionist and strict formalist with an eye for gorgeous compositions, his films are often bleak and uncomfortable, drowning the viewer in disquieting interactions. But the work of a master craftsman doesn’t always translate to a masterful film; striving for perfection with each and every shot in your movie could still lead to an emotionally hollow experience. This isn’t just a common critique levelled at The Shining, a film that was mostly derided by critics upon its release, but at Kubrick’s filmography in general.

Often considered an ‘anti-human’ director for his cold, clinical assessment of the human condition, it isn’t true that Kubrick has no regard for humanity. One can find his empathy in the visionary search for progress in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the soul-deadening experience of war in Full Metal Jacket (1987), or the ways in which our psyches are mired by dreams and nightmares, twin streams of delusion that comprise so much of our thinking, in his final film Eyes Wide Shut (1999). 

But while Kubrick appears to love humanity (though very much on his own terms instead of in a boundless sense), it’s not always a guarantee that he cares about his characters. It’s as if he’s in two minds on this front in the seminal horror film The Shining, a movie that went from receiving two Razzie nominations (‘Worst Director’ for Kubrick and ‘Worst Actress’ for Shelley Duvall) to becoming a staple of its genre. Now its director’s clinical approach to the film’s direction has earned acclaim, while Duvall’s performance has rightly undergone just as radical a a shift in public thinking, where the actress is regarded as a bona fide ‘scream queen’ for a lone performance, a rare feat that points to her singular talents at portraying an abused housewife.

But while Duvall’s role as the psychologically tortured Wendy Torrance is a pitch-perfect portrayal of trauma and the effects of psychological abuse, Wendy’s husband Jack (Jack Nicholson) teeters between being a character and a caricature. Wendy is a loving mother struggling to reconcile her desire for a happy home life with her disturbed son Danny (Danny Lloyd) and his callous, abusive father. After Danny suffers a seizure and a doctor is called, Wendy explains an incident where Jack accidentally dislocated their son’s shoulder. It’s a masterful scene because one can so easily glimpse the dual portions of Wendy’s outlook. She almost does enough to convince the doctor (and us viewers) through her sunny attitude that the incident was a simple misunderstanding, but she tries just a little too hard in her careful explanation to be truly believable.

She’s not just attempting to convince the doctor of this version of reality, but herself, too. Watching that protective cocoon of plausible deniability come undone over the course of this 140-minute exercise in terror is the most haunting aspect of The Shining. It’s just a shame that Wendy’s terror comes as a result of Nicholson’s lumbering madman. Thankfully, this isn’t the case for the film’s first half, as although Jack is very animated at his job interview, there’s enough interiority in Nicholson’s performance to recognise that he, like Wendy with the doctor, is putting together an almost-perfect performance. Pitching himself as the ideal job candidate, his chipper attitude is just fake enough for viewers to notice it, all while he breezes through this interview, which is really just a formality to ensure he’s aware of the responsibilities of the role. As the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel while it is closed for the winter and spring months, he must contend with the isolation and alienation that led one of the former caretakers, Delbert Grady (Philip Stone), to kill his wife and twin daughters (Lisa and Louise Burns).

Jack’s initial conversations with Wendy and Danny showcase a man struggling not to bubble over with anger when he’s around the two people he loves more than any other, an internal contradiction that is largely forgotten about once his insanity-induced theatrics kick into play. It takes little time in relative isolation for Jack to experience a slip in his sanity, where the hotel’s elusive powers start to destroy him from within, drawing him further and further from his family. The point where he was a man prone to anger and struggling to rein in these impulses quickly vanishes, replaced with a deranged buffoon who finds allies in the figments of his—or the hotel’s—imagination.

As for Danny, Lloyd’s expressions of fear are excellent, especially from a child actor. Danny’s bravery and fear are both adorable and emblematic of the rigid way that kids hold themselves and behave. He, just like this hotel, has his share of secrets, some of which he’s very reluctant to divulge. Just as Jack tunnels deeper and deeper down his anguished, ravaged psyche, Danny must look inward to unlock his abilities, expressed through Tony, a creepy voice of his that he claims comes from a being that lives in his mouth. He finds a kindred spirit in Overlook head chef Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), who refers to the telepathic ability they both share as ‘shining’.

There are some fantastic moments of character insight on display, but as a whole, The Shining fails as a character drama. Stephen King’s novel is too simplistic in its morality to work in this broad context, but Kubrick is too cold and calculated, with his stately and glacial approach to these characters also rendering this horror experience bereft of many scares. Some are truly terrifying, like the Grady girls, identical-looking twins in identical clothing who terrorise poor Danny. Their most memorable scene practically leaps off the screen to make the hair on the back of one’s neck stand on end. Nothing else in The Shining ever reaches that height, but while that’s not a bad thing on its own, more disappointing is the awareness that few scenes make an effort to be as scary.

Kubrick’s resistance to cramming this movie with cheap jump scares is admirable, but he oversteps the mark with slow-moving drudgery in the final act, whether that’s in Jack stumbling through the hotel with familicide firmly on his mind, or Wendy flopping around from room to room like a fish that’s been thrown onto dry land. She could be wielding a rocket launcher and still look powerless, frail, and pitiful. It’s an absurd chase that hardly ever tries to evoke tension. When it does, it’s effective, even if it’s difficult to find what the heart of these sequences are, besides its director’s gorgeous compositions and eye for detail. A consistent high point when it comes to the film’s scare factor is its soundtrack, whether it stamps down its icy chills with the sonic equivalent of jump scares, or builds a chorus of despair through a wall of chaotic noise. Krzysztof Penderecki’s compositions are especially effective on this latter point, whose musical musings sound like they were recorded in the pits of hell, where not even flames exist lest anyone there develop some kindling of hope from their sparks.

Kubrick’s perfectionism hasn’t just led to widespread appreciation for the film’s aesthetics, but continued efforts to tunnel down possible thematic webs. While the more worthwhile theories abound online about the film’s implicit references to historical atrocities seem more misplaced the further they delve into the weeds of their analysis, there is something to be said about how this relates to the genteel yet horrifying behaviour of the ghostly clientele that Jack interacts with once his delusion reaches fever pitch.

These figures are polite to a fault, well-mannered, and well-dressed, but have no reaction to Jack’s references to ‘the white man’s burden’, just as Jack isn’t surprised to hear racial epithets from the butler, Delbert Grady (a kind of reincarnation of the murderous caretaker). The cheery nature of the partygoers masks the entrenched racism amongst them. Instead of bleeding through overtly in their attitudes towards race, this film’s evil is expressed more abstractly through Jack’s murderous visions. The sins of the past take root in the present, recalling the ominous fact that this hotel was constructed on an Indian burial ground.

Not all of this thematic ground is visually stimulating (I’m looking at you, room full of dusty, cobweb-ridden skeletons), but more often than not, The Shining is a masterwork of Kubrick’s formalism. The hotel may remain stately from beginning to end, yet it somehow manages to feel like it carries a presence that defies explanation. But to truly sell a horror movie like this, Kubrick would have to go beyond even his perfectionist aims and reach the dizzying psychological heights that very few filmmakers can achieve.

The only director that comes to mind that could adeptly depict Jack’s descent into madness—given the pared-back screenplay and its half-hearted attempt to organically depict this character development—is the man who reasonably induced his characters into maddened versions of themselves in Stalker (1979), twisting their psyches so seamlessly that one cannot imagine them remaining unchanged from this journey. When watching Tarkovksy’s science fiction masterpiece, you find yourself slipping into a milder version of the mania that descends over these characters, instead of watching a flawed character devolve into a parody of himself. There must come a point where Jack can no longer be understood by the viewer, but that happens far too early in The Shining, while his slow, lengthy conversations with the Overlook’s ethereal beings do little to provoke an emotional response. You’re simply watching a crazy man interact with ghosts.

You can spend hours staring at stills from The Shining and marvel at their cruel, cold beauty, but when other elements of its storytelling fall flat, you need someone with the ability to fully submerge themselves in the realm of the ethereal in your creative arsenal. For as brilliant as Kubrick was, his filmmaking was akin to that of a master craftsman who couldn’t dream, endlessly sculpting each shot and scene to give it a sense of clarity in reality that his mind couldn’t wander to in the dream world we all sink into throughout our days. Sometimes that was enough to form masterpieces, as in 2001 or, ironically, Eyes Wide Shut, but other times it falls short, even if these experiences are worthy of praise for their technical elements. In the case of The Shining, that elusive final scene, and some other leaps in logic that point to the supernatural elements lurking in this film’s many rooms and corridors, almost linger in one’s mind for just long enough to forget about the film’s character deficiencies.

UK • USA | 1980 | 146 MINUTES (PREMIERE) • 144 MINUTES (US CUT) • 119 MINUTES (EUROPEAN CUT) • 142 MINUTES (US DVD) | 1.66:1 (THEATRICAL, UK & EUROPE) • 1.85:1 (USA) | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Stanley Kubrick.
writers: Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson (based on the novel by Stephen King).
starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Philip Stone, Barry Nelson, Joe Turkel, Anne Jackson, Lisa Burns & Louise Burns.