The usefulness of the movement/stasis contrast in making the spectator uneasy is even clearer in the twins' final appearance. We follow Danny on his Big Wheels as he glides through the corridors of the hotel, until he turns a corner and comes to a screeching halt, finding himself face to face with the twins once more. As mentioned earlier, this scene highlights the Freudian "uncanny" aspects of the girls, one such aspect being the compulsive repetition in their speech. But the phrase they repeat - "forever and ever and ever" - calls to mind the concept of overwhelming infinitude central to both the sublime and to cosmic fear. Danny reacts by covering his eyes to block out the horror of what he is seeing, then using Tony to tell himself that, "like pictures in a book," the twins can't hurt him. But his uncertain tone of voice belies this claim. The twins have hurt him, but through his mind's eye, which no hands can cover. They have shattered Danny's feeling of safety, both physical (they were slain by their father - might he fall victim to a similar fate?) and metaphysical (they are dead, and yet they are standing at the end of the hall and beckoning to him - what other cracks in the fabric of reality might threaten to swallow him up?).
By the time the film reaches its climax, dangers of both types have reached enormous proportions. Jack turns violent, chasing his wife and son with an axe. His total transgression of behavioral norms is mirrored by the hotel, which in turn unleashes its most numerous and large-scale violations of reality - many of them, naturally, in the form of monumental horror-images. Indeed, as a terrified Wendy, having become separated from Danny, runs through the hotel to find him, she is practically bombarded with such images. After climbing a flight of stairs, she looks into a bedroom down the hall, where a man dressed as a dog kneels and performs fellatio on a man in a tuxedo. They sit up and stare at her, unblinking. Minutes later, after discovering the body of the Overlook's chef Dick Halloran (who has been slain by Jack), she turns to find another tuxedo-clad man at the end of the hallway. His bald head covered with blood, he raises his glass and says merrily, "Great party, isn't it?" Like the dogman and his friend, he is isolated in the distant center of the frame (his central position is accentuated by the presence of a chandelier hanging directly above him, just as the dogman and his lover's position was highlighted by their framing in a doorway), where he stands like a monument to the malevolent party being held in the hotel.
Article comments
1 - emma
You might copy those images to another host. Only a small banner gif is shown when remotely linked it seems.
2 - Rodney Welch
I went to see The Shining at the theatre with the greatest hopes of being scared to death. I mean, it was Kubrick, right? A so-called master filmmaker who had certainly battered my senses with A Clockwork Orange. And Jack Kroll in Newsweek certainly thought it was scary. Can't fail, I thought. Unfortunately, I thought, the movie was all foreplay and no climax -- it promises, tempts, lures, and taunts you with the idea that there will be a big payoff. There isn't -- at least, not really. It's certainly not the kind of picture that makes you jump out of your seat.
And yet, over the years, I've come to appreciate it, although not the way most of it's fans do, because it didn't scare me. Instead, I appreciate it in a kind of distant, arm's-length, perhaps even academic way. I see it as a mood piece, a psychological study of a man who realizes he is nothing -- a man who wanted to succeed, as a father, a husband, and a writer, and finds he can't. Jack Torrance is a man who thinks he has writing talent and discovers that he has nothing to say, and his rage about having nothing to say, nothing to offer, nothing to give his family turns him into a violent beast; he sees them as the enemy. It's really, in its way, a study of alcoholism, told in somewhat horrific metaphoric terms; a man who can't escape his sense of failure, and who turns on the wife and child who make him feel that sense of failure just by their very existence. That, to me, is what the real story is; it's a story of a man's midlife crisis where the horror is all interior.
3 - Jim Carruthers
I re-watched "The Shining" a couple of weeks ago on the DVD re-issue (there's a really comprehensive "making-of" doc with extensive interviews with Kubrick, Nicholson and Duvall).
This was about the third or fourth time I'd seen the movie. The first was when it was first released, the second a couple of years ago at a rep theatre with a badly deteroriated and faded print.
The DVD really represented how the horror comes from beneath and within, plus how "The Shining" is one of the best adaptations of Stephen King's books. However, I should note, while I was a child, my parents spent a couple years employed as caretakers at a seasonal resort (though no where near as isolated as the Overlook).
One thing which provides an interesting contrast is the made for teevee adaptation of "The Shining" which was good, but not great.
And if you need a writer's block double feature, pair "The Shining" with the recently released DVD of "Barton Fink".
4 - Rodney Welch
Cool -- I have Barton Fink lined up to watch over the weekend. And you're right about the double DVD set; fascinating documentary of Kubrick and crew just being themselves.
5 - Eric Olsen
I find the subject of writer's block to be beyond my ken. My problem is that I alwyas have too much to say, never not enough. i am always disgorging large amounts of blather and then having to sort it out, rearrange it, eliminate a lot.
That's the main reason I have found blogging so rewarding: I can just blab on and on about whatever hops into my fevered brain all the livelong day and no one seems to mind much.
By the way, I found "Barton Fink" to be disturbing, claustrophobic and overwrought. I kept thinking, "just start writing down whatever pops into your head, one thing leads to another, it doesn't have to be perfect, that's what editing is for."
6 - Rodney Welch
I think I should have said above that Jack Torrance's interior horror becomes externalized. And I can grok the writer's block thing, because I really don't like writing badly, don't like writing sentences I know are horribly wrong -- which is not to say I don't, of course. I've always had this belief that writing is about knowing your thoughts, knowing what you want to say, having some basic grasp of your own point of view, and left to my own devices I'm not always real sure what that is; in fact, I usually don't know what I think until someone tells me what they think, and I rather immediately find myself agreeing or disagreeing strongly. I'm a shitty blogger, no question, but I'm a pretty steady responder.