We were always going to end up here eventually and with us hitting the 50th day of lockdown I felt like this was the opportune time. Everyone who knows me knows how much I adore Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' (1980). Ever since I first saw it at the ripe old age of 13 (cheers mum and dad) it has had a grip on me. I was completely petrified and yet completely engrossed and my love of the film has survived even ten years on from that first viewing. My love of the film goes so far that I almost teared up in the section of the Stanley Kubrick exhibition designated to the film. Alongside 'Jaws' (1975) it is the film that has had the most impact on my love of the medium and has set me down the life path I am currently on (for better or for worse). The film follows the Torrance family, Jack (Jack Nicholson), Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and their son Danny (Danny Lloyd), who move in to the Overlook Hotel as caretakers for the winter. Before taking the job the hotel's owner, Ullman (Barry Nelson), tells Jack of a former caretaker at the hotel who developed cabin fever and killed his wife and children with an axe. Undeterred Jack accepts the job and the family start adapting to life at the hotel. Danny is much more cautious about the hotel as, due to his ability to shine (a psychic like ability), he knows about the dark secrets of the hotel. Jack slowly starts to lose his mind as the months go by and, simultaneously, Danny sees more and more about the evils of the hotel. As the hotel starts to get more of a grip on Jack's mind, and with a snow storm cutting off the family from the outside world, it looks as though they are heading for disaster.
This film grips you from the very first shot. You're immediately thrown into an unsettling yet beautiful environment with these gorgeous helicopter shots over mountains and lakes with the really disturbing and disorientating score underpinning the visuals. It is a superb opening which immediately puts you in a state of tension as well as establishing a motif of the film which is the characters being shown as tiny, engulfed by their environment. Of course the film was going to be beautiful, it is Kubrick film after all. He is a master filmmaker and his style of filmmaking, with the symmetrical imagery and wide angle lenses, allows for shots to be beautiful, almost like paintings. But what happens every time I watch this film is I notice something new and focus on it, this time around this was the score which is quite beautiful in it's own way. The use of sound in general throughout the film is brilliant, but the score itself is particularly impressive. Now, I have obviously noticed the score of the film before, but this time I noticed stuff within it that I hadn't before, or at the very least hadn't focused on. The score of the film almost acts as the spirit of the hotel. It flows with the action of scenes. When characters are at a peak level of madness it is at its peak to match and it stops on a dime when a character seems to defy the hotel. It also has a heartbeat. Literally I mean, there is a heartbeat within the score which only adds to this sense of the hotel being alive. Its quite a 'film studies' way of looking at it but it is interesting nonetheless and adds something more to the unease of the film. This unease is added too by the ambiguity of the narrative. There is a lot of this film that goes unanswered. You get hints towards what is really happening but the film allows you to make it up for yourself. This not only gives the film rewatchability but keeps the tension and unease high as we are never sure what truly is happening, what is real and what isn't. This ambiguity also led to the making of 'Room 237' (2012) a documentary that focuses on the theories people have about this film, and there are some absolute mad ones. But I do think that all this discourse around the film has meant that people forget that at its core it is a horror film, and a damn fun horror film at that. It is not a film that uses jump scare to scare you, instead using tension and an unsettling environment to do that, but it is also really fun in how it does it. It is a quite funny film at times, at least it is for me but this may be as a result of my seeing it so many times. This level of fun is also helped by a Jack Nicholson performance that almost defines what people think of when thinking of Jack Nicholson performances.
The acting in this film is really divisive, some people love it and some people hate it. Critics of the film will say that Jack Nicholson is effectively playing a character with no nuance and is playing him as a madman before he actually goes mad and that Shelley Duvall is just plain bad, where as others will say almost the exact opposite. I fall very much on the side of loving the performances, although I do see the issues that people have with them. I want to first mention Danny Lloyd who plays Danny in the film. As a child actor he is very solid, especially in the scenes where he is showing pure terror which are completely believable. It is not an incredible performance but it works with the tone of the film. Shelley Duvall was nominated for a Razzie for her performance which is an absolute shocker of a decision. Her performance is a bit oddball, but it completely works in the film, especially when the madness of the hotel starts to take control. She genuinely looks and feels like a woman who is stressed, terrified and losing her mind. This performance is helped by the fact that Kubrick tormented Duvall in real life, so much so that her hair started to fall out. I don't condone that behaviour at all but the result is a superb performance which feels very real and is often time unsettling to watch. When it comes to Jack Nicholson I do agree with the fact that his character does seem mad from the beginning and this leads to a performance with little nuance. This is a problem that Stephen King often cites with the film as he felt that all the humanity of Jack that is present in the book is completely missing from Kubrick's final film. But I think that is the point. Kubrick wasn't trying to make a character study of a man who is corrupted by evil, he wanted to make an unsettling film where it is a clear that the main character is on the edge of sanity to begin with. You know that he is going to lose it at some point and you are just waiting for when. This makes the film all that more tense and all the more fun. I love intense Jack Nicholson and when Jack finally snaps Nicholson absolutely comes into his own. It is not only a terrifying performance but it is a super fun one and is often times quite funny. I understand why fans of the book (which is miles worse than the film FYI) don't like Nicholson's portrayal, but I think it fits perfectly the kind of film Kubrick is going for.
I've had to stop myself from going to far with this review. It is already one of, if not, the longest review I have ever done and I could easily keep going with it, I just love 'The Shining' that much. It is not a perfect film, and I wouldn't even say it is Stanley Kubrick's best film ('2001: A SPace Odyssey' (1968) where you at?), but it is my favourite film ever made. I love everything about it. The cinematography, lighting and sound are all masterfully done and it makes the film a beautiful watch despite how uneasy and tense it often is. I feel like the performances match the film perfectly but I can see why people would disagree. At the end of the day, despite all the ambiguity and technical prowess the film shows, it is just a really fucking good horror movie, one of the best ever made in fact. That alone should be enough for you to give it a watch, but throw in the fact that it is also just one the greatest films full stop then there is no reason you shouldn't watch it. I adore it, you may hate it, but I can guarantee you one thing, it is definitely a film that will stay with you after it ends.