Kubrick’s Shine

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy… While honest in nature these words took on a much greater form when viewed in context with The Shining. Wendy, Jack’s innocent wife, was awakening to the horrors contained in her husband’s mind, when she perused his months long work. It turned out to be solely those ten words repeated over and over again. The build-up to this scene along with the haunting music coming to a crescendo strikes a resounding cord of fear in the hearts of viewers. Furthermore, the following sequence, Jack admits to wanting to bash Wendy’s brains in. This revelation allows the viewer to become fully embraced in her fight or flight reaction. In that instant the pain in Wendy’s face is horrible to watch as she realizes her terrifyingly grim situation. Kubrick’s ability to grow these haunting personal relations is the reason The Shining became a cult classic. The Shining is not like a typical horror movie. It is methodically casual in its slow churn to the inevitable terror. Supernatural bits are shown yet never explained leaving the viewer caught in a haze of confusion trying to come to grips with what is actually occurring.

This film’s style is unique in how it’s mystery is never fully revealed. Kubrick turned the book into something else entirely. The plot starts out believable and standard but builds into compounding questionable events that cause one to doubt character’s motivations and the story’s truth. One scene comes to mind where Jack is called in by Wendy to check out room 237. In it Wendy thinks their son Danny was strangled by either a ghost or another person. As Jack enters he finds himself in a bathroom with an attractive young woman. The woman gets up and reveals herself to be naked. Jack goes up to kiss her and after a brief embrace notices her reflection and is shocked to find a rotting corpse. The true nature of the woman is a decaying old woman who pursues and laughs at him while he retreats. The scene is broken up with images of the rotting woman rising from the bathtub hinting at the corpse awakening years prior.  When Jack confronts Wendy he describes Wendy as crazy for believing ghost stories and explains how he saw nothing in room 237. Jack has no reason to lie to Wendy unless hiding his ultimate motive of murder. Similarly obscure scenes are spaced throughout the film and hint to an interconnected network of repeated violence at the Overlook Hotel. Reincarnation is opening talked about with the ending scene even showing Jack in a 1921 photo of the hotel. Stanley Kubrick in an interview went as far as to admit, “A story of the supernatural cannot be taken apart and analyzed too closely. The ultimate test of its rationale is whether it is good enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. If you submit it to a completely logical and detailed analysis it will eventually appear absurd.” Kubrick acknowledges how confusing the movie is, yet is not worried as he believes it adds to the drama of the movie. It is as if he wants viewers to be engaged but not too involved as the endless amount of speculation would cause the viewer to lose overall appreciation of his masterpiece.

Robert Ebert in his review of The Shining mentions how, “That leaves us with a closed-room mystery: In a snowbound hotel, three people descend into versions of madness or psychic terror, and we cannot depend on any of them for an objective view of what happens.” While Kubrick has mastered the art of illusion. I believe Wendy to be a reliable source for objective reality. Danny and Jack both have many visions with Danny turning to his ‘Tony’ and Jack’s conversations with Grady and the bartender. However it is the innocent Wendy who only sees visions at the climax of the film. She acts as the voice of reason for the trio and in her helpless state attempts to do what is right for their son in leaving the hotel. For this reason and her overall innocence I believe that her observations can be accepted as reality. By drawing this conclusion I may be grasping at the straws Kubrick himself admits are weak.

Richard Jameson argues in his essay for Film Comment how casual viewers at the time were prepared for a more traditional horror film. Kubrick declared it the scariest movie of all time. The original poster looks and feels like standard horror. Viewers went in thinking “OK, zap me, make me flinch, gross me out. And they find that, mostly, Kubrick’s long, under populated, deliberately-placed telling of an unremarkable story with a Twilight Zone twist at the end doesn’t do it for them”. The Shining released exactly two days after the blockbuster sequel Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The two could not be more different in genre and style. Kubrick’s style was one of the last hoo-rahs of the individualistic auteur movement as the blockbuster wave took over the industry. Kubrick’s approach infuriated viewers at the time who craved answers and a more standard horror blockbuster. The massive budget of 18 million for The Shining paid off as people began to warm up to the film. The speculative theories became water-cooler fodder and phrases from the film have remained relevant in pop culture as exemplified through the now comedic “Heeeeere’s Johnny”. Kubrick did not make the movie people wanted. Instead he chose to make it his own. This decision upset viewers initially but over time spawned it’s own legacy similar to that of Stephen King’s book. Kubrick’s unique approach to a new genre is worth reviewing and will no doubt stand the test of time as a thought provoking terror.

Works Cited

1. Jack’s Revelation
2. Bathtub Scene
3. Stanley Kubrick Interview
4. Robert Ebert Review
5. Film Comment Essay
6. Heeeeere’s Johnny
7. Ending Explanation