Jack Torrance chases Danny through the hedge maze in "The Shining."

(Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

January 27, 2010

by Joel Crary

“The Shining” is a twisted freak of a movie, so completely odd and out of bounds that it almost doesn’t work at all. The film’s performances are so different from each other in motivation that the actors seem to be acting on separate planes. Yet because Stanley Kubrick ties these characters together with an unparalleled sense of visual composition and pacing, we believe that unlikely spouses Jack (Jack Nicholson) and Wendy (Shelley Duvall) are spiraling into their own brands of madness together.

When considering “The Shining” as a slasher, all of the pieces are accounted for. A family is torn asunder by the forces of evil haunting an expansive resort hotel, otherwise uninhabited for the season. The father, an abusive recovering alcoholic writer, loses his mind and stalks his wife and son with an axe, limping around like a bloodthirsty hunchback. Author Stephen King wanted Michael Moriarty or Jon Voight cast as the father. Imagine the straight-arrow Voight’s descent into psychopathy, the awful set of circumstances that would have been required to make his level head unfurl.

And yet Jack Torrance seems determinedly tied to camp rather than pure horror. Kubrick insisted on Nicholson, originally having envisioned the actor as right for the lead role in a Napoleon picture that never materialized. Look at Nicholson in his early scenes in “The Shining.” There is nothing reassuring about his demeanor, nothing to suggest that he can communicate any other emotion than repressed anger toward Wendy and young Danny (Danny Lloyd). His isn’t a downward spiral, but a slight shift of expressive fury.

Kubrick was meticulous in his setups, exhausting his actors and tailoring each scene to their abilities. Many of Nicholson’s over-the-top deliveries came courtesy of his efforts to find new energy after a long series of takes. As Jack takes Danny on his lap and reassures him that he would never cause him harm, we’d sooner trust a fire not to spread. And each adult looks eerily skeletal and deathly in appearance. Kubrick’s lingering examinations of Jack’s teeth, chef Hallorann’s cranium and Wendy’s hands continually suggest that death is imminent.

Of course, “The Shining” will be forever coloured by Kubrick’s treatment of Duvall on set. Many have explained that his intent was to whip Duvall into realistic hysteria for her confrontations with the enraged Jack. Her presence is the film’s most controversial point, especially given Kubrick’s filmed criticisms of her ability to react to Nicholson’s scripted temper. But Duvall’s performance is crucial to the film’s primary objective; above all, “The Shining” desires to disorient – to throw its audience out of whack.

“The Shining” must be viewed in the absolute dead of winter. Maze-like enough in better weather, the grounds of the Overlook are quilted in snow and smoke, preventing escape and making the hotel appear a spacious tomb. One of the film’s dark charms is the thorough sense of solitude it induces. The film is as labyrinthine as its hedge maze, as sudden-turning as its hallways, as chaotically patterned as its carpet designs. While there appears to be order to the madness it presents, the order is revealed as a farce, a collection of false securities that are stripped away as Jack finally loses all control.

The Steadicam movements of inventor and operator Garrett Brown allowed for shots that couldn’t have been captured otherwise and create the impression that Jack, Wendy and Danny are constantly being pursued by the unseen. And “The Shining”’s sounds are crucial to its atmosphere. As Danny rides his Big Wheel through the constructed sets of the Overlook, the sound of his plastic tires pulses in and out rhythmically as they grate against the hardwood floors and fall silent when they move over rugs. Jack takes a break from writing and bounces a tennis ball hard against the wall. Later, as he embarks on his rampage, the stability of these sounds will be replaced by a foreboding, demonic score featuring the sounds of horrified screams mixed in with an unceasing rush of strings and bone-rattling percussion.

Kubrick’s devotion to order while filming, perhaps exemplified best by the famous sequence in which actor Scatman Crothers was forced to endure an urban legend-creating amount of takes, is reflective of the “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” obsessive compulsive craziness of Nicholson’s character and gets at the true being of “The Shining.” It is a psychological horror film, a narrative that overwhelms our patience, a visual presentation armed with the sole intent of making the viewer distrust all that is seen.

Fans of Kubrick who would list “The Shining” as their favourite of his films are a very particular type of Kubrick fan. There is an insanity to it that simply isn’t present in “2001″ and “Dr. Strangelove.” Even “A Clockwork Orange” undercuts its own more violent tendencies with pop culture satire. “The Shining” turns inward, shutting itself away from the outside world as it processes convention into a vibrant isolationist nightmare. It takes order and reverses it, through mirror images and time travel, through backtracking and “Redrum,” leaving us desperate for solid ground.