The Shining (1980)
Posted on September 7, 2005
Filed Under Classics, Slashers
The Shining is the most introspective of Stanley Kubrick’s movies and was received with a good measure of apathy in its day. This may seem surprising to modern audiences, who are used to seeing it close to the top of most ‘best horror film’ charts and who readily accept its place in the genre hall of fame. It probably didn’t help that Stephen King – author of the book on which it is based – turned on Kubrick after its release for expunging most of overt scares and instead offering up the defining tale of what happens when a family goes into meltdown. Compare this to the 1990s TV series for which King himself was the scriptwriter and you’ll probably understand why he was more than a little peeved.
I quite enjoyed the TV series, but there is no doubt in my mind that Kubrick was truer to the spirit of King’s work, if not the letter. It often happens that a film adaptation stumbles across the one thing in a story that makes it great, and cuts through the undergrowth of the rest of the book to present it in all its glory. In this Kubrick had few peers, with Dr. Strangelove taking the book Red Alert to entirely new levels of satire and chillingly cool perception – with stunning effect. The Short-Timers turned his attention to the Vietnam War, and – Full Metal Jacket later – the result was one of the finest and most intelligent war movies ever made. This is pretty much what you can expect from The Shining, with the supernatural premise playing second fiddle to his exploration of the phenomenon of fear itself.
Kubrick is crafty in this, on the surface lulling us into what appears to be a pretty conventional ghost story but allowing the underlying tension of his scenario to bubble through at just the right moments. It’s clear from the opening shots of the Torrance family driving to their winter vacation job that things are going to start falling apart. The camerawork is especially polished at expressing this, ranging from the predatory swooping of the solitary drive through the mountains to the fixed shots which amply demonstrate the gargantuan proportions of the Overlook Hotel. The matter of fact way in which we’re told of the bloody past of the hotel seems to come and go and never intrudes on the rest of the film. I’m not sure that Kubrick intended it to, for the real horror of his story is in portraying the terrifying consequences of family meltdown in its most extreme form. Like his Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann character in Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick uses Jack Nicholson as a tool of self-parody, whilst framing the rest of the film in complete dead-pan. The forceful clash between these two worlds is as engaging as it is sublime, and it’s a measure of Kubrick’s talent that he’s able to use the complex technique to turn out a chillingly scary ghost story.
Jack Nicholson is fundamental to this and, as you’d expect, portrays suppressed insanity in a way that looks too easy. It’s a role that only he could play, with his constantly on-edge expression never quite revealing what is going on in his mind. Shelley Duvall is with him all the way though, and as the hopelessness of their predicament slowly starts to sink in she gives us willing self-delusion turning into unbridled fear with a refreshing honesty and unpretentiousness. Perhaps the true star of the show is the Overlook Hotel itself which, as a physical embodiment of unsettling horror, has few screen rivals. All in all The Shining is a profoundly effective attempt to explore what fear actually is, its causes and its consequences. Kubrick clearly had little time for the standard horror mechanics of the original King book but in turning to the human dimension he brought to the tale a stunning freshness and surpassed the original in terms of impact and legacy – a rare feat indeed.
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