Very Long Take
On Stanley Kubrick’s Movie Adapted From the Stephen King Novel The Shinning.
Please don’t read if you haven’t seen the film at least Five or Six times and settled on what you think the movie is about. I could be wrong but I don’t think so.
I wrote the following analysis after reading a differing opinion from a fellow Medium writer. You can read his review here:
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I clapped for your article but only because it was The Shining you reviewed. Your analysis is more than backed by the observations you have laid out and I applaud your boldness in relaying the opinion. There are not many that I know that would be openly critical of any of the actors’ performances or the effectiveness in the methods that Stanley Kubrick conscripts to Develop each. I have never made a feature length movie, but I imagine the luxury of a more detailed and expansive dedication to character formation available to authors of books may be a little less desirable in motion pictures.
The short interludes revealing the backstories of each character are more than efficient at relaying what we need to know about how and what our psyches should be concerned with as we watch the action play out.
You mentioned, I believe correctly some of the references and why they are present in the picture. Whether they be racially insensitive comments degrading towards subjugated and enslaved people with Grady’s derogatory comment about the chef or the constant scenic references in the hotel to a largely unaccounted reconciling of the near total genocide of a continent’s native inhabitants, the director states unequivocally that there is a psychological reckoning taking place with all of the characters involved alongside of the nation, the hotel, and every bit of action occurring in the film.
Even at the start of the film we are put in a place to confront the atrocities and depravity humans can realize when following some faulty concept of superiority or privilege, and what each of us is indeed capable of when the veil of delusion is no longer able to hide the truth. The fact that young Danny responds “I know all about the Dammar Party, I learned it from watching television,” to Jack’s mentioning of the infamous casualty of Western Expansion in the car ride to the hotel is for me the bit that is most relevant in what this telling of The Shinning has as its genesis.
With all that you have observed, you have proven half of my argument for me in regards to what I believe this movie is stating. I was disappointed to see that you found fault with the ending of the picture as this is as true a reveal as I know of in cerebral cinema included to relay intent or clarity on what we have witnessed. The garden maze has a very close association with psychology and the mind, Danny’s seizure and the subsequent visit from the health professional enforce the continuity of the major themes of mental trauma, memory, and psychosis.
By the visit from the doctor and Danny’s imaginary friend being a prevalent trait in his characters makeup, the minute his father Jack takes to talking to make-believe entities, I am persuaded that the overall intent of the story is indeed about the journey back through time when our conscious’s are clear as they are when we are young. A time when we haven’t led a life that tends to bend us to negativity and a young white boy feels safe and comfortable around an elderly black man as they eat ice cream and impersonate Bugs Bunny. He will later need to summon the help of the Chef in his psyche to help him realize what in the end will free his mind. The Chef, while on face value, seems to be brutally murdered, serves the alternate and what I believe is the true purpose of his end. He is taken out of the picture to equate a dealing with slavery and enduring racism, allowing Danny to confront his damaged self and recover by covering his tracks with the white snowfall in another very close reference to going back to innocence and time travel back to when the Europeans first landed on the continent (the blizzard taking place at the height of the action).
The story telling is a vision of a man going back to his child self and asking him to kill those prejudices and failings that have made him into the damaged man that he somehow became belying the human he started out as. The butler’s inclusion and his horrific crimes may be a reference to some childhood trauma Jack had witnessed or conjured as a boy, or worse, an instance of a past crime Jack himself had committed. Jack’s wife accompanies him through the madness as she loves the person he used to be as we see her and Danny walk together from their first trip through the garden working on figuring out the maze through his troubled past. We witness both Danny and his mother relaxed watching an unplugged television in what can be assumed is a memory of a more relaxed time in her and Jacks’s relationship. When Danny utters the word murder in reverse repeatedly, he again proves his character’s intent of traveling backwards to kill off those unhealthy demons that have attached to him as he has aged. In the end a success is narrowly obtained, and we can assume the battle to kill off the negative self has been a success as the mother and young Danny (Jack) run off together to permanently escape what they had traveled to the desolate location to accomplish.
I apologize for my lengthy and exhaustive spoiler. Please forgive me as this movie is at the top of my list of films that I consider to be above reproach. Not only do the filmmaker’s attention to absolute clarity and precise tension building suspense maintain the needed space to weave a coherent travel through the complex spaces of a troubled mind, but the stunning visuals create a truly profound pictorial reference to madness, redemption, and love.
I never read the book by Stephen King, my dad read it, and it disturbed him to no end. He said it deals heavily with the most negative instances a person processes internally. I thought the movie was as far as I needed to take my experience. I don’t want to mess up 4 season’s by Mr. King, which are about as dark as I care to go.
