Film Review: The Shining (1980)

Films that age like wine and get better with each subsequent viewing are rare. It is even rarer for films to be panned by critics after the premiere and later become almost universally hailed as masterpieces, undisputed genre classics and easily recognisable pop culture references. Such rare achievements require someone with rare talents, and that person was Stanley Kubrick when directing his 1980 horror film The Shining.

The plot, based on the novel by Stephen King, is set in the Overlook, a luxurious hotel situated in the Colorado Rockies. The protagonist, played by Jack Nicholson, is Jack Torrance, a former teacher and aspiring writer who agrees to work as the caretaker during the winter, when the hotel is closed. He is to spend a few months there together with his wife Wendy (played by Shelley Duvall) and young son Danny (played by Danny Lloyd) and hopes that the isolation from the outside world will help him to focus on his literary work. Danny, unbeknownst to his parents, possesses psychic abilities which are recognised by Dick Halloran (played by Scatman Crothers), the departing hotel’s chef who is a telepath himself. He befriends the boy and explains his skill known as “shining” and warns him about disturbing phenomena in the hotel. These first appear as Danny’s visions, related to the fate of a previous winter caretaker who took his life after butchering his family. As weeks and months go by, Jack too begins to experience visions and they begin to take a terrible toll on his grip on reality and sanity, and it becomes increasingly likely that the bloody history of the Overlook might repeat itself.

Kubrick is known as one of the great masters of world cinema and his perfectionist touch is evident from beginning to end. Every shot is meticulously composed and perfectly framed with utmost care for every single detail. The perfect cinematography by John Alcott is complemented by great production design, especially in the London studio sets which were used for interior shots of the hotel, portrayed as a stylish, luxurious but also menacing place with wide spaces that make the characters feel claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time. A strong emphasis on style serves this film very well when it creates a sense of horror by having scenes featuring opulence, luxury and beauty (like in Jack’s encounter with the naked bathtub lady) made in a way to explicitly or implicitly suggest sinister, evil and supernatural forces at work. Kubrick works very hard to create unease among the audience with clever musical choices that sound more like background noise than a conventional soundtrack. He deliberately evades usual horror film techniques like jump scares or the use of dark spaces. The goriest and the most disturbing scenes are displayed in broad daylight. The editing is also superb – the pace is deliberately slow, but it allows the audience to soak up the atmosphere of the Overlook and get to know the characters very well and become emotionally invested in their fate.

Kubrick’s skill alone, however, couldn’t turn The Shining into an extraordinary film. For that he needed an extraordinary cast and he got it, although the casting of Nicholson and Duvall is still the cause of debate among cinephiles. There is no doubt that those two are great actors and they played their respective roles in this film very well. On the other hand, it could be argued that they weren’t perfect casting choices. By the time of The Shining Jack Nicholson had already built a reputation as New Hollywood’s superstar and the audience was expecting another scenery-chewing performance. They got it, but although Nicholson had justification for his over-the-top acting in his character being a madman, he failed to initially establish Jack Torrance as a “normal” character. Instead, he is initially subtly, but unmistakably menacing and the transformation of a loving father and husband into an axe murderer isn’t as shocking or disturbing as in the case of a character being played by a more restrained actor. The same thing, to a degree, can be said about Shelley Duvall who for the most part plays a constantly intimidated, fearful and overemotional character who almost falls apart at the end of the film, almost compromising her function as the Final Girl (although it can be said that such a trope is shared with Danny’s character). Less problematic are the supporting actors, like Joe Turkel who plays the polite but sinister-looking bartender Lloyd and Philip Stone who plays waiter Delbert Grady. The most impressive and memorable performance belongs to Scatman Crothers who appears briefly as Halloran, but nevertheless brings a warm breath of humanity into a film which some might call cold and misanthropic.

While many critics, the author of this review included, changed their opinion of The Shining for the better, Stephen King, the author of the original novel, remains an important exception. Despite the film representing another relatively successful high-budget adaptation of his work, he still considers it a failure and claims that Kubrick missed its point while adapting it. While the original novel clearly belonged to the genre of supernatural horror and represented a conventional ghost story, Kubrick muddled the waters and allowed the possibility that the events in the Overlook are nothing more than a simple story about an ordinary man becoming a homicidal maniac and that the supernatural content in the film represents nothing more than a reflection of his sick psyche. King believes that such an interpretation oversimplified his story and characters, but, on the other hand, the somewhat abrupt ending leaves the door open not for one, but many other interpretations including those used by King in his novel Doctor Sleep and its 2019 adaptation. Other explanations, offered by the film’s fans through the decades, have viewed The Shining as an allegory for the Holocaust, the treatment of American Indians and even Kubrick’s implicit confession of his alleged role in the faking of the Moon landing. A single source that spawns such a diversity of views must be an extraordinary piece of art, and The Shining fits that description perfectly.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

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