The Shining

From the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece that is The Shining, the suspense builds. The opening musical theme emanates ominous, foreboding notes, played over beautiful tracking shots of a car driving through the scenic mountains of Colorado.

Inside the car is Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a former teacher on his way to the overlook Hotel, to interview for the position of caretaker for the winter (due to the costs of cleaning the roads of snow, the hotel closes in the winter). Jack also plans to bring his wife, Wendy, and his son, Danny (who has supernatural powers and sees visions of the hotel's evil) to the hotel to keep him company during the long winter months.

Nicholson's sly smile, arched eyebrows, and creepy demeanor let the audience know Jack cannot be trusted. most of the first half of the film is waiting for Jack to crack, due to the sinister forces inhabiting the hotel (of course you knew something was going to go wrong). Stephen King, the author of the novel, infamously disliked the adaptation of his book, and one of his reasons was that the casting of Nicholson would tip the audience off of what was going to happen. Kubrick, however, wanted Nicholson so that the suspense was established from the moment he was on screen.

Kubrick improved over King's vision in this instance. As Hitchcock once said, when explaining the difference between surprise and suspense, that imagine that two people are talking at a table. There is a bomb and it suddenly goes off with no prior warning. In a second scenario, the audience is shown the bomb at the beginning of the conversation, which lasts for 15 minutes. "In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed."

Nicholson's acting in this film is incredible. It is pure joy to watch as Jack is enveloped by nightmares and consumed by anger. Easily the best Nicholson performance I have seen. No wonder he was typecast as Joker in 1989's Batman, and as the villain in subsequent films.

The two most important filmmaking techniques that Kubrick uses here are the movement of the camera and the sound.

Kubrick's tracking shots of Danny riding his tricycle through the hotel's symmetrically carpeted corridors are masterful. The camera flies through the maze of a hotel. Whenever the camera is following Danny, the camera takes on a magical life of its own, making you on the edge of your seat with suspense as well as awed by the scenic beauty of Kubrick's locations.

What makes The Shining so above and beyond any horror film of its time, and certainly miles better than any modern horror flick is the atmosphere. The film doesn't rely on cheap jump scares. The cinematography, combined with the use of sound create an eerie quality that evokes the hotel's evil. Most of the music is a motley collection of creepy sounds, strung together. That may sound trashy, but it works well because it is not used just during jump scares. There are no sudden spikes of music when something pops out. THe eeriness builds throughout and is almost always a constant. Kubrick also intercuts brief flashes of gruesome imagery to represent Danny's visions.

Another part of the greatness of The Shining is that not everything is explained. That is amazingly restrained for a filmmaker to do that. Nowadays, there is an urge to explain everything in a film - the supernatural being has an origin, the sci-fi teleportation or laser guns have a scientific basis. Sometimes, that works (The Martian, The Cabin in the Woods). Most of the time, though, ambiguity is a blessing. it leaves the interpretation of the film to the viewer, which is why there are so many fan theories about The Shining. FIlm as a medium is subjective. If there was a set definition of a film, there would be no discussion of film, and there would be no reason for me to write this review.

Kubrick, in The Shining, has made a chilling, atmospheric, cabin-fever horror classic that will be discussed for years to come.

In my mind, that is the definition of success.

{★★★★}