The Shining

I've sort of seen The Shining before. I watched it with a then-boyfriend eleven years ago the night before Halloween. I sorta dozed between the beginning the end, and really only remember the opening scene of the car winding up the mountainside, and the final chase through a snow-covered maze.

I missed a lot. As I found out today when I checked out the TCM Big Screen Classic's screening of it. It's a Stanley Kubrick film based off a Stephen King novel, so clearly it's a bit weird. The film's initial story is innocent enough - wannabe-writer Jack Torrance takes a job as the winter caretaker of a hotel in the Rockies. The hotel closes down in the winter because it would be much too costly to keep the road to the hotel plowed during the winter months, hence the need for a caretaker. A caretaker who will be there all by themselves for five months. Jack, though, will have his wife, Wendy, and young son, Danny.

A month in, things get strange. Really strange.

What Kubrick excels at is creating an atmosphere of creepiness. And he does it with all the tools at his disposal - music, mise en scene, set design, cinematography.

Let's start with music. The music makes the film. With out it, nothing would feel as creepy as it is supposed to. And it's not just regular-scary-movie music; it's distinct and deeply jarring. Musical cues can sometimes be annoying (see my take on music in Terms of Endearment), but they work well in The Shining because that atmosphere of creepiness is integral to the film.

The staging of the scenes, mise en scene, is crucial. I love all the tracking shots, especially as the camera follows Danny on his big wheel. It's a disorienting view point.

The set design adds a lot to the film. Think about the red bathroom. Or the carpet. Or the green bathroom. The hotel design has a lot of inconsistencies, which Kubrick did intentionally to disorient viewers. Hallways come out of nowhere. Windows are placed where they wouldn't exist in a real building. The large ballrooms would not fit in that size of hotel.

Apparently Stephen King wasn't happy with the casting of Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance. According to him, audiences see Nicholson and expect him to be a bit creepy/off balance. So the decent of Torrance into crazytown isn't as unexpected as it should be. And I kind of agree with him; Jack Nicholson comes with actor-baggage. The kid who plays Danny, though, is amazing. For being just five, he successfully mesmerizes as the kid who "shines". The look of terror on his face when he's at the bottom of the window that his mom has gotten him out of is just so real.

This movie is cuh-reepy. Classicly so.