The Shining

The first time I saw The Shining, I was a little let down.  Sure, I liked it okay, but the film had such a reputation that I was expecting to be blown away.  How often do we see legendary directors entering the horror genre and succeeding?  And how many other horror movies have become so ingrained in popular culture as this one?  Obviously, The Shining is a classic.  And yet...something just didn't click for me.  This year, I thought I would give it another go and see what influence age, wisdom, and forgetfulness would have on my opinion.

This is an endearing tale of a man and his love of bourbon, right?

Jack (Jack Nicholson) is an aspiring writer looking for a change, so he takes a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel.  The hotel's staff leaves for about five months out of the year because the area receives so much snow that the hotel is effectively isolated from humanity.  Of course, they might take time off because the hotel is built on an Indian burial ground, has ghosts, and a previous winter caretaker had gone insane and murdered his family in the hotel; po-tay-to, po-tah-to.  Did the killer caretaker go crazy from cabin fever?  Nobody knows.  But why shouldn't Jack bring his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), with for five months of quality family time? 

No reason

Before the hotel staff leaves, though, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) pulls little Danny aside and lets him in on a secret --- he knows that Danny secretly has some sort of psychic ability.  Dick calls it "the shining," and he has it too; unfortunately, places sometimes "shine" when really bad things happen there; think of it as a psychic ring-around-the-collar.  The Overlook Hotel has a nasty "shine" to it. At first, things seem fine.  Danny and Wendy find all sorts of things to do in the enormous hotel.  Jack, though, seems to be suffering from writer's block and is getting more and more irritable.  And creepy.  And he starts hallucinating.  Is it just a case of cabin fever, or is it something worse?

It's worse --- as caretaker, Jack has to clean this up

Oh, man, I needed a movie like this.  The horror movies I've been reviewing this month (with the exception of Thirst) have been fairly cut and dry with their direction; either the directors were competent or they were not.  Stanley Kubrick is, of course, more than just competent --- the man was an artist.  Enjoying his technical prowess with the camera, his use of color and sound, not to mention the great performance by Jack Nicholson, was a treat after so many bad slasher pics.  Right from the opening scene, we get a gorgeous series of helicopter shots, showing Jack's car absolutely dwarfed and completely surrounded by untamed nature; not only is that pretty to look at and unlike almost anything else you will see in a horror movie, but it's symbolic.  Hell, yeah!  That's what I've been missing from my cinematic diet recently! 

Art + axe-wielding maniac = can't miss movie

As impressive as the visuals are --- and there are a ton of iconic shots in this movie, so "impressive" is probably underselling it --- what struck me in this viewing was Kubrick's use of sound.  I loved the discordant static when there was any shining going on; it was usually subtle, but called attention to itself every so often, like when Dick and Danny first meet.  Similarly subtle is the unreasonably unsettling noise of Danny's big wheel as he tears across the hotel's wooden floors.  There is no reason to suspect something is wrong, but the uncharacteristically loud and abrasive noise sets you up for the creepiness that lies just around the corner.

Kubrick's direction is fantastic, but it would have been just an empty technical exercise without the effort of Jack Nicholson.  Nicholson, once again, takes a pretty standard role (an alcoholic writer going crazy) and makes him charming and frightening at the same time.

...and this is his "charming" face

In other words, Nicholson takes a role that could have been shallow or overacted in another actor's hands and instead fleshes it out into a believable character.  I noticed something new this year, though; Jack's condescension toward his wife always struck me as odd, but it made more sense to me this time --- his character here almost feels like a logical extension of his role in Five Easy Pieces, only this character got married to the pleasant but dumb chick.  Speaking of whom, I was not impressed by Shelley Duvall.  As good as Jack Nicholson was, Duvall was commensurately bad.  It felt like she was an extra that was asked to read lines with the cast during a break, not the lead actress in a motion picture.

I hate mouth breathers

She and Kubrick infamously clashed throughout production, but I am astounded that Kubrick settled for the performance we see on screen.  Maybe they just wanted Wendy to be a spineless dishrag of a character.  Little Danny Lloyd wasn't much of an actor (although no relation to Jake Lloyd), but he did a good job of being completely impassive whenever adults were speaking to him.  Other than an impressive blank stare and a creepily-voiced finger...

Lesson: kids are stupid

...I suppose Danny was adequate.   This was years before audiences actually expected anything out of their child actors, so I guess that being okay was good enough, even in a movie like this.  Personally, I would have liked to see him act frightened more often, because that was when he was at his best.

Trauma = Acting

As much as I enjoyed The Shining this time --- it went from "pretty good" in my mind to "effing great" --- it is occasionally uneven.  First and foremost, this is a long horror movie.  I understand that it takes time to set the mood just right, but damn it's long for what it is.  Perhaps more irritating for many people is how the movie doesn't tie up its loose ends. 

• What was with Grady having two first names?  
• Was Jack a reincarnation of a former Overlook employee, or was he absorbed by the evil hotel?  
• Is this a story of a haunting, or simply a man going insane?  
• Why did Jack seem to lose the ability to communicate as the film progressed?

I'm not going to try to answer those questions, even though I believe they are all important.  I like the ambiguity in this story because it allows viewers to come up with their own interpretation of what has occurred.  I don't always like it when filmmakers force the audience to decode their stories (David Lynch, I'm looking at you), but I think The Shining conveys enough of the story to allow viewers to enjoy it with a single viewing; subsequent viewings, though, make the inconsistencies more noticeable, which made me want to discuss and enjoy the movie further.

Sometimes, all you need is a friend to set things straight for you

I'm so glad I took the time to re-watch The Shining this month.  It's not necessarily one of those movies that you immediately acknowledge as a classic (as evidenced by its lukewarm initial reception), but there are a lot of layers here and it is fun to see how Kubrick tries to frighten audiences.  The movie is too long and the non-Nicholson cast is mediocre if you're being generous, but the film makes up for its deficiencies in other ways.  This is a horror movie with almost no violence, and yet it is one of the most creepy, claustrophobic films you will ever see.

I have a few side notes to add.  Is it strange that I laughed out loud when this image flashed on the screen?

 It's probably not supposed to be funny, but I giggle every time I see it.  I think it's Jack's gaze, combined with his eyebrows.  Whatever.

I have actually visited the place that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining, the Stanley Hotel in Colorado.  It's not as creepy as the Overlook (the movie was filmed elsewhere), but it is kind of cool to see how closely the film conveys some of the rooms in the building.  Oh, and the Stanley has a TV channel that plays The Shining on a continuous loop, which is pretty cool.

And I can't review The Shining without making a single reference to The Simpsons.  For my money, this is their best "Treehouse of Horror" episode ever.

The Killing

When most people think of Stanley Kubrick, they usually think of his later works, like 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining.  That's fair enough, I suppose; by that point in his career, Kubrick was acknowledged as a film genius and was allowed to get genuinely weird.  While not as inventive or visually interesting as those films, The Killing is very important in Kubrick's career.  While it wasn't very successful, this was the first time Kubrick worked with a professional cast and crew.  This film also attracted the attention of Kirk Douglas and MGM, and those partnerships lead to his breakthrough films, Paths of Glory and Spartacus.  Of course, you don't have to care about the film in its historical context.  It's a nice film noir, either way.

After being released from prison, Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) was a man with a plan.  As much as he would have liked to live the quiet life with his fiancee (Coleen Gray), he wants to pull one last job --- a high risk, high reward robbery --- before they marry.  He plans to do the impossible and rob a racetrack, despite the armed policemen, employees, high security, and thousands of witnesses.  To pull off the job, he needs a police officer (Ted de Corsia), a racetrack bartender (Joe Sawyer), a racetrack bookkeeper (Jay C. Flippen), and a racetrack cashier (Elisha Cook, Jr.); these are the men that are need-to-know, and they need to know each other and their roles in the overall plan.  Clay also hires two other men, on a strictly no-need-to-know basis; they are a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey) and an enormously burly chess aficionado (Kola Kwariani).  The plan (which I won't detail for you) is flawless.  However, even the best plans can be foiled by small mistakes.

Before I get into the things I liked about The Killing, I have to get a couple of things off my chest first.  The narration in this movie is godawful.  It is on par with Harrison Ford's intentionally bad narration for the theatrical cut of Blade Runner.  It makes the movie feel like an episode of Dragnet, only without any idea who the narrator is or how he came by his information.  According to film lore, the narration was tacked on by  the movie studio, and this was one of the final straws before Kubrick would start demanding complete control over his films.  In the long run, I guess things turned out okay, but it's still really terrible.  The score is pretty bombastic, too.  It would have been better used in a gladiator fight instead of scenes showing anonymous characters placing horse racing bets.  And the bit with the dog, towards the end, is a little too cutesy for this movie, I think.

The first thing you're going to notice about The Killing is that it is not told in chronological order.  It's not as disjointed as Pulp Fiction (which it influenced), but many key scenes are told and retold from the perspective of another character.  The camera work isn't as flashy as it is in other Kubrick movies, but it is one of the film's strong points.  Normally, filmmakers use a quick establishing shot to tell the audience where the scene is taking place, and then it will cut to mid-shots and close-ups of the actors in the scene.  Kubrick holds his establishing shots longer than usual in this film, allowing the audience to feel like more of an actual observer.  The pace is brisk and the tone is brutal.  This is classic film noir, complete with a tough "hero" in Clay, a femme fatale (Marie Windsor), and a tough as nails ending.  The ending is a fantastic cap to a good movie, complete with a great last line of dialogue: "Eh, what's the difference?"  It might not sound like much, but it fits the movie perfectly.

Sterling Hayden was good in the lead role, matching the tone of the film with his tone of voice.  The movie doesn't spend much time developing characters, so most of the supporting cast was just doing their job.  Elisha Cook, Jr. (who I love in Bogart movies) did a great job as the brow-beaten and pathetic cashier.  His final stand is one of the best parts of the film.  His wife, played by Marie Windsor, is one of the foulest femme fatales I have seen so far.  Most of the time, there's some ambiguity with how good or bad they are, but she is rotten to the core.  Oddly enough, the two no-need-to-know guys that stuck out for me.  I thought that Timothy Carey did a very good job with the limited time he was given, although I wish his downfall didn't directly connect to his racist remarks.  I also liked the use of real-life professional wrestler and chess fanatic, Kola Kwariani; he was disgustingly hairy, and his accent was almost too thick to understand, but he is the most believable thug I have seen in a 1950s film.

Do you like crime movies?  Do you like noir?  Do you like tough guys in movies?  If so, check this movie out.  It's not flawless, but the crime is well-executed and the film itself has no remorse for any of the characters.  They might have made a killing with this heist, but that's not where the killing ends.