There are some movies that are so impactful for you, that you can remember the first time you watched them; for me, The Shining is one of those movies. It was Halloween night in 2017 and I was sitting on the couch, eating pigs in a blanket and candy with my partner. We lived in an apartment complex in Jersey City, so trick-or-treaters weren’t really a thing and we had just gotten married that spring, so we wanted to establish some new traditions of our own for some holidays. We decided to give The Shining a try: I had never seen it before, and my partner owned a copy on DVD. We turned the lights off and hit play, and within seconds, I was mesmerized.
The opening helicopter shot of Jack Torrance driving through the Rocky Mountains to the Overlook Hotel while the Dies Irae segment from “Symphonie fantastique” by Hector Berlioz plays is one of my favorite film openings of all time. You get a feel for the beauty of the region, but also the complete isolation that awaits the Torrance family for six long and (mostly) cold months. This scene sets the stage for the rest of the movie, as we are already feeling uneasy by a long, winding shot of a beautiful location that is counterbalanced with music telling us to not be so comfortable. This is one of many things Kubrick does that makes this my favorite “suspense” film of all time.
Kubrick did a lot of other great things in this film, one of them being the early use of the Steadicam. The Shining was one of the first films to ever use the Steadicam, with its inventor, Garrett Brown, being one of the key producers for the movie. One of the best examples of the Steadicam being put to use is the tracking shot we get of Danny riding his Big Wheel throughout the hotel – without the typical abundance of gear needed to get a shot like this (dolly or crane), the cinematographer is able to get super low and super close to the bike, which provides for the jarring sound difference when Danny is riding on the hardwood floors and the rugs. Speaking of those rugs, let’s talk about one of the most controversial aspects of this movie: the conspiracy theories!
I don’t know about you, but I love to read about a good conspiracy theory – I typically don’t believe them and I’m not much of a tin-hat person, but boy are they entertaining to read!1 If you’ve read any sort of article or watched any video on The Shining, then you are probably aware of one, if not several, conspiracy theories that have spawned from and about the movie. In regards to the rugs (and moreover the Native American art seen throughout the hotel), some have theorized that The Shining is an allegory of American Imperialism and the genocide of Native Americans as a whole. The hotel’s manager recalls how the Overlook is built on top of a burial ground, there are motifs, art and logos being appropriated throughout the hotel, and there are even smaller metaphors hidden throughout. For example, when Jack’s writer’s block is initially setting in, we hear him throwing a tennis ball against the wall. The camera turns the corner, and we see Jack hurling the ball as hard as he can against a wall featuring a massive canvas that has Native motifs on it. I don’t know about you, but I never threw the ball that hard when playing wallball. This is arguably one of the most pervasive theories about the movie, but there are still several more. I won’t go into detail on the rest because we would be here for another hour, but they include: Jack sexually abused Danny, Stanley Kubrick directed the faked video of the Apollo 11 moon landing, The Shining as a whole is informed by the Holocaust, Jack Torrance sold his soul to the devil, and many more.2
Moving on, we need to touch on the incredible performance that we got from Jack Nicholson in this movie. Nicholson gave his first Oscar-winning performance in 1975 with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest but followed it up with three consecutive duds in The Missouri Breaks, The Last Tycoon, and Goin’ South. Kubrick was coming off of directing Barry Lyndon, a highly visual period film that was not a box office success and was derided by critics as being too slow and too long. They both needed a win. Nicholson was Kubrick’s first choice to play Jack Torrance, but Stephen King (author of the original book The Shining) took exception to this choice.3 Nicholson ended up getting the part and he seems to have had quite the time getting to play it. He is over-acting nearly the entire film, but that is what the role calls for – a man slowly losing his mind to the point of insanity and feeling called to murder his wife and child. Nicholson brings the perfect amount of charisma, charm, and insanity to the role, which allows the viewer to be fully engrossed in the story from the jump. Looking back, it is a travesty that this movie didn’t get a single Oscar or Golden Globe nomination. Nicholson belongs in the conversation for Best Actor4, Kubrick deserved a nod for Best Director5, along with the crew being nominated for Best Sound and Best Cinematography.
With that in mind, let’s head to the categories!
By The Numbers
- Budget: $19 million
- Box office: $47.3 million
- Run time: 144 minutes (2 hours, 24 minutes)
- Letterboxd rating: 4.3 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 4.5 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 83% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades – 5 total nominations, 1 total win (including 2 Razzie nominations)
- Zero Academy Award/Golden Globe nominations
- Selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”
Best Scene
We don’t even need to beat around the bush for this movie, it’s an obvious choice. The last thirty minutes or so of the movie all count as one scene for me, and that is our winner. From the moment that Wendy picks up the baseball bat in her room, the movie kicks into sixth gear and doesn’t slow down until the very end. We get some iconic lines, incredible moments of cinematography, and heart-racing thrills throughout.
What’s Aged the Best
Redrum! The first time you see this, and we get the mirror shot spelling out “MURDER”, and then immediately cut to Jack breaking in with the axe is just so iconic. For that matter, we can just add in all of the other iconic lines here which have aged really well. “Wendy, darling, light of my life”, and Nicholson ad-libbing “Heeeere’s Johnny!6” are top of this list. The Grady twins have aged very well, which can also just be lumped in with all of the other references that pop culture make to this movie – namely “here’s Johnny”, the Grady twins, and the elevators gushing with blood. All of these have broken into just about every corner of pop culture and have inspired quite a few works of art themselves. The Overlook Hotel has aged well too – both the Timberline Lodge in Oregon (used for the exterior shots) as well as The Stanley hotel in Colorado, which Stephen King based his novel on after staying there with his family. The Stanley is booked incredibly far out with guests wanting to have the same experience that King had and has provided years and years of good business for them! Finally, my pick for what has aged the best, is the Steadicam. We already mentioned it briefly at the top, but you just can’t beat the invention of this technology that is used in practically every single movie, television show, music video, and so much more. Being able to get the swooping, rushing, moving shots without the shakiness of a handcam is both brilliant and iconic.
What’s Aged the Worst
Well folks, it finally happened: we wrote about a movie that unnecessarily uses a racial slur! One might say that it “fit with the times” or “made sense” in the context, but I’m in the camp that if you take it out, it doesn’t take away from the scene. Outside of that, there isn’t a ton about this movie that aged poorly, aside from one giant, glaring, red flag: Kubrick’s treatment of Shelley Duvall on set. Throughout the filming of the movie, it is said that Kubrick pushed Duvall hard; the scene in which, armed with the baseball bat, she walks backward up the stairs before the attack of her husband (one of the most reshot scenes in all of cinema), she was not representing a terrified woman; Shelley was literally “terrified”, according to multiple sources. Kubrick allegedly had the scene shot 127 different times. Duvall eventually became so overwhelmed by the stress of her role that she became physically ill for months and at one point, she was under so much stress that her hair began to fall out.
The Jason Clarke Award
It’s Tony Burton. He’s the winner. You probably recognize him as Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa’s trainer from the Rocky movies!
The Jack Nicholson Award
Pretty weird to not be giving this award to the namesake, no? I mean obviously he can’t get it, he’s the lead actor in the movie – it’s just weird! Anyways, I’m honestly having trouble choosing between three nominees for this one. It’s between Scatman Crothers (Dick Hallorann), Philip Stone (Delbert Grady) and Joe Turkel (Lloyd the bartender). Philip Stone gives us the most contained performance – he’s really only in the one scene and is instrumental in the movie turning from suspenseful and creepy, to scary and evil. That bathroom scene still gives me the ick to this day. Joe Turkel is incredibly convincing as the ghostly bartender who is there to basically drag Jack into his own version of Hell and push him over the edge. Scatman really brings it home as Dick Hallorann, though. When rewatching on Halloween last night, my partner and I agreed that we both would have been confusingly scared of yet comforted by his presence as children. He’s over-animated with Danny on the tour and doesn’t really know how to interact with a child, but then turns on a dial to have a very real and intimate conversation with him about shining and to never go into Room 237. I gotta give it to Scatman.
The Roger Deakins Award
John Alcott was the cinematographer for The Shining, and he provided us with some really great shots. We have the aforementioned opening sequence of the car driving through the Rocky Mountains, we have the multiple tracking shots with the Steadicam (following Danny on his Big Wheel, following Danny and Wendy through the maze, etc.), but my favorite doesn’t involve the Steadicam and it doesn’t involve the beautiful scenery of Colorado either. It comes from the scene where Jack is locked in the kitchen pantry, and he reveals to Wendy that he has sabotaged the hotel radio and snowcat. The angle that we get from underneath Nicholson while he attempts to sucker Wendy into opening the door for him before telling her to “go check it out” is just so good. We can see his wheels turning, trying to think of how to get himself out of the pantry before being overcome with pure evil joy, knowing that while he is trapped in the pantry, Wendy and Danny are trapped in the hotel. So good.
Conclusion
I really, really like this movie. It’s creepy, it’s suspenseful, it has really great acting, 7 and provided some really iconic moments in cinema history. It’s interesting to look back at the history of this movie – it wasn’t particularly well received when it initially released, and was the only one of Kubrick’s films to be nominated for a Razzie Award (Worst Director and Worst Actress).8 It has since gained a certain respect and admiration from movie watchers, with appreciation for both Nicholson and Duvall’s performances, as well as Kubrick’s vision and outside-the-box approach to horror. If you don’t mind a little fright here and there, I highly recommend you watch this movie. The violence is tame, but the suspense keeps you on the edge of your seat for nearly the entire time. When in doubt, just pull out your phone and read one of the conspiracy theories while the scary stuff happens on screen.
- My favorite conspiracy theory to date is that Michael Jordan didn’t actually retire in 1993, but was secretly suspended for two years for alleged gambling. ↩︎
- I highly suggest you watch this video, which breaks down the entire film, along with the theories, better than I ever could. ↩︎
- King famously hates the film adaptation of The Shining, along with basically every other film adaptation of his books. He thought Nicholson was the wrong choice since people would be associating him with his character from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the viewer wouldn’t get the full experience of the cabin fever suffered by Torrance. ↩︎
- The nominees that year were Robert DeNiro for Raging Bull, Robert Duvall for The Great Santini, John Hurt for The Elephant Man, Jack Lemmon for Tribute, and Peter O’Toole for The Stunt Man, with DeNiro winning. ↩︎
- The nominees that year were Robert Redford, Martin Scorcese, David Lynch, Richard Rush, and Roman Polanski, with Redford winning for Ordinary People. ↩︎
- To be clear, Nicholson borrowed this line from the famous nightly intro of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson ↩︎
- Shoutout to Danny Lloyd, who played Danny Torrance, by the way. He absolutely crushed it in this movie, and this is basically the only acting credit to his name. ↩︎
- The Razzie committee would later (like, way later, not until 2022) rescind Duvall’s nomination for Worst Actress, stating that, “We have since discovered that Duvall’s performance was impacted by Stanley Kubrick’s treatment of her throughout the production.” ↩︎
