The Shining

In this superb reworking of Stephen King’s horror novel of the same name, Stanley Kubrick picks and chooses elements from the book that best suit his purpose, reassembling them to deliver his own personal, albeit pessimistic, vision of reality and human nature. For Kubrick, the human soul has always harbored irrationality and brutality, which explains why good Stanley took the liberty of adding domestic violence to the list of Torrance’s transgressions, even though such details are totally absent from the literary source (King publicly disapproved of this decision).

With that in mind, the Overlook Hotel’s sinister influence can be seen as a sort of catalyst that uncovers these negative traits that normally simmer somewhere deep inside all of us (perhaps with the exception of children, for whom the director seems to harbor some hope) and brings them to the surface. This interpretation lines up with the importance conferred on psychoanalytic theories on subconscious impulses and drives and the Oedipus complex, as well as the weight given to the numerous mythological and folkloristic allegories permeating the entire film – from the titan Cronus’s filicide and the legend of the Minoan labyrinth, up to the child-eating ogres and wolves from the pages of European fairy tales.

Rich with atmospheric long takes (including the famous use of the Steadicam through the hotel’s claustrophobic hallways), powerful in its ceaseless pursuit of geometric harmony and symmetry, and supported by a suitably oppressive main theme, “The Shining” is a technically dazzling work seemingly tailor-made to drop the viewer into a dimension of algid, existential discomfort.

Jack Nicholson’s histrionic performance has rightly earned him a place in cinematic history.