All Jack’d Up: The 40th anniversary of “The Shining”

 

By Michael Lyons

Unsettling.  Nerve racking.  Morbidly funny.  Disturbing, Iconic.

Director Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” is all of these.  This is why for forty years, the film has stayed at the forefront of horror movie conversations.  As “The Shining” hits this milestone and usually finds itself in many a Halloween Season movie rotation, it’s fitting to look back at this most unique entry in the horror movie genre.

Based on the novel by the literal king of horror writing, Stephen King, “The Shining” centers on writer Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson in one of his most famous performances), who brings his wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and his son Danny (Danny Lloyd) to the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado, where the family will act as caretakers, staying there through the winter, while the hotel is closed for the season.

A mysterious, supernatural force of past evil lives in the Overlook as well and begins to possess Jack, slowly driving him to insanity and against his family.  Additionally, his son Danny develops the ability called “The Shining,” a telepathic power that allows him to see and know things that others can’t.

Director Kubrick brings his slow, sleepy and, at times, hypnotic pacing and style (seen in some of his other well-known films, such as “A Clockwork Orange”), which brings a sense of impending doom to the film, even in its earliest scenes where nothing scary happens...but feels like it soon will.

And they do...in some of the most haunting images ever put on screen:  the camera following Danny as he endlessly rides his Big Wheel tricycle through the halls of the empty hotel...and then comes upon the twin girls (“Come and play with us, Danny...”); “Redrum” scrawled on the wall and seen in a mirror by Wendy and realizing what it spells in reverse;  the guest in room 237; blood pouring out of an elevator; Jack, finally gone off the edge and coming after his family with an ax and announcing “Heeeeere’s Johnny!,” in probably the film’s most famous scene.

And that scene is just one of the many examples of how good Jack Nicholson is in this role.  With his trademark arching eyebrows and suspicious smile, it’s easy to dismiss Jack as “just doing Jack” as Jack, but he brings so much to even the quietest moments in the film, particularly those where he just stares blankly at the camera and is the true picture of a man slipping into madness.

It’s been well noted that Stephen King was not happy with this adaptation of his work and actually was involved in a TV mini-series remake of the film in 1997 for ABC.  

Fans have all respect for the author, of course, but feel differently about 1980’s “The Shining,” holding the film in high regard and immensely re-watchable, with multiple themes, messages and hidden meanings coming out of the film.

In 2013, King penned a sequel, “Doctor Sleep,” which was adapted into a successful film last year.  For the fourteenth anniversary of “The Shining,” Fathom Events, along with Turner Classic Movies, is hosting theatrical screenings of the film this week and the film has been the subject of multiple articles, blogs and You Tube videos lately.

So many remember and appreciate “The Shining” for what it is: Unsettling.  Nerve racking.  Morbidly funny.  Disturbing, Iconic.

Sources:

TCM.com

Wikipedia