I always feel like that the hotel and its forces were just so powerful, that once Jack died, he'd already sort of given his soul to the hotel, so they were sort of just able to suck him in and back in time and retroactively make it so he felt he'd been there all along.
shareIt seemed to me that certain souls keep coming back to that hotel. The "you've always been here" line and the photo at the end was what made me think this.
shareThat is another indication that Jack can "shine," just like his son and the chef. Danny can see past events (the Grady twin girls), just as Jack can see the past and communicate with people in the past (bartender, Grady, the woman in the bathtub, etc.). His picture on the wall is perhaps just a coincidence: that someone in the past looked like him. The film may even be implying that his lookalike could shine as well, and that there may have been many "shiners" throughout history. When Wendy sees ghosts in the hotel, she may be shining too. The whole story is obviously a metaphor about the mental distress suffered by this family that manifests itself as ghostly visions and such. It has been done before in films, notably in Roman Polanski's "Repulsion," where a depressed woman sees all kinds of repulsive hallucinations.
shareI like this... but I just thought one of two things -
1. That he was the reincarnation of Grady. There's a scene in the bathroom where Grady says "You've always been here. I know this because I've always been here." There is also a scene where Jack is in bed eating eggs and he tells Wendy the first time he came to the hotel he felt a crazy sense of Deja Vu. This doesn't explain the picture showing the exact image of Jack, unless the hotel made Grady look different when he confronts Jack.
2. When Jack dies his soul is sucked into the hotel. All the dead people who are at the hotel were people murdered or killed there in the past and their souls are there too. That's why the hotel wanted Danny so bad - he's got the Shining and that allows the hotel to communicate with him well. They wanted to suck that powerful soul in. That's why you see Jack at the end in the picture.
Personally I like 1 better than 2, but
He couldn’t have been the reincarnation of Grady as Grady died only ten years earlier. I assumed that Grady and jack are both reincarnations of people who parties at the overlook right when it was built so they were cursed to always come back and be consumed by the hotel.
sharewhat did kubrick have to say about it?
shareHaha if you think Kubrick actually revealed anything. He was the kind of guy who not only left so much to the viewers' interpretation, but also when he was done with a project, he moved on. He didn't even watch his own movies.
Bottom line, Kubrick didn't have anything to say.
Even though I like the way you think, I really don't see what in the movie let us suppose that Jack shines as well. I mean, this hotel is clearly something coming straight from hell. Anyway will lose his mind in this place.
But then there is the picture at the end which adds some ambiguity. The way I always saw it, is that anyone who gets possessed by the hotel ends up added on that picture. Nothing suggest that he was there before the events.
The other theory I had for some time about the picture is that it was taken in another life, and that in the said life Jack was one of the hotel's founder. This our that he actually was in that place the whole time and that his family comes from his imagination. Or that he was there for the picture but for some reasons forgot this event.
Maybe like you say, he does shine. This is what is great about this movie (and most Kubrick's movies while we're at it) is that so much is left to our interprations. In 50 years people will still discuss this movie and make new theories.
Outstanding movie!
I go with this^
shareI think Jack was reliving moments from his past-life by staying in that hotel. When he mentioned to Wendy that entering the hotel was like a moment of deja vu - like he had 'been there before', is what gave me that indication. And maybe, the picture on the wall always had Jack's face in it...but nobody took time to notice. So basically, what I'm saying is, maybe Jack gravitated towards that hotel, because being there was giving him recollections of his past-life. In a sense, being there felt only natural, but later proved to be his greatest downfall.
But hey, I could be wrong.
And even if the deja vu / past-life idea is true; that still doesn't really explain his connection to Charles Grady.
But another theory I have is - seeing that Jack clearly had issues with his wife and kid, along with alcohol, maybe the spirits in the hotel were like a trigger for him. His mind was under so much mania and pressure, that the spirits (particularly the spirit of Charles Grady) possessed him, and pushed him over the edge, causing him to reenact the exact same thing that Charles Grady did.
Oh, I don't really know. There are still so many theories I could mention. But I still think my first theory may hold some significance.
I don't interpret the ending in any way other than Jack, after being successfully consumed by the hotel into attempting to kill his family, in death now belongs to it and has become part of its history, and that is the hotel's way of showing it in the photo. As Grady said, he's always been the caretaker.
shareExactly.
shareI'd say your brief explanation works on many levels, in the "quick-and-dirty" sense.
The other obvious possibility is that Jack Torrance went insane and imagined everything with WAY too much time and isolation on his hands. Kubrick of course, declined to provide a definitive answer and wanted the viewers to come to their own conclusion. (Or he did not care one way or another.) However, given the documented and lengthy history of horrific events that spanned decades, I tend to think it was a combination of Jack's diminishing sanity and paranormal/psychic influences. So we never truly know what the "blend" was.
All of the above stated, my take is that the hotel was, in effect, a massive "focusing lens" for those with paranormal ability, latent (like Jack) or powerful (the boy). It was definitely malignant/evil. The wife had ZERO ability, so the hotel only was able to get her to see what it want her to see when it was "super-charged" with psychic energy, near the finale.
The hotel knew that the boy was a threat since he could effectively summon outside, and powerful help, who presumably "thwarted the hotel" for years if not decades while he worked there. (He knew that an unstable person like Jack would be dangerous, and the young boy with the Shining would be targeted; but he tried to not care and do what he could while talking with the boy). The boy could influence the wife and possibly Jack to leave. He had to go. The wife was totally incidental, UNTIL she got the best of Jack and locked him in the storage room.
As for Jack always being part of the house "staff" or a reincarnated version of Grady. I like your answer, while simplistic, works well.