40 years old! The ending still ambiguous.
One of the many great things about this movie, is the open for interpretation ending.
Experts on this movie have theories but they remain just that, theories.
What "interpretive ending"?
It's simple: Jack froze to death in the maze and joined the evil spirits in the Overlook Hotel, whilst Wendy and Danny escaped.
There's nothing to interpret.
Did you miss the picture on the wall?
The picture is what I mean, it contains all of the evil spirits in the Overlook Hotel, including Jack.
I really don't see what the misunderstanding is.
So how exactly was Jack alive AND a spirit in a picture from the 1920's?
Final scene.
https://youtu.be/Abey64kpZws
We didn't actually see the picture until AFTER Jack died, so he appeared afterwards. And the spirits were stuck in the 1920s, so he too would join them there. And the Gold Room scene was the first time Jack saw all of them and didn't feel disturbed, and they liked him then too.
It's really very simple, Redsfan001.
Thanks, I kind of like that interpretation of the ending.
But as viewers, we don't know for sure, it is speculation. What if the photo exist AS IS before Mr.Torrance arrived?
The photo is from the 1920s, which is the time period the spirits are stuck in, including those that came later, like Delbert Grady and Jack, so maybe he was always there? It's one of a series of group photos, and maybe no-one ever noticed before?
Another theory is that the picture was a doppelganger and was the seed to mental illness for Jack, where he elaborated special story line for explaining the photo.
shareThe most difficult thing to read here is...40 years old.
I saw it when it first came out. Seems like only yesterday.
I recall thinking on first viewing that it wasn't at the level of Dr. Strangelove or 2001...but all these years later, now it seems that it is.
Do you recall what was the reaction of the audience? Were they screaming and getting involved in the film, or was the reaction puzzlement?
shareDo you recall what was the reaction of the audience? Were they screaming and getting involved in the film, or was the reaction puzzlement?
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I don't recall people screaming at The Shining. It is a 'process of elimination" for me. The list of movies I saw with audiences who really SCREAMED is a short one: Psycho(in a 1979 full-house college revival); Wait Until Dark(first run), Jaws (first DAY) and...Friday the 13th..which taught me a sad lesson: you didn't have to make a movie as great as Psycho or Jaws to make people scream at killings.
I recall only one scream at a full-house first run screening of The Exorcist, and it wasn't for anything scary: it was a cheap lion's roar sound effect when Burstyn is exploring the attic. The rest of it -- when it got gross -- was a mixture of "Uggh" "Ewww" and laughter.
The Shining got no screams(not even in the film's one killing scene). It got an "uggh/ewww"(woman in the bathtub. But mostly it got laughs. Mainly laughing WITH,not AT.
The whole scene of Nicholson stalking his wife up the stairs and being "toxic" ("I'm not gonna hurtcha..and I'm just gonna bash your brains in") was laughed at until, when Jack said "gimme the bat" - - they yelled "GIVE HIM THE BAT!" and cheered and applauded when she hit him in the head and fell down the stairs. More laughs at "Little pigs" and "Heere's Johnny"
The chase through the snowy maze was simply...dull. No reaction. I suppose people were just trying to think things out at that point.
Note in passing: I first saw The Shining at a special screening with "Hollywood insiders" at the Motion Picture Academy in Hollywood. Notoriously tough crowd. I also saw The Empire Strikes Back there and they didn't cheer it or applaud it at all. Jealous, I guess.
I have a vivid memory of standing outside the theatre door in the auditorium waiting to see the next showing of the original Halloween, and hearing the screams of the audience through the door.
By today's standards it probably would fetch a shrug and a 'meh'.
I have a vivid memory of standing outside the theatre door in the auditorium waiting to see the next showing of the original Halloween, and hearing the screams of the audience through the door.
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That's a great memory! I never saw Halloween in the theater first run, I'm sure it would have been a lot of screaming.
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By today's standards it probably would fetch a shrug and a 'meh'.
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Same with Psycho and Jaws and Wait Until Dark. As one critic wrote of today "we have become a different species" -- unless its a REALLY good jump scare -- people simply don't scream anymore at shock violence. We've absorbed it into our systems. Nothing can shock us.
Perhaps Kubrick with The Shining "got that." The film doesn't depend on shock scream moments. It has one "jump scare killing" that really isn't "sold" right -- the audience doesn't scream (given that the killer is a too familiar and sorta funny Jack Nicholson, there's no mystery to it.) The Shining subsists on dread and mystery and a very dark comedy.
Here's what I liked about the "jump scare" that Stephen King famously declared a failure. We have a POV hand-held camera behind Wendy as she's reading the "All work and no play" manuscripts. As per Black Christmas and Halloween, the audience naturally assumes we are seeing the POV of someone sneaking up behind her. However, Jack's hand suddenly appears in the right side of the frame and he steps into view, asking her "how do yo like it?", with no cut-away from the camera. We realize that it could not have been Jack's POV at this moment. This begs the question - who, or what, was watching Jack watching Wendy? So, yeah, Kubrick was going for uncanny eeriness and dread more than traditional jump scares.
shareHere's what I liked about the "jump scare" that Stephen King famously declared a failure. We have a POV hand-held camera behind Wendy as she's reading the "All work and no play" manuscripts. As per Black Christmas and Halloween, the audience naturally assumes we are seeing the POV of someone sneaking up behind her. However, Jack's hand suddenly appears in the right side of the frame and he steps into view, asking her "how do yo like it?", with no cut-away from the camera. We realize that it could not have been Jack's POV at this moment. This begs the question - who, or what, was watching Jack watching Wendy? So, yeah, Kubrick was going for uncanny eeriness and dread more than traditional jump scares.
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Well put...I remember that moment indeed getting a big GASP -- if not a scream -- from the audience -- and I realize now that I either didn't get or didn't remember the POV.
The movie toys with the "reality" of the ghosts -- most famously: who lets Jack out of the frozen locker, which gets debate around these places. I do remember in 1980 that there was some real "audience noise" at that point -- the ghosts not only had to be real(and not in Jack's mind) ...they had physical power.
Unless they didn't (see: debate on this page.)
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So, yeah, Kubrick was going for uncanny eeriness and dread more than traditional jump scares.
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Yes. Kubrick's "rep" was as an art film maker of "important films." He HAD to bring that sensibility to The Shining or he'd lose that reputation (and maybe Warners would stop treating him like a God allowed to make movies every five, seven, twelve years).
CONT
I didn't much like The Shining the first time I saw it. It didn't much feel like a horror movie and I was particularly unimpressed by Jack chasing the kid around the maze...it all seemed half-hearted and anti-climactic. Indeed, JACK didn't seem terribly frightening to me at the end, even killing that one person.
But over the years and with re-viewings, I've adopted the film as a favorite. Some of it is nostalgia -- I remember where I was, and who I was, in 1980 --but some of it is responding to the other aspects of the film -- its great look, its great setting(The Overlook; right behind the Bates Motel and Mansion as the greatest setting in horror movie history.)
I particularly like three very long, very slow dialogue scenes -- Jack's interview with Barry Nelson(a smarmy actor from the 50's) at the hotel; Jack's first dialogue with Lloyd the bartender, and Jack's bathroom talk with the butler. All of these are funny with a touch of dread. Actually, MORE than a touch of dread with the butler. And hey -- they are as long as some Tarantino dialogues.
I love the scene with the butler. Before they go into the bathroom, Grady spills some advocat (made from eggs) on Jack's jacket. Jack quite impishly and deliberately stains the butler's jacket in return by patting him on the back. The butler has a British accent and Jack even calls him "Jeeves" (the servant from the Jeeves and Wooster books). So there is a master and servant dynamic here, but like in the books, the servant has ways of getting what he wants. In the bathroom scene, first Jack seems at first to have the upper hand, but slowly, insidiously, the butler takes control and is the one in control and manipulating Jack. Just before he bumps into Grady, Jack blurts out the "White Man's Burden" to Lloyd the Bartender. This is the title of a poem by British writer Rudyard Kipling, in which he encouraged America to take up the civilizing endeavor of colonialism after our acquisition of the Philippines in the wake of the Spanish American War. Anyway, getting back to the theme of mutual staining and "egging on", one of the character Peter Sellers plays in Dr. Strangelove is named "Root Captain Mandrake". Mandrake root is a deadly poison. The American nation and subsequent empire has it's roots in the British Empire. What was Kubrick saying about the legacy of the British Empire on the American one?
Anyway, there is no way anybody was going to pick all that up by watching the film in 1980. Barring the expected jump scares and odd tone, it's not surprising it took a long time for the hidden thematic depths of this film to be understood. The creepy, eerie feel of the movie was enough for some people, but not enough, for it to be a huge hit back in 1980.
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This quote by Kubrick is very telling of how he viewed the world: "The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes." So in relation to the red bathroom scene, Jack is seemingly the dominant caretaker, but it's really Grady calling the shots. Likewise, the "special relationship" between the UK and USA during the Cold War (when The Shining was made), had America as the dominant partner (the master), but the UK (the clever and manipulative servant) had a lot of hidden soft power which was amplified by this relationship with USA. Reminds of Margaret Thatcher telling George Bush the Elder "Don't go wobbly, George!" after Sadaam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The American nation and subsequent empire has it's roots in the British Empire. What was Kubrick saying about the legacy of the British Empire on the American one?
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That's some great educational insight there, christomacin. I think that Kubrick knew he had a reputation to uphold, always (but especially after 2001.) I wouldn't doubt that research into a great many topics made it into his films, perhaps from his screenwriters as well as the source writers.
I recall some irritation when Wendy was running around at the end and some rather "minimal" ghostly (but entirely human) apparitions appeared; one with a chopped gash in his bald head, another in a mask performing a sexual act, even as the famous "elevator full of blood" shot re-appeared. I remember thinking: "Oh, its an art film." I reacted AGAINST that; I thought there wasn't much to it, for one thing.
I may actually be right. I'm probably wrong. That's the very NATURE of an art film. (Compare these climactic Shining scenes to the "suspense movie 101 chase and fight basics of the fruit cellar climax in Psycho.)
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Anyway, there is no way anybody was going to pick all that up by watching the film in 1980. Barring the expected jump scares and odd tone, it's not surprising it took a long time for the hidden thematic depths of this film to be understood. The creepy, eerie feel of the movie was enough for some people, but not enough, for it to be a huge hit back in 1980.
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All agreed -- and I was part of that crowd. Verdicts differ on how much of a hit The Shining was, but clearly it was not at the level of The Exorcist or Jaws. The film needed decades to grow.
From the 1980 opening day review by the LA Times Kevin Thomas: "The Shining is too much of an art film to please horror film fans, and too much of a horror film to please art film fans."
Bringing this back to the ending of the film, the date of the photograph (July 4th, 1921) in which Jack's double/reincarnation(?) appears seems to mean SOMETHING specific to the United States. What though?
"The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."
- Stanley Kubrick
Bringing this back to the ending of the film, the date of the photograph (July 4th, 1921) in which Jack's double/reincarnation(?) appears seems to mean SOMETHING specific to the United States. What though?
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Brighter minds than mine must approach this. The Fourth of July, of course...but perhaps the Roaring Twenties and continual partying. WWI behind us, Prohibition and the Depression well ahead of us.
Imagine the Overlook stocked to the gills with giddy, wealthy, sexually promiscuous people. Nothing haunted about THAT.
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"The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."
- Stanley Kubrick
--Ha. Well, yeah.
I think Jack was the reincarnation of a hotel guest from 1921, the way the camera focuses on the date at the end to me indicates that Jack wasn’t just added to the photo, the date means something which implies reincarnation.
shareActually I thought it meant that he was reincarnated.
shareThe interpretation is Jack Torrance is a reincarnation of the man seen in the picture in 1921. Presumably, the man in the picture was the caretaker then. How else does Jack know the people whom he "saw" in the hotel? It just so happens that the person from 1921 looks like him and Jack could is his doppelganger. Just look up the definition of doppelganger and you'll see the movie's explanation.
shareI don't buy that Jack had never been to the Overlook before, first of all in the US version there is a line that he was having "deja vu", and secondly the camera at the end specifically focused on the date (Knowing Kubrick's obsessive attention to details that was definitely inferring that Jack was reincarnated). My interpretation is that the guests of the Overlook right after it had been built were cursed by the spirits of the Indian Burial Ground to be reincarnated and eventually find their way back to the hotel where they would repay their debt with a blood sacrifice.
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