The Shining

+ he hates horror

and yeah like i said upthread i find jack super relatable, especially when he's trying to write and wendy keeps asking kind but infuriating questions. actually think one of the themes of the movie, kind of, is the danger/self-deception of not finding jack relatable.

and the moon landing obv.

of course by "trying to write" i guess i mean "trying to think of new typographic configurations for a single sentence", so

either way tho she's not helping.

right Jack's not really the "Other" in this scenario--or to be all grad-schooly his "othering" from himself sorta joins him to us.

I don't "hate" horror, but it's gotta be real good to engage me. Plus this film works best for me if you throw horror out the window.

I can't imagine re-casting would've solved all the problems I have with Kubrick's approach, ie "the first pompous haunted-house movie" as La Kael wrote.

But I had never heard the theory about Ghost Grady unlocking Jack from the storeroom that JFR floats in Room 237!

So have no stills survived from the Wendy-in-the-hospital penultimate scene that I saw 32 years ago, then was cut after opening weekend and never seen again?

Eric, you will like the Creepshow clip in Room 237.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WzkaisOKcbo/TnMFFni9PsI/AAAAAAAACWM/lWP97Fg64ho/s1600/the+shining+alternate+ending.jpg

relatable. huh. jack's an asshole whose wife and child are scared of him iirc?

morbs what happens in that scene i am curious

Hardly the first pompous haunted house movie.

Also, Kael lost interest in Kubrick one movie after he became "Kubrick," so whatev to her.

relatable. huh. jack's an asshole whose wife and child are scared of him iirc?

haha yes. look, he's unambiguously evil. but then, to quote another movie: nobody's perfect.

calling the movie 'the shining' / the whole presence of 'the shining' in the movie is sort of hilariously arbitrary, isn't it

relatable. huh. jack's an asshole whose wife and child are scared of him iirc?

you rc!

It's not hard to relate to someone who hates other people. Here of all places.

i think king is right to hate the movie, by which i don't mean i think it's a bad movie -- but it makes all the changes it makes to his text in the service of total reader/viewer hostility

as dlh put it so nicely, not finding him relatable it in its own way a sort of turn away from the provocation that the movie offers.

anyway, i've gone on about this here and on the EWS thread but i dont think Kubrick is hostile to viewers so much as doing something very formally interesting wrt the symbolic "interpretation" of his films. They lead in but dont lead out.

Adulthood is coming to the realization that other people use you, even depend on you, and don't like you, and resisting the urge to kill them over that.

Just kidding big love this movie sucks et al.

one of the Meaningless Shining Theories i find compelling even if i have no idea and no way of ever finding out if it's accurate is that that one long lingering shot of the car wreck as halloran is driving up the mountain is there as a hostile gesture to king because the wrecked car matches the description of the torrance family car in the book. if that's true then sure i don't blame king for hating this.

apart from, i mean, like in the book jack is an asshole who broke his son's arm but it's okay because man he had kind of a difficult childhood himself and if you'd just try and understand, plus i mean he's a writer -- and in the movie he's just an asshole who enjoys being an asshole -- the levels on which king was bothered by that are pretty transparent

anyway, i've gone on about this here and on the EWS thread but i dont think Kubrick is hostile to viewers so much as doing something very formally interesting wrt the symbolic "interpretation" of his films. They lead in but dont lead out.

― ryan, Thursday, 1 November 2012 21:09 (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as a narrative it leads in but doesn't lead out!! symbols, enh

ive never really related to jack. i think i always used to be lukewarm on the movie because i didn't get much of or any emotional charge out of it - no fear for wendy or the kid, no thrill @ watching jack. they felt like puppets, not people

It's not hard to relate to someone who hates other people. Here of all places.

― Bobby Ken Doll (Eric H.), Thursday, November 1, 2012 5:06 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark

i think it might be easier for me than for most people even

'relatability' isnt something i typically get out of kubrick films i guess

Your ab-STRACT-ing me, Wendy!

man he had kind of a difficult childhood himself and if you'd just try and understand, plus i mean he's a writer

this is so boring tho! i mean everyone knows it deepens like a coastal shelf; thank god we don't have flashbacks or sad speeches about jack's childhood or whatever. what we do have is the sense, in the bar scenes or in that one where danny sits on jack's lap and asks if he'd ever do anything to hurt them, that while jack long ago made up his mind to hate his wife his hostility towards his own child disturbs and frightens him. (even morbz likes the scene where he temporarily wakes from his nightmare and for a few minutes is just straight terrified by his entire life.) how many times in the movie does he insist that he loves danny? half of his hostility towards wendy comes from the suspicion that wendy doesn't believe him when he says that. and the suspicion that he doesn't either.

xp lol

i think what's bold about the "relatability" angle is that the movie points to a part of ourselves we often actively suppress any relationship to (guilt, that "capacity for violence," resentment of loved ones). and the actual precariousness of relating to it! it's uneasy, threatening, you can get lost in it.

I dunno i havent seen this movie in like 10 years lol.

haha i don't think jack is an unboring character in the book let's put it that way

the scene where he temporarily wakes from his nightmare and for a few minutes is just straight terrified by his entire life.) how many times in the movie does he insist that he loves danny? half of his hostility towards wendy comes from the suspicion that wendy doesn't believe him when he says that. and the suspicion that he doesn't either.

yeah! and there's enormous pathos in this for me.

haha you're gonna watch it and be like WAIT A MINUTE DIFFICULT LISTENING HOUR IS INSANE xp

nah man you've kinda blown this movie wide open for me!

i think i always used to be lukewarm on the movie because i didn't get much of or any emotional charge out of it - no fear for wendy or the kid, no thrill @ watching jack. they felt like puppets, not people

yeahh this is part of what i feel about it?? but what i guess i'm calling viewer hostility is the sense i get from the movie that it wants to call your attention to this, make you feel kind of an idiot for wishing that they could be otherwise

-

haha i am growing to like the opposing reading that's coming up way more though

People dissecting this movie makes me not hate people.

I might get weepy during Room 237.

Nicholson does add plenty to the movie in some of those scenes you mention. Tongue and fingers wagging, "CHECK IT OUT!," etc, he kinda torpedoes it.

All I recall from the cut scene is that Ullman tells Wendy they didn't find Jack's body on the grounds. TA DUM! However, since that's how I first saw it, the cut from Popsicle Jack to Overlook dolly into the photo seems terribly abrupt to me in subsequent viewings.

disclosure btw i have never read the book. i've been wanting to see the king miniseries lately.

is there a thread on that? i remember thinking it was so lame. King's version of horror never really gets to me.

Instead might I suggest dropping acid and watching eight episodes of Wings back to back? And make them all the same episode?

Actually wait no that sounds like it could be fun.

yeah i have no expectations for it (i've seen the langoliers, which actually isn't even really that bad, it's got dean stockwell, it's just, yknow, something else) but i always talk about the kubrick movie and his famous hijacking of the story without actually having any real idea what's king and what isn't. i guess i should just read the book if i want to know.

haha

It's the only King book I've ever read. Don't bother.

I don't remember the thing w/ the yellow ball described by Duvall below, perhaps it was shot but not in the opening-weekend version.

Shelley Duvall (1981):

I think he was wrong (to cut the scene), because the scene explains some things that are obscure for the public, like the importance of the yellow ball and the role of the hotel manager in the plot. Wendy is in the hospital with her son. The manager visits her, apologizes for what happened, and invites her to live with him. She doesn't say yes or no. Then he goes into the hallway of the hospital, passes in front of Danny, who is playing on the ground with some toys. When he gets near the exit, he stops and says, 'I almost forgot, I have something for you.' And he pulls from his pocket the yellow ball that the twins had thrown at Danny. It bounces twice (we spent a whole day filming so it would bounce the right way), Danny catches it, looks at it, then lifts his eyes towards the hotel manager, stupefied, realizing that throughout the story he was aware of the mystery of the hotel. There was a Hitchcockian side to this resolution, and you know that Kubrick was crazy about Hitchcock.

Diane Johnson (1999):

Kubrick felt that we should see them in the hospital so we would know that they were all right. He had a soft spot for Wendy and Danny and thought that, and the end of a horror film, the audience should be reassured that everything was back to normal. Personally, I was a bit tougher. For a long time we kept asking ourselves who was going to die, and we decided on Hallorann. But I was ready to shock everyone by killing Danny! That may have been going too far.

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~butting/shining/hospital.html

i assume that kubrick's estate probably has all the cut scenes (same with 2001) but out of understandable respect to his wishes will never let anyone see them again.

king's changing attitude toward the film is kind of interesting: according to wiki he found the film 'dreadfully upsetting' when he first saw it and only later started saying that he found it dissatisfying and 'not really horror' etc.

invites her to live w him!

There was a Hitchcockian side to this resolution

yeah hitchcockian like in psycho

I did see the 120-min cut once and thought it was total hash.

i think that's sweet that kubrick wants us to know wendy and danny are all right, belies the cliche about kubrick as some kind of detached unfeeling alien. i've never worried about them once they get into the sno-cat tho.

is the 120-min cut the one that's been in the u.k./europe this whole time? cuz they just had this big-deal re-release over there w New Footage! and i got all excited and then read about the new footage and i've seen it all. was it not even on their DVD?

afaik, yes, the short cut was always shown in theaters, dunno about home formats

that website seems to say yes. huh.