Review of The Shining (1980) by Sindri — 20 Feb 2011

Unflinchingly directed - There has certainly been a good number of well made and thrilling horror-films in the last thirty years, but few possesses the psychological tension that Stanley Kubrick created in 1980 with his adaptation of Stephen King`s novel "The Shining" which he wrote with novelist Diane Johnson, that stringently tells the fictional story about writer, husband and father Jack Torrance, who travels from the city with his wife Wendy and son Danny to attend a job interview during the winter at the Overlook Hotel considering an off-season job as a caretaker. Torrance's intension is to use the remote and isolated hotel to find peace while he is writing, but as he get's into his writing his mental state starts to change.

From the majestic and long opening scene where the camera moves transversal through a dead silent landscape and towards the films main location, to the grand finale, this is a throughout captivating and mind-puzzling tale mostly seen through the eyes of a psychic young boy who receives frightening premonitions about the place his parents have brought him to and a grown man who unknowingly is faced with his own mind's evanescence. This increasingly chilling character study uses repeated imagery, shifts from regular to extreme close ups, concentrated, repetitive and no dialog whatsoever, short and long takes and frequently changes from scenes of eerie silence to scenes of climactic noise.This is the type of film such as, without making any comparison, Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975) or David Lynch's "Eraserhead" (1976), where the mood is crucial for the films atmosphere, and in this case the mood is composed by Jack Nicholson's versatile mood-swings and the classic and orchestral music.

Several stories are intersected in "The Shining", and they differ from the story of a writer's block, a horrible tragedy that happened in the past, a wife unable to reach her husband, a son unable to connect with his father and a man's broadening psychosis. It's impossible to overlook Jack Nicholson's electric presence as he transforms into a character that bewilders himself as far as conceivably possible in an oblivious mind. His multi-layered performance stands as a milestone in acting and Nicholson is as frightening as he is entertaining in his nearly exaggerated interpretation. With that said, this film wouldn't be as good as it is without the performances of Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd, who's presence is just as effective as Nicholsons. The ingenious about "The Shining" is that it achieves a high level of tension without being overly violent. Yes, there is a flood of blood, but the greatest horrors of the film is the words, the sounds, the images, the faces, the moods, and how these cinematic elements spark the viewers imagination. This inner an outer mind maze is a vivid examination of supernatural spookiness that truly captures the feeling and perception of fear. Kubrick knew no boundaries as a film maker and his eleventh feature is photographically aesthetic and unflinchingly directed.