The Shining

Typical Stanley Kubrick. There is not a single moment in this film that is not part of the elaborate mosaic of a psychological labyrinth. Everything is perfectly timed and fluid, with the camera moving most of the time at right angles and in parallel with the walls of the stereotypical hotel. There isn’t a single note in the music that isn't necessary. It’s creative and musical minimalism of the coarsest grain, perfectly enhancing the oppressive feeling of the empty setting in which the story takes place. We don’t just watch Jack Nicholson as a movie character, but we become him thanks to Kubrick’s visually naturalistic directorial approach. As in Nicholson’s character, nervousness builds up within us until we fear what we would be capable of if we were in his shoes. It’s almost impossible to give The Shining the “horror” label, which belongs to ordinary horror movies for genre entertainment. And though it’s a shame that its coldness and precise calculation don’t allow me to experience the story of the main characters in any way different from what Kubrick intended, I’m giving The Shining a full five-star rating. I respect the depersonalised path that Kubrick took, because I'll find something new in this madness with every viewing. (06/05/2002)

I may be strange, but I tried to read King's book three times, and I always put it down about 100 pages. I didn't like it. But the film immediately got to me through its suggestive atmosphere of creeping terror, in which Jack Nicholson's masterful performance plays a big part. He plays Jack Torrance like a harp, first quietly with all the dark undertones, and then suddenly he starts to yank on all the strings. Jack's transformation into a monster is gradual, and he's basically "making" this film. Kubrick admirably managed to create fear without darkness and cramped spaces. The fear of The Shining is an airy, light, spacious fear... And that's absolutely unique. The film also feels authentic because the evil seems to have no source – is it "from inside" Jack, or is it evil embodied in the genius loci? Is Jack's madness really just the work of his bruised psyche? The viewer is stuck in the same uncertainty as the main heroes of the film - it is difficult to determine the distribution of forces between reality and the supernatural. But everything only leads to one thing... REDRUM... did it also give you goose bumps? (01/30/2004)

I love it when a film takes me away for two hours and lets me wander in an unpredictable labyrinth of cinephile perfection, and in the end exhausts and decimates me emotionally and psychically. The Shining is the only film in my life that can fully do that several times. It’s no wonder that King doesn’t like this masterpiece, Kubrick is a visionary of such style that he playfully surpasses the narrative value and power of an otherwise great book, and he does it “only” with carefully built interiors and a minimalist staging of a space that is arranged in detail and expressively connected to the different perspectives of the three protagonists. What is reality and what is fantasy? Is the deranged Jack an instigator or an unfortunate victim? What do all those carefully constructed events represent and symbolise? Kubrick gives clues, ambiguously and cunningly, to constantly draw the viewer into a seemingly depersonalised world and at the same time force them to experience the simple story of the characters. The Shining is an incredibly complex product by a genius who likes to hide and wrap meanings, but also knows how to narrate with the intensity of a monsoon storm and entertain the viewer with an iconic direction of the scenes and the actors, who are exposed to the bone – Jack Nicholson delivers what’s probably his most amazing performance and he actually carries most of the film’s meaning. I strongly recommend to watch the shorter, 114 minute version, the longer one has redundant scenes that explain things for the dumber part of the audience and lack filmmaking zest. (11/17/2018)

The excellent minimalist soundtrack couldn't be better, and some scenes, especially the bathroom scene and the boy's vision of dismembered children in the hotel corridor, are truly horrifying, but I still have some reservations. Jack Nicholson, as excellent as he is, overacts disgustingly in some scenes; if that's the director's intention, I didn't quite get it. And Shelley Duvall, as she runs around the hotel with a knife in her hand, tries to play scared, but you can see in her face that she's not very good at it. But these are just tiny blemishes on the beauty of the whole. (11/11/2003)

Redrum. Redrum. Redrum. The main asset of this movie is neither Nicholson, nor Kubrick’s precise directing, but the flawless atmosphere in the mountain top hotel. Kubrick’s loose adaptation of King’s novel is attractive due to it being actually only very loosely based on the motifs in one of King’s best stories and is not a mere idealess “one to one" adaptation (however much I may think that Torrance’s fall was far too sudden in comparison with the gradual descent in the book). redruM! (01/30/2007)