Is "Room 237" some kind of crazy joke? Rick Ascher's much-discussed "subjective documentary" features five people who present their theories/interpretations of the "hidden meanings" they say they've found in the rooms and corridors of Stanley Kubrick's Overlook Hotel, the setting of his chilly 1980 horror film, "The Shining." I'm asking a question; I don't know the answer. I haven't yet had the opportunity to see the picture, which has played a number of festivals (Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, NY, London, Karlovy Vary) and has been picked up by IFC Films and is slated for release in 2013. I have seen Ascher's 2010 short, "The S from Hell," however, which the "Room 237" web site says "in many ways laid the groundwork" for the new film. That one is satire.
The premise of "The S from Hell" is that three interviewees -- David Legget, John S. Flack, Jr., and Keri Maijala -- were traumatized as children by the Screen Gems logo that appeared at the end of TV shows like Betwitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun, The Monkees and The Partridge Family. The innocuous logo is presented as deeply creepy ("the scariest corporate symbol in history," according to the movie's web site) and the movie uses all manner of sinister effects to create an aura of menace, like a ghost story or a political attack ad. The point seems to be that those techniques (portentous narration, ominous music, distorted lenses) can make even the most benign of subjects, like an animated graphic, seem chilling. The aim, as the site describes it, is to "make the audience feel the same fear and confusion as the children who were first confronted by the vexing, unfolding sights and mournful, dissonant sounds that hid in the cracks between their favorite TV shows."
Which sounds not terribly unlike the premise of "Room 237."
Here's the actual, unadorned Screen Gems logo from 1965:
And here's Ascher's full, nine-minute short, "The S from Hell":
The S From Hell from Rodney Ascher on Vimeo.
In some ways, you could see this as kind of the flip side of something like the celebrated 2006 fake trailer, re-casting "The Shining" as a gentle family comedy:
The difference, of course, is that the narration, editing and music here transform footage from Kubrick's film into something cute and cuddly instead of horrific. Flip the coin again and you have this phony serial-killer trailer for "Uncle Buck":
In anticipation of seeing "Room 237," I did a little research, consulting the movie's primary sources on the web, and inspired by early critical reactions from Jonathan Rosenbaum and Girish Shambu, who saw "Room 237" in Toronto and have raised issues independent of the film itself. They hated the movie, not just for how it may or may not misrepresent "The Shining" but for how it distorts the meaning and practice of criticism itself. So, while I can't venture a personal opinion as to how "Room 237" handles its material, we can look at some of the theories, while acknowledging that certain critical principles stand on their own. So, Girish writes:
Spotting hidden references to the Holocaust or to the genocide of Native Americans is not in itself a critically or politically reflective activity. "The Shining" (while being a wonderful film, for many reasons) simply does not engage with these weighty historical traumas. It is not "about" them in any meaningful way. And neither does it have to be in order to be a great film. But when "Room 237" represents film analysis in a manner that treats it as little more than a clever puzzle-solving exercise, it gives no hint as to the social value and political/aesthetic worth of this public activity. It never intuits what is truly at stake in the activity of paying close, analytical attention to films.
I think what Girish is getting at here is: At what point does "criticism" (observing, analyzing, interpreting what you see in a movie) become something more akin to "conspiracy theory"? It's a good question. Some people approach movies as as if they were brain-teaser games or riddles designed to be decoded and "solved," closed systems in which finding "meaning" becomes a simple matter of detecting patterns and deciphering internal rules. You can see this at work by comparing the two contrasting versions of "Donnie Darko": the original release in 2001 and the Director's Cut in 2004. In the latter, all the laws of the movie's ostensible time-travel physics are explained, but the effect is reductive, stripping away the ambiguity (and the resonance along with it) that made "Donnie Darko" a good movie to begin with. (Similarly, "Inception" was conceived as a kind of video game puzzle-movie. But if positing internally consistent fantasy rules for the made-up field of dream architecture is all there is to it, if there is no larger metaphor at play, then what?)
You may be thinking: But, Jim, you have put forward subtextual, close readings of quite a few movies -- such as "Donnie Darko" (as the story of a boy who can't face his incestuous feelings about his sister), "Birth" (as a feature-length riff on themes and images from "Un Chien Andalou"), "Barry Lyndon (as an investigation of fate, chance, free will and the nature of art), "No Country for Old Men" (concerning the lot of human beings, living with the ever-present awareness of death), and even " Argo" (as a movie about turning incidents into stories and stories into movies)... But I don't propose that the movies can be reduced to or summarized exclusively in those terms. And they don't extrapolate from trivial patterns or coincidences, like the old Lincoln-Kennedy meme. (Wow, presidents Lincoln and Kennedy both had vice presidents named Johnson! And they were both assassinated -- one in 1863 and the other in 1963! [Except that they weren't -- Lincoln died in 1865. Details!])
One of the "Room 237" theorists is the British historian Geoffrey Cocks. According to a piece in Tablet Magazine:
For Cocks, whom I chatted with this morning, "The Shining" is the Holocaust film that Kubrick, who grew up in a Jewish Bronx household in the 1930s (his father was born Jacob but Anglicized it to Jack--the name of Jack Nicholson's deranged protagonist), always wanted to make but felt that, for aesthetic reasons, he could never make except in the most oblique possible manner.
The [New York Times] highlights the prevalence of the number 42 in the film --Danny, Jack and Wendy's son, wears a t-shirt with the number on it; Wendy takes 42 swings of her baseball bat at Jack -- and notes that since the early '70s, that number was seen as an ominous metonym for the Final Solution, which was launched in 1942. (The number was prominent in the '70s also as the answer to Douglas Adams' question.) But there's more.
For example: Jack's typewriter. Cocks explained to me that it's an Adler Eagle typewriter--"a German machine, pictured almost to make it a character, a clear representation of the bureaucratic killing machine." (It's also the model typewriter Kubrick himself used.) When Jack awakes from a dream in which he has killed his wife and his son, he is slumped over his desk, next to his typewriter, which has changed color. It is now light blue: a color that, according to Cocks, invariably signifies "a system of cold, mighty hierarchical power" in Kubrick's films....
OK, and where does that get you? (Also: "Eagle" was the name of the Apollo 11 lunar landing module... oh, wait, that's from somebody else's theory.) If "The Shining" is "about" the Holocaust, how does that enrich understanding of the film -- or, for that matter, the Holocaust itself? What is the movie suggesting by invoking the Holocaust? That Nazis are like murderous (or redrumous) fathers who fancy themselves writers but can't write? (Hey, maybe it's a movie about how if Hitler had been more successful as an artist the Holocaust might never have happened!)
It's not enough to point out that you've spotted the number 42 in various places ("Hey, that's 'The Summer of '42' on the TV!") without explaining how it is used meaningfully within the movie. On the other hand, we overhear the sound of Road Runner cartoons on TV ("Road Runner, the Coyote's after you / Road Runner, if he catches you you're through!") and you might well want to show how the movie sometimes playfully resembles a live-action Road Runner Looney Tune -- especially in the chase through the hedge maze at the end. (If Jack -- the name of Cocks's father! -- catches Danny, the boy is through!) Does that make it a movie about a long-legged bird native to the American southwest? Not, as Girish says, in any meaningful way.*
(You may read more of the theories and analyses by the interview subjects -- or, what one of them calls "featured obsessives" -- of "Room 237" by following these links: Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, Jay Weidner.)
There's nothing at all wrong with loving a movie and wanting to climb into it, play around in it, explore it, as if it were... I don't know, maybe a big ol' empty hotel with many rooms, compartments, corridors, doors, portals, staircases, ghosts, secrets. But, as Girish notes, that's not criticism, which requires more thorough, disciplined analysis and interpretation. The makers of "Room 237" say they didn't want to take sides, to evaluate or venture opinions about which theories they thought were valid and which weren't. I can understand that. They didn't want to play favorites. However, Jonathan Rosenbaum writes, the unwillingness to evaluate the relative merits of the material they present, creates a problem:
Thus we're told, in swift succession, that "The Shining" is basically about the genocide of Native Americans, the Holocaust, Kubrick's apology for having allegedly faked all the Apollo moon-landing footage, the Outlook Hotel's "impossible" architecture, and/or Kubrick's contemplation of his own boredom and/or genius. Images from the movie and/or digital alterations of same are made to verify or ridicule these various premises, or maybe both, and past a certain point it no longer matters which of these possibilities are more operative. Unlike his five experts, Ascher won't take the risk of being wrong himself by behaving like a critic and making comparative judgments about any of the arguments or positions shown, so he inevitably winds up undermining criticism itself by making it all seem like a disreputable, absurd activity. We can't even tell if he's representing his commentators fairly; he seems so invested in giving them all equal credibility that he can only make them all into cranks.
If you read some of the pieces I link to in this post, you'll see that certain of the "obsessives" are more serious (or deserve to be taken more seriously) than others. I mean, it's perfectly valid to make note that the Outlook Hotel is located on an "Indian Burial Ground" (a familiar horror-movie device: so was the housing development in "Poltergeist") and that the lobby is decorated in Native American motifs and that the Calumet Baking Powder cans in the pantry are prominently displayed. (And Tang is what the astronauts drink!) Because... well, there they are -- you can hardly miss 'em. So, you could make a legitimate case, as Blakeman does. for a subtext involving the ghosts of slaughtered Native Americans (even though they don't appear as Native Americans but as decadent white aristocrats) exacting their revenge on the red-white-and-blue Caucasian family. But what does "The Shining" do with all those things? That's the domain of real criticism.
Ascher says "Room 237" began when he and producer Tim Kirk saw some clips on YouTube -- including this one, by Jay Weidner: " Kubrick's SHINING Analysis - What he wanted us to Know - The Fake Moon Landings" (watch below or read a transcript here):
So, for example, once you spot the Apollo references, how do you use them to corroborate the story that "2001: A Space Odyssey" was Kubrick's "rehearsal" for faking the moon landing in 1969, as Weidner does in his piece above (subtitled: " How Faking the Moon Landings Nearly Cost Stanley Kubrick His Marriage and His Life)? And how do you get from there to the threats to Kubrick's marriage and life? Here's an example of Weidner's logic:
Danny is literally carrying a symbolic Apollo 11, on his body, via the sweater, to the Moon as he walks over to room 237. Why do I think this? Because the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 237,000 miles. The real truth is that this movie is really about the deal that Stanley Kubrick made with the Manager of the Overlook Hotel (America). This deal was to get Kubrick to re-create, in other words, to fake, the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your analytical work, there, Jay. There's a real danger of getting lost, as if in the Overlook itself, when you go searching for details just so you can plug them into your existing hypotheses. (Also, there's this: "The Timberline Lodge [exterior stand-in for the Overlook at Mt. Hood, OR] requested Kubrick change the number of the sinister Room 217 of King's novel to 237, so customers would not avoid the real Room 217.") And there's this comment left on Kearns' site:
I am interested in your comments on "the dart board" and reversed "237." Note that the interstitial numbers, "17" and "19," are both prime. The sum of these terms is "36." This number is interesting as the square of "6," as a rebus for "three of 6" or "666," and because of the fact that all of the terms from "1" through "36" equal "666."
It's always exciting and gratifying to discover a fresh angle or a novel interpretation of a familiar movie, but as Rosenbaum says, art is not about secret decoder rings, Rosetta Stones and skeleton keys:
The puzzle aspect of "Last Year at Marienbad" and "Certified Copy" may finally be the least interesting thing about them, but it's probably the most interesting and important thing about a cynical piece of non-art like "Memento," which is possibly what makes that film such a cherished cult item and fetish object in certain Anglo-American circles. One way of removing the threat and challenge of art is reducing it to a form of problem-solving that believes in single, Eureka-style solutions. If works of art are perceived as safes to be cracked or as locks that open only to skeleton keys, their expressive powers are virtually limited to banal pronouncements of overt or covert meanings -- the notion that art is supposed to say something as opposed to do something.
Which takes us back around to that idea that Roger Ebert has phrased as: "A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it." Same goes for criticism.
Let me conclude by quoting the most influential piece on "The Shining," Richard T. Jameson's July-August 1980 Film Comment cover story, which helped spark a critical re-evaluation of a Razzie-nominated, Oscar-ignored movie that was not initially well-received. Jameson doesn't pretend to have any particular key to a movie designed to be frustrating ("The Stephen King origins and haunted-house conventions notwithstanding, the director is so little interested in the genre for its own sake that he hasn't even systematically subverted it so much as displaced it with a genre all his own."). He explores how the movie moves -- because, after all, "How it feels is how it works." Take those low-angle tracking shots that follow Danny on his Big Wheel through the hallways:
Yet even as we get off on this wonderful movement, we look for it to disclose more. Will the kid round a corner and run smack into a ghost? Every turn, every new avenue of perception, is approached with anticipation; and nothing happens. Anticipation, anticlimax, anticipation. It has a lot to do with the quality of the Torrances' lives.
For Jack Torrance's life has nowhere to go. The wrinkle in Kubrick's haunted-house concept is not that The Overlook Hotel, with its layer on layer of sordid, largely silly (in Kubrick's selection from King) atrocity, taints Jack -- it is the setting he was born to occupy, the snow-walled zone in which he can achieve an apotheosis he is clearly unequipped to achieve in any other way. To be a writer, for instance, is not within Jack's grasp. It is sufficient self-justification that his former wage-earning job of schoolteaching got in the way of his writing; or that his wife Wendy so little comprehends the reality of writing (she thinks he just needs to get into the habit of doing it every day) that he can stay points ahead simply by being more sophisticated on the subject than she. The Overlook's spaces mirror Jack's bankruptcy. The sterility of its vastness, the spaces that proliferate yet really connect with each other in a continuum that encloses rather than releases, frustrates rather than liberates -- all this becomes an extension of his own barrenness of mind and spirit.
Those spaces draw Jack. Kubrick sees to it that they draw us as well. It's not merely a matter of corridors obsessively tracked. Virtually every shot in the film (whether the setting be The Overlook or not) is built around a central hole, a vacancy, a tear in the membrane of reality: a door that would lead us down another hallway, a panel of bright color that somehow seems more permeable than the surrounding dark tones, an infinite white glow behind a central closeup face, a mirror, a TV screen ... a photograph. From the moment [in the opening shot] we lose the consoling sense of focus and destination supplied by that island picturesquely centered in the lake, we are careening through space....
The makers of "Room 237" say they avoided interviewing anyone associated with the making of "The Shining" because that's not what their movie is about. They wanted to look at the process a movie goes through once it's finished and goes out into the world. At that point, it belongs to everybody, and is not limited to (or by) the makers' intentions. In a 1987 interview with Rolling Stone, Kubrick said he hated being asked to explain what his own movies mean. That's a job for somebody else:
And that's almost impossible to answer, especially when you've been so deeply inside the film for so long. Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, "This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments."... I hear people try to do it -- give the five-line summary -- but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary.
I'm not saying that anyone here is guilty of reducing "The Shining" to "a five-line summary." But never forget that criticism, above all, demands that you read it critically.
- - - - -
* Here's Richard T. Jameson on the Road Runner references:
Nevertheless, the tracking in "The Shining" is consecrated to a good deal more than satisfying the director's lust for technology, or providing a grand tour of a Napoleonically lavish set. It personifies space, analyzes potentiality in spatial terms, maps the conditions of expectations within a neo-Gothic environment that is finite, however imposing its scale. And if this sounds like an arid exercise to pass off as a popular entertainment, consider that Kubrick twice provides the formal nudge of Roadrunner cartoons heard playing on a television offscreen somewhere. Tell a filmgoer that he's caught between comic and emotional hysteria because Wile E. Coyote's multifariously misfired stratagems describe a systematic reinterpretation of spatial and temporal possibility, the trading-off of kinetic and potential energy, and he'll think you're pulling his chain; but that's still why he's laughing.
POSTSCRIPT: Sharp-eyed readers will notice that the title of this post refers to a "keycard" and the Overlook Hotel did not use keycards, but real keys!!! Yes. Because "The Shining" is a movie about slipping backwards and forwards in time, and that headline was written in the future, when keycards were (are?) much more commonplace!
Post-screening Q&A; with director Rodney Ascher and producer Tim Kirk at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival:
60 Comments
While I should make a comment to the substance of the post the innate proofreader in me must let you know that President Lincoln died in 1865 not 1863.
I will mention that seeing The Shining in a theater brand new the scariest thing was one of the title cars that suddenly announced the day.
Funny -- I misremembered the Lincoln/Kennedy thing I'd seen. (Not that it matters, because it's all silliness, anyway.) But you're absolutely correct. The trivial coincidence I was thinking of was that Lincoln was elected in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960.
lol, when I saw "...Ebert has phrased as: 'A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.' Same goes for criticism," I immediately read the quote as "A movie is not about content. It is about style."
Not to insult movies, or movie criticism, or modern culture in a general sense, but I chuckled.
Bad reviews or not, I'd still like to see Room 237. The fact that 5 disparate but seemingly impassioned interpretations can be found for a 32 year old film is just further testament to The Shining's brilliance.
Great post - I have to say that the excerpts above from both Cocks and Weidner (whether intended as parody or not) remind me so much of a lot of academic litcrit I read when I was in grad school in the early 90s (and that still persists to some degree). That's why discovering Bordwell was such a revelation - it was exciting to come across criticism that genuinely illuminated a film, and that was able to both draw from the great traditions of aesthetic criticism and explore new areas of research (such as neuroscience).
I tend to think that once a movie is out in the world you can do whatever you want with it. I tend to enjoy "The Royal Tenenbaums" as a movie about post 9/11 America, which of course it is not as it was shot before that event, but it was released shortly after 9/11 and has always resonated with me on that level. Of course I'd hesitate to mention that in a critical piece and I don't go digging for non-existent clues, and I certainly don't approach all films like this, but it's one of the things I love about that particular film. I don't really care if this is the "wrong" way to approach it. But you're right there's a very fine line between drawing out subtext that makes your experience richer, and looking to prove the movie is flatly "about" something entirely different from what it claims to be.
By the way, I love the screenshots here. It's so fascinating to me how the composition The Shining instills such fear in me. I recently saw this screenshot (below) and it really got under my skin. This establishing shot of nothing happening at all is even scarier than what actually happens next! (Obviously, wondering what's behind a drawn curtain is always more frightening than actually seeing what's behind the curtain, but this shot is also creepily effective with that 1970s avocado-green paint and the lighting and use of lines and space)
http://tinyurl.com/9pj4bgy
The doc reminds me of the Volkswagen ad campaign: See Films Differently. Why should spectators (or readers or listeners) be passive consumers? Why can't they be creative, too?
Surprised that nobody mentions the Screen Gems release of Eli Roth's "HOSTEL", where the boys check in and get "checked out" of Room 237.
As a huge fan of THE SHINING, I was disappointed at ROOM 237. The Q&A; with the director made it clear that he was entertained by the subjects (folks talking about their theories) rather than interested or impressed by them. Since the film doesn't show any of the speakers -- only film clips demonstrating the content of the VO, often in a facile way -- it could be a set up or send up, but there are folks who believe in the symbology of THE SHINING and the filmmakers couldn't care less.
It was paced for mockery, not satire, and the Q&A; supported that.
I do thank the film, however, for inspiring me to watch THE SHINING forwards and backwards overlaid. It was a great experience and an opportunity to look at Kubrick's obsession with symmetry in a new way.
If it is safe to say 2001 is Kubrick's Ulysses, can we claim The Shining as his Finnegans Wake? Not so fast. First, ask yourself "how does one decipher Finnegans Wake"? I say, the same way the people in this film choose to decipher Kubrick. A commodius vicus of recirculation indeed...
What, no reference to page 237 of Freud's complete works, which happens to be an article on numerology, and on the same reccuring numbers we find in the movie (7 and 42) ?!? (Or maybe it's about the unheimlich, I'm not sure anymore, but that was always my favorite part of that theory, thinking that Kubrick would intentionnaly make a reference to a page of a book, hoping that someone would think "oh room 237, it must be a reference to one of Freud's book!" Now which one... which edition... which language...Can't be a coincidence, Kubrick is so perfectionist!)
For the genocide of the Native American though, it's very much a part of the film, it's quite clear from the production design, as you point out, although I don't think this is what the movie is about (it would be quite shallow to think this masterpiece was pointlessly trying to denounce an already well-known historical event in such an oblique manner). Kubrick used these symbols of America to tied them with his portait of a dysfonctional american family: ghosts from the past are haunting Jack, and he repress his guilt about past acts of violence, from there it's easy to make a parallel with this part of american history. Shining is very much about american society (which is a simpler explanation for the prominence of these american symbols, like Apollo 11, than some kind of conspirationnist theory), a society build on violence, obsessed with work and public image (Jack's desire to succeed), and in that way this genocide can become a potent parallel, a sort of sub-subtext to the subtext.
Haven't seen Room 237, but even though these theories seem, for the most part, completly crazy and somewhat futile, it stands as a fascinating testimony on the power of cinema, on how people can lose themselves in a quest inside a movie they can't quite comprehend. We all have our own elusive movies (or artworks of any kind) we love without knowing exactly why, and maybe these interpretations aren't the best way to demonstrate this love, but it still shows how deeply cinema can affect someone.
I just have a small quibble. You speak of Nazis "like murderous (or redrumerous) fathers...". I suggest the second word should be simply "redrumous," the word "murder" reversed with the suffix "ous" appended. Then again, maybe I'm being overly critical.
Good point! Thanks. I'll fix that.
Your comments about the holocaust don't really ring true for the simple reason that Kubrick's films never have a single point to make.
The reason Stanley Kubrick used holocaust metaphors in his film is that it feeds into the story. As you said it features a native American burial ground, which has now been built upon, covering up the atrocity, skiing over it, and essentially making light of death.
The story of The Shining is about a man dealing with the fact that he has abused his son. He is in denial about this and has to delve into his work to forget. Wendy is in denial of the fact that she is married to a talentless monster and Danny is in denial about the fact that he was abused at all, by regressing and talking to a man in his own head.
Since Kubrick is making a horror film, he wants to include as many potent metaphors as possible to subconsciously feed into the main horror of the drama, and there is nothing more shocking than the denial of the holocaust by the opulent (like the overlook) Vatican. This metaphor holds ground, fits into the main text (alongside the native Americans) and can't be dismissed that easily.
That's not to say The Shining is about the holocaust, but it's not about anything else much either. It's only concern is pure horror. I came to this conclusion when I realised that there was no central character and if you picked one to side with you would experience a horror very much in tune with their age and gender.
1) Jack as a man, cannot work, can't provide for his family, and can't drink. He has also abused his son. He is worthless.
2) Wendy, as a woman, realises she has not only given up her life to be with this worthless creature but that she is now locked alone with him for three months.
3) Danny -- I can't think of anything more terrifying than your own father hunting you down.
I understand what you're saying -- many metaphors can operate inside a movie simultaneously. And, certainly, the image of the blood spilling from the Outlook elevators and splashing over the camera (originally shot for the teaser trailer, but later incorporated into the movie itself) can be seen as an image of mass murder or genocide. But where is the specific evidence in the movie itself that ties it to the Holocaust, or, say, the Outlook to the opulence of the Vatican? Some readings are supported by more evidence than others...
Hey Jim,
I often don't respond here, but I would like to warmly recommend another analysis of "The Shining" by Rob Ager, which is light years ahead in his thoroughness of approach to the film, and Kubrick's films in general (he didn't take part in "Room 237"). More so, one of his key ideas is actually credited to an observation made by Roger Ebert.
His reading into the visual elements of the film is much in the way Kubrick himself once said in an interview: that after 2001 was screened, many critics thought that the 2nd monolith was placed on a planet named Clavius (which is in fact a crater on the moon), while kids who saw it understood it was placed on the Moon. The reason was that Clavius is "SAID" by a character, while the moon is "SHOWN". Kubrick expressed frustration with critics of his time that are reading films literally, instead of visually. And this is one of he reasons I feel that those "crazy!" theories, are not so far removed from Kubrick's own intentions.
Even today, there is too few great film analyses out there, and too much banal criticism.
anyway, if you don't already know him, this guy is great, you should check his stuff, got plenty of educating analyses of Kubrick's stuff, and others like Ridley Scott and Verhoeven.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAQnfOXqiR0&feature;=relmfu
Ager's a far-right-wing asshole, and his film criticism is full of absolutely basic errors of fact - I can't remember if it's Alien or Aliens (and I'm not going back to check), but if you watch it yourself you'll be able to spot it. If he can't get stuff like that right, then I don't trust his views on anything more complex.
Great article. Folks might want to check out Rob Ager's analysis of The Shining at his website. Extremely well done.
http://www.collativelearning.com/the%20shining.html
The crux of "The Shining" is about one man's free fall into self-induced Hell. Less the verbiage used by Jim Emerson, here is the concise tale:
Jack Torrance become a victim via total immersion. He is lost to his audience long before he recites his first lines. Forget the the verbal nuances and guttural "Danny" (his son) anthem, the character is quite connected to the physical hotel.
Torrance writing behind the over-sized desk becomes the desk. He is the clanking pots in the kitchen, the pots literally follow after Danny. The hatchet used to kill the cook works itself loose from Torrance, relegating him to a bystander. The elaborate outdoor maze that finally claims the killer is merely an extension of Torrence and he is quite consumed up to his neck by the maze and snow that make up the DNA of one Jack Torrance, his quest for in-animation finally realized.
Chris Roberts
The only hidden meaning I found in "The Shining" was that it's terribly overrated. Without a doubt the worst film Kubrick ever made. Shelly Duvall's performance was awful and cartoonish and kept the film from being anything but mediocre. Any random scream queen from the 80's would have done the role just as well.
I may be in the minority in my negative outlook, but Stephen King didn't much like it either and he wrote the damn story. "The Shining" should have been burnt long ago, it stains the rest of Kubrick's wonderful filmography.
I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but c'mon, really?
Respectfully but strongly disagree.
Oh come on. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't find the appearances of the twins, particular the second appearance, as being one of the most terrifying scenes in all the movies.
"Come play with us Danny... Come play with us forever..."
And there's no doubt, more than any other of Kubrick's films, that he filled it with an insane number of metaphors. I've read plenty of analyses, some obviously bunk, but some with enough meat to them that you have to accept that this was a film with an obvious surface narrative but also with a hidden narrative, and that there is certainly some sort of a Native American genocide subtext.
I wonder sometimes if The Shining was Kubrick's own I Am The Walrus, written specifically to befuddle generations of cranks and cinephiles with an obnoxious number of references that might or might not mean a damned thing.
Stephen King not being a fan is hardly a point in your favor when you consider his hearty endorsement of that awful TV miniseries remake that came out in the late 90s.
It was surprising in 1980 how different the movie was from the book. King doesn't like it as an adaptation of his novel because -- as Kubrick freely acknowledged -- it isn't. Nobody contests that. It takes the basic concept of the book and does something totally different with it. In 1997 King got to adapt the novel himself for a 4.5-hour miniseries starring Steven Weber and directed by Mick Garris.
Regardless of King's issues, I think it's a second rate film. I've never been more disappointed. Of the Kubrick library "The Shining" was one of the last I ever saw, I fully expected something great. What I got was mediocrity. Visually stunning? Sure. That was all though.
My biggest gripe is Duvall, she single-handedly ruined the film for me. I'm not sure I could even judge the rest of it with any clarity thanks to the overpowering stench of her performance.
I strongly believe that The Shining would've been forgotten within a year if any name but Kubrick was attached. The same way I feel about Scorcese's After Hours or to a lesser degree, Blade Runner.
Meanwhile Kubrick's "The Killing" and "Killer's Kiss" are often overlooked. Even "Paths to Glory" doesn't get the attention of "The Shining" and it's a much better film.
How about 42 as the meaning of life as espoused in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? That's what I first thought of anyway.
The myriad of theories surrounding THE SHINING, like the entire "Paul Is Dead" theory, is proof to me of the desire of obsessive fans to find even deeper meanings hidden in a work (or works) of art already laden with obvious meaning. In finding the hidden "clues", fans can bond more fully with the artist and feel themselves privileged to be part of an inner, elite circle of fandom.
For the record, I don't believe that Kubrick planted most of these "clues" (I'm on the fence about the Native Americans) any more than the Beatles did.
Another great essay, Jim. Coincidentally, I was just having an argument on a Facebook film discussion group about exactly the topic you covered here. Here are some of the comments I made, put together into a little mini-essay, with some sentences amended for further clarification (sorry if its still a little unclear as I make certain references to earlier comments, specifically the Christmas thing):
I don't approach a film in terms of what it means, but instead what it does. I like to call it practical film criticism. Asking "what does setting the film at Christmas do to the audience?" instead of "what did Kubrick intend to do by setting the film during Christmas?". The former is approachable because you ARE the audience and therefore you know how the film affects the audience/you. But you aren't Kubrick and you can't read his mind, so all the latter allows for is theorizing and guesswork.
What I'm saying is that we ultimately can't say for sure what Kubrick was trying to communicate in Eyes Wide Shut. What we can say with certainty is how the film affected us. Maybe The Shining is his admission that he faked the moon landings, but in the process of trying to make a film that communicated that he also made one of the most effective horror films ever made. I'm not interested in the first one, but I am interested in the second one. Again, I'm fine with you looking for Illuminati clues in film, but it has no worth in an argument.
The mention of the Lincoln/Kennedy business reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in years.
Circa 1966, Homer & Jethro, the country-western comedians, put a track on one of their RCA LPs, with the title "Great Men Repeat Themselves".
Jethro Burns, possessor of the deeper voice of the duo, spoke in somber tones, while partner Homer Haynes accompanied on the guitar ("Battle Hymn Of The Republic" as I remember).
After the notation that "great men repeat themselves", Jethro began in earnest:
The name Lyndon contains six letters.
The name Batman contains six letters.
Jethro continued, soberly citing Robin/Hubie, Wallace/Riddler, and perhaps most impressively Mr Robert S Macnamara/Commissioner Gordon, among many others that I sadly can't recall.
The original Lincoln/Kennedy bit concluded with a wild numerological thingamabob connecting the two men.
The Homer & Jethro cover finished with a similar numerical hookup between Batman and Lyndon; I remember none of it save for its finish:
... and there is only one Batman.
I only heard this a couple of times; my main regret is never having gotten the LP, so that I'd remember it better today.
Okay, off-topic, but what the hell ..
A great post, and I agree with the general idea that film criticism is not puzzle-solving.
However, regarding the Screen Gems logo, I can genuinely tell you that it did disturb me as a kid--to the point where I usually ran out of the room to avoid it at the end of The Partridge Family. As an adult I know this was an irrational fear--and I certainly wouldn't try to justify making a movie about it--but even though the film is a satire I can believe it:-)
Those interested may also read an article on Kubrick's use of alchemistic symbols and imagery in the current edition of Senses of Cinema.
Sounds like Rosenbaum believes that Room 237 is a statement about film criticism, which he then needs to defend by attacked the film, but I'm not so sure. Film critics are so defensive these days.
Almost completely unrelated: anybody here see The Innkeepers from last year? I saw it last night and thought it was fantastic, and I think it illustrates well your comments about subtext and how "a film is about what it's about."
I don't think its a coincidence that THE SHINING is the Kubrick picture that all this odd talk in centered on. If you were to ask every person in America, I guarantee THE SHINING would win the "what's your fave Kubrick?" question. It's not my fave, or even among my top five, but it IS a Kubrick, so it goes without saying that the picture is brilliant. But my point is that the reason they're not seeing the conspiracy stuff in BARRY LYNDON or EYES WIDE SHUT is because those movies are not sensationalistic or "genre" enough for them to watch in the first place.
Great post and thread. I think there is nothing wrong with anyone trying to dig deep and "get to the bottom" of their favorite films. After all, what else is film criticism. If people sometimes stretch to make their points, well, then that's the fun. You may feel free to disagree. As Jim says, evaluate criticism critically.
And trying to decipher the filmakers' intent is beside the point, and may in fact be counterproductive to appreciating the work, as Jim's Donnie Darko reference shows.
A few random thoughts: I remember talking to a woman about Basic Instinct, and she was convinced that Jeanne Tripplehorn's character Beth was the killer. I saw the movie many times, and more importantly read several books by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, and I know for a fact that the "intent" was that Sharon Stone was the killer. "No No" this woman said, " I don't care what he says, Beth is the killer". In other words, she was prepared to tell the screenwriter to his face that the screenwriter was wrong about the identity of the killer! And you know what, she's right, at least as far as she's concerned.
I also remember reading a wonderful analysis of the Sopranos finale not long after it aired. It was massive, pretty much a shot by shot analysis, and it concluded without a doubt that Tony was killed at the end of the finale. Anyone who reads it would agree. I mean, every shot in the finale can be read to say that. If I find the link I will post it, it was really great.
Yet, even if that was Chase's intent, (and I think it was), that doesn't preclude Chase from bringing Tony back for a movie, saying " What do you mean, I never said he was dead ". So the meaning of a film or show is not only different for different people, but is actually a malleable thing, changing over time.
Time to watch The Shining again. A mans lonely struggle to deal with his receding hairline....
Here is the analysis of the Sopranos finale. Just awesome. I love that this guy did all this work, to me this represents the best of criticism, using what is on the screen to develop a thesis, instead of trying to fit a thesis to the work.
http://masterofsopranos.wordpress.com/
I remember that. I read it quite differently, consistent with the series-long refusal to find "closure" (the scene is deliberately disorienting to build tension and paranoia), but I appreciate his effort. Here are a couple things I wrote about it on Scanners back in 2007:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2007/06/tony_soprano_barton_fink_charl.html
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2007/06/david_chase_breaks_his_omerta.html
"The Sopranos" has always been founded on the proposition that human nature, character arcs (Christopher: "Where is my arc?!?!") and narrative structures are roughly the shape of... I don't know, onion rings. People have breakthroughs, illuminations (Tony: "I get it!"), vow to change their ways, think they have changed... and then fall back into their old ways. Because that, fundamentally, is who they are.
I felt that the finale was intentionally ambiguous when I saw it, and I must say I was a bit let down by that. I can't argue your reading at all. I suppose I let myself be persuaded by this long piece because I wanted closure, even while recognizing that Chase was not out to give me any.
It is however a very strong, well thought out argument. I find many of his points interesting, and while there are some stretches of logic, much of what he wrote rings true. If you watch the finale with the mindset of "Tony dies at the end", you will find it hard not to start to feel that way.
In any event, still my all time favorite show.
On the recut trailers end, you HAVE to check out the dumb and dumber INCEPTION trailer
Or the Lion King TDKR trailer. Legendary.
I remember reading the article on the web about the hotel's architecture and corridors at where they shouldn't be, doors opening wrongly, etc.
At first I was fascinated. I thought, this is a new way of looking at the movie, very interesting and sounds meaningful.
After a while, it just went on and on and on about the 'misleading architecture' and I got bored - it had nothing to say about the characters, plot, etc., but just droned about the architecture. Like chasing its own tail.
I had the same thing here in Canada with the CBC logo. Haunted my dreams and made me feel sick about the station in general.
For those unaware:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/CBC_Logo_1986-1992.svg/1000px-CBC_Logo_1986-1992.svg.png
Frightened the hell out of me.
Todd,
I have also read that Sopranos link and it is truly remarkable. Tony Soprano is dead. There is no other rational way to read that final scene once you have read that thesis.
Jim, you really should check it out as your theory is outdated and is completely dispelled by the author of that piece. Tony is certainly not, as the piece explains, paranoid in the final scene. That is simply the audience projecting their feelings into the scene as we know it's the last of the series but Tony is simply enjoying dinner with his family. There is no traditional "closure" because the viewer will never know who exactly killed Tony and why. But Chase certainly wanted us to think Tony died. In fact, as the author of the site so expertly points out, Chase did wrap up most of his story lines and was actually traditional in that respect during the run of the series.
If you don't want to read the whole thing, just read Part 1 or skip to the Richard Belzer-David Chase interview where Chase all but says Tony is dead. I would love to see Rick Ascher do a short film on that site.
As I said before, you can read it however you want -- but that's exactly the most important point: the room for doubt. If Chase had wanted to overtly kill or spare Tony Soprano, he would have done that. But he didn't. The scene is 100-percent ambiguous -- it does not show a killing. You can speculate about what happens after the screen goes black (tying it back to Bobby's speculation about what getting whacked is like), but the episode ends where it ends. (We don't see what happens to Danny Torrance after the end of "The Shining," either; maybe he froze in the snow like his dad; maybe he became the new caretaker of the Outlook. The point is, it's not in the movie.) "The Sopranos" could have ended by showing the Members Only man emerging from the bathroom with a gun; it could have shown Tony getting shot; it could have included the sound of gunshots; it could have ended at another point and people could speculate that Tony got killed a few minutes later or the next day or a month later... but it didn't. There IS no single, definitive answer, and everything else is fantasy and speculation. Because we don't see or hear anything after the screen goes black. (I remember what that was like seeing it live; I thought my cable had cut out... and then I realized what a brilliant move it was.) We have to accept the reality: what's important is not what you think happened in the silence of that black screen. The show ended where it ended. We did not see Tony get shot or die. We did not see him NOT get shot or die. All that matters is the ambiguity.
No, Tony's death IS on screen, just not in the way you would expect to see it. You see it through Tony's eyes, carefully set up by a very deliberate,logical, brilliantly executed point-of-view pattern that suggests that the black screen is Tony's final point-of view. The black screen is 10 seconds long, it is a scene onto itself. That is why there is a delay from cut to black (and cut out of sound) to the credits.
I only agree that there is no definitive answer in the sense that since we don't see Tony's bloody corpse, we don't know 100% for sure. Yet I can also not say 100% for sure Santa doesn't exist or that L. Ron Hubbard was delusional. Not all interpretations are equal and Chase's intent is important here.
Chase created an unambiguous ending wrapped in ambiguous clothing because he is a true artist. To say that Tony dying is "fantasy and speculation" is reductive and ignores engaging and interpreting the text the way Chase wanted us to. Again, just read Part 1 of the piece Todd cited. If you still believe Tony lived after reading it then I will buy you lunch (assuming you're in NYC!).
No, you're missing the point: What's there is there, and what isn't isn't. That's "Chase's intent" -- that's his choice. Not to show one way or the other, but to allow us to interpret. Yes, all the information that's on the screen is on the screen. We know Big Pussy was killed. Christopher Moltisanti died. Whether Tony got whacked or not has to be, in the end, the wrong question -- and a speculative one. Because the series is over. It's a fine parlor game, but it's not taking "The Sopranos" seriously as a work of popular art. Tony Soprano (like Carmela or AJ or Meadow) does not live or die beyond the imaginative fiction of the show, and the show ends with deliberate ambiguity. The screen goes black. You may claim that the blackness signifies death. That's debatable. All we know for certain is that the blackness is the end of the show.
Dominic--Are there any *other* moments in The Sopranos' 86 episodes where Chases uses "a very deliberate,logical, brilliantly executed point-of-view pattern that suggests" something? Or did he break this device out of the closet only for the last sixty seconds?
Ezra,
It was "totally out of the closet" as you say. The site linked explains it better than me so I would recommend reading Part 1 at least. Essentially Chase says he did not want to show Tony's brains splattered all over his onion rings because it was hypocritical for fans to cheer him on for years and then want to see him dead. In his statements her refers to Tony's fans as his "alter ego." So Chase puts the fans in Tony's eyes so that they are not removed or detached from his death. We get to vicariously experience his death. The site also explains that Chase killed Tony in the editing room because he couldn't possibly film Tony getting killed without it leaking before the show aired.
I think Chase's POV pattern may be the most creative way first person death has ever been conveyed in film history and I'm not sure why he does not get more credit for it. It's completely original. You may not notice it until it's pointed out, but once you see it, you cannot UN-SEE it. It's like a light switch goes on and you see exactly what Chase was doing. Now if he would only film a first person perspective of birth!
There is a certain undergraduate delight in inventing a text's code in order to de-code it that persists for some in grad school--and then, to our detriment, in professional scholarship/criticism.
"Room 237" seems not so much a parody as an expose of such shenanigans. I'm reminded of "Last of the Moe Haircuts," a collection of essays detailing "the influence of The Three Stooges on twentieth-century culture." While overtly a parody, its vehicle, the Stooges, have certainly made their presence felt in said culture; and so Bill flanagan's satire seems redundant--then again, at times the book slips from the ridiculous to the sublime--as when it contemplates an image of Larry Fine running through the empty streets of an unnamed city, an enormous radio (apologies to John Cheever) in his arms blaring "Pop Goes the Weasel." The inevitable connections to the Surrealists and Dadaists, and the Pop artists who come after, are almost convincing. Also hilarious.
So spread out, you chowderheads; it's sab-o-too-gie, I tell ya.
The first paragraph refers to the hotel as the Outlook Hotel. It's actually the Overlook, which the rest of this article gets correct.
Yikes! Thanks for spotting that. I've fixed it.
Part of your review says how you don't think ALL criticism is finding subtext - well, surely "Room 237" doesn't either? It's about a fairly small subset of film obsessives who are indulging in "immersive criticism" - the sort of thing that's only become possible in the era of home video, where people can watch films hundreds of times.
In other words, I agree with what Paul J Marasa above me said.
When reading this, I thought of an article that Roger Ebert posted on his Facebook page about the futility of criticism and the overall slavishness of film festivals that once were cultural collectives. It goes on about how Cannes, TIFF and even the Venice film festivals have been loaded with popular stars that push their films, which tend to be forgettable attempts at being taken seriously as actors ( Cosmopolis, and The Paperboy were some that got this treatment).
This article made me think of the other side of this up-hill battle critics face. Where just about anyone can make any statement about a film, like Holocaust connections and Apollo landings, why would film criticism be taken seriously? It's a pickle, no doubt about it. Do you at least have similar feelings, Jim?
*Not sure who wrote that article that Roger Ebert posted.
http://iahuasca.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-is-kubrick-transformer_2456.html?m=1
I respectfully disagree with BK. I think 2001 better aligns with Finnegans Wake than The Shining. Each movie is open to many interpretations and each is complex but I think 2001 is open to far more interpretations and in a far more complex way. I also think the portmanteau puns in Finnegans Wake are much closer to the clouds and tornadoes of metaphor in 2001. (I speak of fuzzy cloud-like metaphors, not rigid allegories.) The monolith has perhaps 15-20 clear and obvious global metaphors and perhaps 20 clear and obvious local metaphors associated to it--and that doesn't count the difficult and hard to "see" ones; even so, counting and categorizing them is hard and a matter of opinion and judgment. (A global metaphor is operative throughout the entire film; a local metaphor is most important in a particular scene.) (It would be even more horribly off topic to document, describe or even list them but I can. Here, I throw away two for you all just to make the argument concrete: the monolith in 059, 065 and 224 is a candle seen from a low angle (as if we were on the cake), the sun is the burning wick, the apparently convex astronomical object above the sun is metaphorically concave--a Necker cube effect--and is thus a mouth about to blow out the candle--appropriate for a film about beginnings, isn't it? In the same shots but in the fecundity metaphorical cloud the monolith is an erect penis, the sun is a drop of semen and the astronomical object above the sun is a vagina. Etc. etc. etc. But hey, as I say, that's all very obvious in this G-rated movie, isn't it? Doesn't one of the earliest shots display a metaphorical penis with a retracting foreskin shooting forth cosmic semen? Duh.) Each of those 30-40 metaphors has meaning, is consistent (as far as poetry can ever be consistent) and is important. And that is just for the monoliths. All of the film's other components--sets, props, costumes, etc.--also have metaphors associated with them. The film is drenched in metaphors. It is, in my view, a very dense visual poem. I do not see The Shining as a visual poem. Nor do I see the same level of Joycean density. I also do not need to invoke conspiracy theories or other half-baked ideas. I document everything. I think everything in 2001 is in plain sight; one does not need to add to what one sees in it; one must simply see it and interpret what is already there. (Well, OK, yes, something like the Wizard of Oz cloud--the star ride is the cyclone, the "invisible" chair and table is the Wicked Witch of the East, the pod is Dorothy's house, the toilet is the yellow land of the Winkies, the monolith is the ruby/silver slippers, etc.--is pushing it and perhaps not obvious or even correct but I directly and forthrightly acknowledge that. I do not claim my interpretation is True, only mine.) Yes, The Shining is complex and yes "237" is clearly important in it but is it important in 30-40 different ways? The Wake sometimes approaches that level of complexity (especially in Book III); Ulysses, as great and as complex as it is, does not (not during Penelope, not during Circe). (And I say that even as I acknowledge that both Ulysses and 2001 riff off of Homer.)
Sylvain's point is well-taken in both directions: interpretations can open out a work to lay bare some of its meanings but can also lead to unfalsifiable conjectures which are merely the projections of the interpreter's concerns; we need judgment to tell the difference. Each of us is deranged in his own way--hallelujah!
I like your style. But if you reread my comment, I do not claim The Shining to be K's FW (even though the opening shot of The Shining and the first sentence of FW are near the same). My contention is that if one found FW on an island, how would one approach an understanding of it? It is the methods one employs to achieve gnosis that apply here, and I think Kubrick's work is worthy of the Joycean plunge into complexity. Please check out The Kubrick Transformer over at my blog to see how 2001 and The Shining reveal something very uncanny when viewed simultaneously. Really. No schizo.
Certainly one of the themes of Kubrick's entire life and career is informed by the Holocaust and the idea that, beneath a very thin veneer of civilization, we are apes with sticks beating each other and no better than that. For me the big Holocaust reference is the one hardly mentioned here: who is Jack Torrence but a failed artist turned apparatchik who finds his purpose in a murderous bigger cause than himself and can hardly be more eager to please it with whatever violence it asks of him? Hmm, failed artist... who does that remind us of?
Likewise I think the Native American allusions, though in no way the subject of the film, are there to remind us that 10 minutes before this fine, dignified hotel was built, people were killing each other with hatchets on the same spot. That's the universe according to Kubrick. You can't kill in here, this is the war room!
And finally, I think there are definite hints, per Rob Ager, that the story is "about" (I use that word cautiously) about child abuse, possibly sexual. (I mean, a man is performing sex on a teddy bear, and there's a boy with a teddy bear, how much more do you want it spelled out?) Child abuse is often a generation after generation cycle, and though there's no way to reconcile all the timelines and say exactly when which Mr. Grady was there and so on, there is kind of a feeling that both Jack and Danny are caught in the same endless cycle, but Danny, who doesn't repress his shining the way his dad evidently has, is ultimately smart enough to find his way out of it.
Likewise some of the visual clues that Rob Ager points to are unmistakable-- Shelley Duvall DOES dress like Goofy and the elevator signs do match the Teddy Bear and so on. Maybe even the copy of Playgirl... I mean, Kubrick didn't do anything randomly, but some of them may be no more than jokes on the set.
But let's stop there. Is there an entire deep subtext that took 30 years to unwind? No, I think most of these things were sensed by people, if not exactly articulated, early on, and are found in other Kubrick movies all along. Jack with a hatchet is scarcely different from Alex with a cane or an ape with a bone. Kubrick's themes are not mysterious; they're merely subtly developed.
Oh, and Tony Soprano is dead unless they ever make a Sopranos movie, then he isn't.
(Actually, it's the "teddy bear" who's fellating the man.) And, yes, I mentioned the Hitler/failed artist comparison -- though only as a joke about farfetched readings. Anybody interested in Kubrick knows he wanted to make a Holocaust movie but couldn't figure out how he could do justice to the subject. (He worked on "The Aryan Papers" on and off for years until "Schindler's List" -- which he called "a movie about winners" -- finally caused him to put aside the project.) But there's a big difference, as you say, between an allusion and a coherent, developed theme or subtext.
This documentary reminds of of a line from Borges:
"A critic [in Tlon] will choose two dissimilar works--the Tao Te Ching and The Thousand and One Nights, let us say--and attribute them to the same writer, and then with all probity explore the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres."
Okay, that's just silly, Jim. Of course it's an adaptation and not the loose jazz riff you're implying. And it's arguably one of the greatest literary adaptations ever done, in large part because Kubrick is such a ruthless editor that he actually distills and improves upon the source text. Kubrick doesn't just take the basic concept of the book, he mines it for every single itoa of interest. (If Kubrick had edited all of King's texts we might regard him as a truly great writer instead of just the great storyteller/entertainer that he's become) I've seen the film dozens of times. But I finally got around to reading the novel after I had not seen the film in a while and, sure enough, every time I got bored by a passage none of it was in the film. But every time I perked up to something, whether it was a scene or a description or a single line or dialogue or whathaveyou, Kubrick found a way to put that detail in the film. You can see his marked-up copy of the novel briefly in that giant Taschen book. Too bad we don't have access to a complete facsimile version.
I never said it was a "jazz riff." Kubrick doesn't do "loose." Not his style. I think "The Shining" is a much greater film than it was a book (though I did enjoy the novel), and the movie's best elements aren't in King's book. Even the conception of the character of Jack Torrance in Kubrick's movie is radically different than the one in King's novel.
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