There are also repeated shots of Jack Torrance looking taurine, his forehead jutting and eyes rolling wildly, like a bull about to charge. ". The Shining is a 1977 horror novel by American author Stephen King. The resulting images are eerie (see above, video NSFW). Given the legendary place that Kubrick's The Shining occupies in cinema culture, it is perhaps unsurprising that it has been the subject of endless interpretation, including a few extreme readings. The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by Stephen King (who hates the movie), is one of the most iconic horror films ever made. Jack is seen reading a Playgirl magazine with an article about incest, while the movie’s sexual imagery plays like a child’s naive understanding of sexuality, like Jack kissing the naked woman he finds in the bathtub. "I'm sorry to differ with you, sir, but you are the caretaker. RELATED: 10 Stephen King Novels That Should Be Adapted For A Modern Audience. Kubrick’s philosophical mindset has been compared to Nietzsche’s. On the surface, it tells the relatively simplistic story of a writer taking his wife and son to an isolated hotel to work as the winter caretaker and then slowly going mad. It’s also very scary, a stunning exercise in atmosphere and dread, and earns its place as not just one of the best horror movies ever made, but also, one of the best movies ever made. When Jack signs his employment contract in the opening scene, he’s signing away his soul in a Faustian agreement. The Overlook Hotel represents the CIA and is functioning the same way on Jack Torrance, chipping away at his mind with creepy hallucinations intended to crack him. Toujours prêts à faire une bêtise. Another suggests it is all a nightmare. Stephen King wasn’t exactly thrilled by Kubrick’s portrayal of Jack Torrance and his eponymous novel, to put it nicely. The following is a list of all interpretations of the film. The movie is filled with tiny details that suggest symbolic ideas and thematic substance. Things weren’t looking good for Kubrick after Barry Lyndon was released in 1975. It can be interpreted in a number of different ways — and it has. Some viewers have taken this as a suggestion that the whole movie is a nightmare taking place inside Jack’s booze-addled mind. When Jack first arrives at the lobby of the Overlook, he's reading a Playgirl magazine. In fact, this may be the theory that director Ascher most prescribes to. Many of them rely on metaphors and symbols to exhibit a hidden meaning. In the vintage black-and-white photograph shown at the end of the film, Jack's pose is exactly the same as the Tarot card for Baphomet - a.k.a Satan. The soundtrack of The Shining contains a number of post-war compositions inspired by the Holocaust. Neither do the ghosts or visions. 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It is King's third published novel and first hardback bestseller, and the success of the book firmly established King as a preeminent author in the horror genre. The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written with novelist Diane Johnson.The film is based on Stephen King's 1977 novel of the same name and stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd.. The Shining is an amazing movie, one which is open to numerous interpretation. Laissez-les seuls dans un hotel pendant tout un hiver, et vous ne pourrez vous en prendre qu’à vous-mêmes. Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING has one hell of an ending: maniac Jack Torrance’s frozen grimace, followed by the slow push-in on the antique photograph on the Overlook Hotel wall, is one of the most memorable one-two gut-punches in film history. Some theorists even claim that the typed word “All” in “All work and no play...” looks like “A11,” an abbreviation of Apollo 11. This can suggest that the whole film was a nightmare. This is suggested because of a seemingly out-of-place ski poster is visible in one of the shots of the freaky twin girls. A common trope in American horror movies is the “Indian burial ground.” It plays heavily on white guilt, as white people build on land in which native people are buried and then the building is haunted by their spirits. Although this conspiracy is almost definitely untrue, some viewers have still read The Shining as Kubrick’s confession that he was involved in faking the Moon landing. History professor Geoffrey Cocks is pretty sure The Shining is about the Nazi extermination. But despite all the study, there are still few conclusive answers as to what Kubrick was actually trying to say with The Shining, opening the door for countless interpretations. In The Shining, Stuart Ullman mentions that the Overlook was built on an "Indian burial ground," suggesting that the ghosts that haunt the hotel are the vengeful spirits of murdered Native Americans. There's an article about incest. In one of the shots of the Grady twins, there’s a ski poster with the word “Monarch” on it. Conspiracy theorists allege that Kubrick peppered his work with visual references to Masonic symbols, like the Eye of Providence. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is still dissected by fans today. A shining example of a brilliant director elevating the material. The Shining is a horror cinema masterpiece, and figuring out its haunting and iconic ending was no easy task for Stanley Kubrick. Another suggests that the film represents the myth of the Minotaur. Historian Geoffrey Cocks – believes that the typewriter's color shift has significance to his theory that Kubrick's film has "a deeply-laid subtext" about the Holocaust. The Shining revolves around the life of Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic seeking to find solace to focus on his writing. To watch my previous video analysis of The Shining, based upon some of the concepts described in the text of the article, scroll to the bottom of this page. The novel was adapted into a … When the hotel manager gives the Torrance family a tour, he mentions that the. Another suggests that the Illuminati killed Stanley Kubrick because of this film. Another suggests that the Overlook is hell. A one-stop shop for all things video games. The date on the photograph in the final shot, July 4, has been seen as an ironic wink affirming this interpretation. This scene is one of the more important in the whole film, but is often overlooked on the first watch as being just for shock. NEXT: Stanley Kubrick's 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes. A pretty pedestrian reading of The Shining is that the Overlook Hotel represents Hell. In order to fulfill this desire, he accepts a job as a caretaker for the Overlook Hotel (Godfrey, 2015). To hammer this home, the pose he’s striking in the photograph in the final shot is the same pose demonstrated by Baphomet, aka Satan, on his tarot card. The figure on a skiing poster in the hotel resembles a Minotaur, as does another poster of a cowboy riding its bull. All the latest gaming news, game reviews and trailers. To wit: In the scene where Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) meets Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) in his office and, Weidner says in 237, his hips line-up perfectly with his paper try making it look like an erection. In the novel, Jack manages to fight the hotel’s possession long enough for him to tell Danny to run for his life. LE COMMENTAIRE. Based on the fact that Jack becomes the embodiment of pure evil throughout the movie, some viewers of The Shining believe that he is the Devil. In The Shining, the previous winter caretaker snapped and killed his family, then Jack did the same. Here are some interpretations of the horror film based on Stephen King's novel. The Shining allegedly contains Kubrick’s coded apology. But Kubrick’s original version of the film included another scene inserted between these two iconic […] Stanley Kubrick, 1980. The murdered twins are over-layed across Jack's face. Several of the theorists talk about weird coincidences that they personally experienced while spending countless hours watching and thinking about The Shining. Interpretations, also known as theories or readings are fan based interpretations of the meanings of hidden themes found in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film version of the 1977 Stephen King novel The Shining . Interpretations, also known as theories or readings are fan based interpretations of the meanings of hidden themes found in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film version of the 1977 Stephen King novel The Shining. There are piles of Tang, the powdered fruit drink used on space flights, visible in the pantry. The conspiracy goes that the TV broadcast of the landing was filmed by Stanley Kubrick using sets from his movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was released a year earlier. However, Jack Nicholson’s face was airbrushed into an old photo in which some guy who didn’t know the picture would one day be in The Shining was already doing that pose. Shining or shining on is the phrase used by Dick Halloran to describe his and five-year-old Danny Torrance's ability to read minds and mentally converse with others who read minds. Take your favorite fandoms with you and never miss a beat. RELATED: 10 Reasons Why The Shining Is The Greatest Horror Movie Ever Made. Another suggests that Jack Torrance is the devil. RELATED: 10 Scariest Moments In The Shining, Ranked. And there is good reason for viewers to puzzle over the film 33 years after its release: The Shining tends to be opaque, even though its corridors are well-lit. At the beginning of the film Danny's been physically abused, but there's a suggestion that he's been sexually abused as well," Ryan says. He told me he finds it incredibly serendipitous that his documentary is coming out the same year as the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art's Kubrick retrospective, and Stephen King's publication of. One of the wilder theories about The Shining is that it’s not about anything in particular, but in referencing so many Freudian concepts in a movie that can’t be fully understood, Kubrick may have made a movie that quintessentially captures the chaos of life. This term is inaccurate, however, because a conspiracy theory usually involves two or more people of great social and economic power conspiring to carry out an illegal out. Eyes and triangles do indeed feature highly in his film, not least in The Shining: triangular chair backs, step-ladders, roofs, mountains and tapering corridor shots. SHINING. "The cover is like people getting ready for the New Year. My interpretation of this set design anomaly, as presented in the previous version of this analysis, was that Kubrick was deliberately disorientating the viewer. The layout of the Overlook makes no physical sense. However, the text version is a much more thorough breakdown of the film and includes video stills and other research sources. Another suggests that it represents CIA mind control. This car belongs to Jack Torrance, who has driven three hours to the isolated Overlook Hotel for a job interview.Mr. 5/5 Like the twin girls are over-layed on top of Wendy," Ryan says. "All the symbols in the movie overlap in the superimposition backwards-forwards. Interpretations | The Shining Wiki | Fandom. Another suggests that the film is about the holocaust. Lśnienie (ang. The Shining ends with an extremely long camera shot moving down a hallway in the Overlook, reaching eventually the central photo among 21 photos on the wall. The Shining is a rare film, because, like most Kubrick films, it has dozens of theories behind it. Both believe in the concept of “eternal return,” the idea that all existence is recurring and history is doomed to continually repeat itself. The Shining opens on an eagle-eye's view of a car traveling up windy Colorado mountain passes. The theory goes that the Overlook represents the CIA and Jack represents a prisoner the agency is mind-controlling, presenting him with hallucinations of ghosts and other horrific imagery to crack his mind like an egg. The Shining is “A Stanley Kubrick Film,” and as such it makes impeccable—if also horrific—sense. ", Taking a cue from site MSTRMND's brilliant analysis, which noted that "The Shining is a film meant to be seen both forwards and backwards," Ryan wanted to see what would happen if it was projected simultaneously with one version being played the normal way and the other being superimposed and run backwards from end to beginning. There are all manner of spatial anomalies in the hotel: doors that don’t lead anywhere, windows with the wrong view and rooms that seem to move around. According to some viewers, The Shining is a reminder of the unforgivable horrors of the Holocaust. The apparitions he sees during his time as the winter caretaker are demons tormenting him, while other scenes force him to confront his worst mistakes and fears. Danny wears a sweater with the Apollo 11 space shuttle on it, while Room 237 (changed from 217 in the book) could be reference to the 237,000-mile distance between the Earth and the Moon. Some fans have even suggested that the movie is about the trauma of sexual abuse. The setting and characters are influenced by King's personal experiences, including both his visit to The Stanley Hotel in 1974 and his struggle with alcoholism. Many of the interpretations of The Shining, especially those on the Room 237 documentary have been mistakenly labeled as "conspiracy theories". Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was only one person and encoding hidden themes in a film or piece of artwork isn't illegal, it's standard practice. Throughout The Shining, it’s mentioned that Jack once hit Danny, but it’s heavily insinuated that the abuse goes much further than that. Pitch Perfect: Which Barden Bella Are You Based On Your Zodiac Sign? https://theshining.fandom.com/wiki/Interpretations?oldid=1386. In The Shining, Kubrick chooses to begin with zooming in on a roughly symmetrical landscape that is reinforced with the perfectly mirrored symmetry of the scene in the water. There’s a widespread conspiracy that the 1969 Moon landing was faked so that America could win the Space Race over the Soviet Union. Still, there’s a chance that that’s why Kubrick chose that photo. There’s a scene in The Shining in which Wendy finds Jack screaming at his typewriter, and he says he fell asleep and had a horrible nightmare in which he was forced to murder his family. Top-notch conspiracy hunter Jay Weidner has many, many theories about the work of Kubrick (and other things) but some of the more eye-popping are his thoughts about how the director used the subliminal messaging of advertisers in his films. "That typewriter, that German typewriter – which by the way changes color in the course of the film, which typewriters don't generally do – is terribly, terribly important as a referent to that particular historical event. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop. The Shining is a film about cyclical violence, and about how we can't escape the dark specter of history. When Halloran talks to Danny privately he tells him: "You shine on boy, harder than anyone I ever met in my life. But what does it actually mean? In addition to writing for Screen Rant and Comic Book Resources, covering everything from Scorsese to Spider-Man, Ben directs independent films and does standup comedy. The Shining Wiki is a FANDOM Movies Community. The word “Monarch” appears on it, which was a widely rumoured codename for a CIA “behavioural engineering” programme called MKUltra, which breaks minds down using LSD and experimental techniques. Jack wears a t-shirt bearing an eagle, a symbol of … When Jack Torrance signs his employment contract, it’s a Faustian pact with the devil – hence his descent into a hell full of blood, ghostly visions and his personal fears. 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