The Shining (1980)

[bobbyh64]

Originally Posted by Baron Blood

Although I heard he's coming around to liking Kubrick's movie.

Where did you hear that Stephen King now likes Kubrick’s The Shining? All the articles I’ve read and King interviews I’ve seen about this topic are about how much he hates the film.

[bobbyh64]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

You analyzed my referrence!!! We have the SHINE!!!

I hadn’t even read your post yet when I made mine. So maybe we really do have the SHINE!

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by bobbyh64

I hadn’t even read your post yet when I made mine. So maybe we really do have the SHINE!

I didn't even mean it as a reference until you analyzed it so maybe we really... oh wait.

[Cherokee Jack]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

1) Which cut you prefer is likely centered on which you grew up with. I grew up on the US cut and can't imagine those scenes missing, but I am sure those "new" scenes being added is strange to people who grew up with the opposite. Both versions are masterpieces I am sure, and I will cut you if you say the US cut is slow or boring. It's excellent.

Seems that way but I guess I'm the exception as I immediately loved the Euro cut after having only watched the American one for decades.

And the second half of the following scene isn't slow or boring (or totally unnecessary) at all :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKItVWs-1Zg

The first half of the scene has similar issues but is at least saved by some incredible music. Part of the problem with how late Kubrick ended up trimming this, and how unforgiving he was with the cuts, is that he did throw out some good stuff with the bad. Neither cut is perfect IMO.

[Monroville]

Originally Posted by Baron Blood

It's definitely not a love for Disney.
Why would a true inovator love a factory who cranks out the same cliched crap?

I think Kubrick was intelligent enough to recognize that Walt Disney was pretty visionary and a bit devious when it came to storytelling. For as "cute" as SNOW WHITE, BAMBI, CINDERELLA, PETER PAN, PINOCCHIO, etc might seem on the surface, underneath is some pretty grotesque stuff that deals with serious issues (loss of parents, learning to grow up, facing the fear of the unknown, children who make an a$$ of themselves getting sold into slavery, etc).

Maybe Kubrick "was" showing some appreciation to Disney, but taking those moments (like Bambi's mother being killed, Snow White being on the run from a hunter who wanted to cut her heart out and a pirate who had no qualms in using a bomb to kill multiple children in order to kill a kidnapper of children) and making an entire movie out of them.

For me, I have to agree with a Disqus poster who mentions "I don't love THE SHINING so much as I appreciate it." While I love and appreciate all of the hidden or not so hidden messages and details, I'm a bit conflicted on how I feel about the film itself.

The kid who plays Danny is fantastic (and I would say the best thing about the movie), and I can appreciate what Kubrick was going for with Duvall (purposefully choosing someone who could completely encapsulate a demure and abused woman, who Jack no doubt picked to marry because he felt she could be so thoroughly dominated) and Jack (I think Kubrick wanted the fictional Jack to be a caricature or cartoon character. Haunted house movies can be so dour and moody, so it wouldn't hurt to entertain the audience through Jack's personification/performance).

But (and that's a big, fat George Clooney Batman but)... I always felt that this and FULL METAL JACKET was Kubrick being behind the curve and trying to stay relevant. On the surface, it is a pretty boring movie, with your typical haunted house cliches (short of the self rocking chair or self opening doors), especially when you have the same camera zoom for every scary moment accompanied by the same damn stinger. Haunting and hypnotic can go both ways, and it all comes down to how invested you get in the characters. Danny works period, but Wendy is so pathetic and Jack is so over-the-top that they come off as cartoons, and not in a good way. Halloran seems to only exist to get killed, ie to give Jack credibility as a killer (by giving the audience a victim to let us know Jack is capable of killing his family). I understand why, but it still makes Halloran to be an almost "Monty Python" character for travelling all the way from Miami just to open the door and get an axe to the chest.

Regardless, other than the aforementioned Rob Ager, there are quite a few good viddies on the Tube to check out:

The Shining: Ending Explained - YouTube

The Lost Ending of THE SHINING






A deleted scene from the screenplay for The Shining, In which Jack shares with Wendy the scrapbook he has found in the basement

"’[Kubrick] actually took out a scene … where Jack finds the scrapbook in the boiler room. And I thought that was very important because you had to know the moment in which he came under the control of the hotel. It’s like the moment in a fairy story when the hero takes the poison apple. The main character makes a mistake that brings them into the grip of evil. That was when Jack made his mistake.
Before that, it could have gone either way. It’s his vanity and his hope to be a great writer that leads him to take this scrapbook as a gold mine of subjects. That was written and shot. I was sorry to see that Kubrick cut that out."
- Novelist Diane Johnson, co-screenwriter of The Shining

Danny's missing gun

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by Cherokee Jack

Seems that way but I guess I'm the exception as I immediately loved the Euro cut after having only watched the American one for decades.

I'll grant you that the "traveling to the hotel" scenes are kind of bullshit, but if they weren't there wouldn't it feel like ol' Dicky just popped in out of nowhere? In any case shut up and eat your ice cream, dammit!

[Geoff D]

Kubrick always loved those kinds of OTT performances, didn't he? Reminds me of Patrick Magee and Aubrey Morris in Clockwork Orange, so bizarrely overwrought and yet somehow a perfect fit nonetheless.

[eiknarf]

Originally Posted by Monroville

I think Kubrick was intelligent enough to recognize that Walt Disney was pretty visionary and a bit devious when it came to storytelling. For as "cute" as SNOW WHITE, BAMBI, CINDERELLA, PETER PAN, PINOCCHIO, etc might seem on the surface, underneath is some pretty grotesque stuff that deals with serious issues (loss of parents, learning to grow up, facing the fear of the unknown, children who make an a$$ of themselves getting sold into slavery, etc).

Maybe Kubrick "was" showing some appreciation to Disney, but taking those moments (like Bambi's mother being killed, Snow White being on the run from a hunter who wanted to cut her heart out and a pirate who had no qualms in using a bomb to kill multiple children in order to kill a kidnapper of children) and making an entire movie out of them.

For me, I have to agree with a Disqus poster who mentions "I don't love THE SHINING so much as I appreciate it." While I love and appreciate all of the hidden or not so hidden messages and details, I'm a bit conflicted on how I feel about the film itself.

The kid who plays Danny is fantastic (and I would say the best thing about the movie), and I can appreciate what Kubrick was going for with Duvall (purposefully choosing someone who could completely encapsulate a demure and abused woman, who Jack no doubt picked to marry because he felt she could be so thoroughly dominated) and Jack (I think Kubrick wanted the fictional Jack to be a caricature or cartoon character. Haunted house movies can be so dour and moody, so it wouldn't hurt to entertain the audience through Jack's personification/performance).

But (and that's a big, fat George Clooney Batman but)... I always felt that this and FULL METAL JACKET was Kubrick being behind the curve and trying to stay relevant. On the surface, it is a pretty boring movie, with your typical haunted house cliches (short of the self rocking chair or self opening doors), especially when you have the same camera zoom for every scary moment accompanied by the same damn stinger. Haunting and hypnotic can go both ways, and it all comes down to how invested you get in the characters. Danny works period, but Wendy is so pathetic and Jack is so over-the-top that they come off as cartoons, and not in a good way. Halloran seems to only exist to get killed, ie to give Jack credibility as a killer (by giving the audience a victim to let us know Jack is capable of killing his family). I understand why, but it still makes Halloran to be an almost "Monty Python" character for travelling all the way from Miami just to open the door and get an axe to the chest.

Regardless, other than the aforementioned Rob Ager, there are quite a few good viddies on the Tube to check out:

The Shining: Ending Explained - YouTube

The Lost Ending of THE SHINING






A deleted scene from the screenplay for The Shining, In which Jack shares with Wendy the scrapbook he has found in the basement

"’[Kubrick] actually took out a scene … where Jack finds the scrapbook in the boiler room. And I thought that was very important because you had to know the moment in which he came under the control of the hotel. It’s like the moment in a fairy story when the hero takes the poison apple. The main character makes a mistake that brings them into the grip of evil. That was when Jack made his mistake.
Before that, it could have gone either way. It’s his vanity and his hope to be a great writer that leads him to take this scrapbook as a gold mine of subjects. That was written and shot. I was sorry to see that Kubrick cut that out."
- Novelist Diane Johnson, co-screenwriter of The Shining

Danny's missing gun

Yeah that video analysis is like a smaller, more abridged version of all of Ager's pages upon pages of analysis.

I read em/watch for fun. Makes the movie more "magical"

[Cherokee Jack]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

I'll grant you that the "traveling to the hotel" scenes are kind of bullshit, but if they weren't there wouldn't it feel like ol' Dicky just popped in out of nowhere? In any case shut up and eat your ice cream, dammit!

The Hallorann trims in the Euro cut are some of Kubrick's most painless actually. He still manages to show enough of the journey so he doesn't just show up out of the blue but the fat is removed and no awkward cuts are inserted. The hotel tour OTOH is choppy as hell. I've gotta think Kubrick would have re-done that whole part of the film if possible.

And I'll take Belgian chocolate, please.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Kubrick always loved those kinds of OTT performances, didn't he? Reminds me of Patrick Magee and Aubrey Morris in Clockwork Orange, so bizarrely overwrought and yet somehow a perfect fit nonetheless.

He also seemed to like banal and awkward conversation. Some have said he was a bad actors' director but I don't think he was going for naturalistic performances in the first place.

Out of all Kubrick's 'great' films, I only consider Ryan O'Neal's performance to be noticeably weak. Doesn't get in the way of the film though and the character's/actor's blandness fits right in with Kubrick's choice of Modine for Joker in FMJ so I'm sure it was intentional as well.

[English Patient]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I think that's why the longer cut in general feels like it's padding the whole thing out to me, I'm told very early on that this character has a very dark side and from there it's just a waiting game until he pops his top. And the longer that takes the more I find my interest waning, whereas the Euro cut doesn't feel the need to expound every little detail and it maintains that tension, not constantly puncturing it with Halloran's travelogue and not capping it off with that rather indulgent and not scary in the least skellington ballroom scene.

That's a good observation, and I can understand it, especially considering that a lot of the cut scenes are just desultory, undramatic things like phone conversations or renting a Sno-Cat or having a chat with a doctor. And none of the scenes have particularly riveting performances, anyway. Still, I prefer the longer cut, mainly because we get the info on Jack's drinking and abusiveness early on - it's the equivalent of showing a loaded gun in the first act so it creates suspense as to when it will go off in the final act.

I wish Kubrick had done a bit more with many of the scenes (like the Halloran travelogue) to make them more interesting so they'd feel less like padding. King certainly did that in the book.

[PGW]

Originally Posted by Baron Blood

My suspicion is once we had access to the internet he could no longer do it so he just remade Von Trier's Kingdom.

Did you see the original Kingdom? I wouldn't call King's version a remake - more like an utter and intentional destruction of every worthy idea the original had going for it.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Cherokee Jack

The Hallorann trims in the Euro cut are some of Kubrick's most painless actually. He still manages to show enough of the journey so he doesn't just show up out of the blue but the fat is removed and no awkward cuts are inserted. The hotel tour OTOH is choppy as hell. I've gotta think Kubrick would have re-done that whole part of the film if possible.

And I'll take Belgian chocolate, please.


He also seemed to like banal and awkward conversation. Some have said he was a bad actors' director but I don't think he was going for naturalistic performances in the first place.

Out of all Kubrick's 'great' films, I only consider Ryan O'Neal's performance to be noticeably weak. Doesn't get in the way of the film though and the character's/actor's blandness fits right in with Kubrick's choice of Modine for Joker in FMJ so I'm sure it was intentional as well.

I still think O'Neal's rather underrated as Lyndon. I just made mention of Kubrick's love for scenery-chewing acting and yet BL is such an achingly gorgeous movie that it doesn't need a whirling dervish of actorly accoutrements to distract from all of that (even Patrick Magee is positively restrained). The bedside scene with Lyndon's stricken son still kicks me in the feels every time though, probably for the exact reason that we're finally seeing some genuine emotion from this otherwise coolly-detached chancer.

[English Patient]

Originally Posted by Cherokee Jack

He also seemed to like banal and awkward conversation. Some have said he was a bad actors' director but I don't think he was going for naturalistic performances in the first place.

Out of all Kubrick's 'great' films, I only consider Ryan O'Neal's performance to be noticeably weak. Doesn't get in the way of the film though and the character's/actor's blandness fits right in with Kubrick's choice of Modine for Joker in FMJ so I'm sure it was intentional as well.

Kubrick said (I think it was quoted in one of the special features on The Shining disc) that "real is good, but interesting is better." So I think he wasn't all that keen on gritty, natural/realistic performances. Not sure why. Maybe it's because he was from an earlier era and was more influenced by movies from the forties and fifties.

I think he liked the banal, extremely bland performances because it made the shocking imagery and plot developments stand out more starkly. I think the dull, almost boring performances kind of lull you, make you let your guard down. If the characters are too interesting or quirky, they could possibly steal the show from the other things going on in the story.

[AaronJ]

I think naturalistic dialogue is what one should strive for -- in certain sorts of films. I think stylized dialogue is what one should strive for -- in certain sorts of films. And everything in between.

Content and setting needs to dictate how one approaches acting and dialogue stylings, it seems to me.

It's funny, because I was thinking a lot about dialogue this weekend. I binge-watched all 13 episodes of "13 Reasons Why," a Netflix show that takes place in high school (excellent, powerful show, btw). Anyway, I remember thinking more than once that this is not how kids talk in high school. And it wasn't just the style and eloquence, but it was also how everyone seemed so philoshopically self-aware and the like. It's just totally unrealistic. But it didn't matter since it contributed to the quality of the show as a whole, and it was very well-written for the most part.

I just think that dialogue is so personal not only to the film but to the writer and filmmaker. Who the hell talks like characters like in Aaron Sorkin movies?

[TylerDurden389]

Wow. Listening to Bill Burr's podcast as I was reading this, and Bill mentioned Kubrick. Freaky, lol.

I recently watched the Euro version, after having both grown up (ok, first saw it at 14) on the American cut, and have watched this movie somewhere between 50-60 times. That being said, there's one vital part of the story that is directly correlated to US vs. Euro:

Wendy tells the doctor that Jack broke Danny's arm while drunk when he was very young (and subsequently started talking to 'Tony'). She then says "No more drinking, or you can leave". This, *I believe* was when Danny was 2 or 3...but then Wendy says he hasn't had a drink in months...Contradiction? Jack later says "Here's to 5 miserable months on the wagon".

Without these scenes, this error is no longer an issue, but I feel like I'm missing something here. Was it the constant change in script?

Also, I feel some of the Scatman's stuff should've been left in. Him getting there without much explanation was jarring. Not to mention Tony Burton in the credits, but now is nowhere to be seen.

Finally, I honestly can't believe little Danny would have an episode, and neither parents did anything about it. The doctor scene should've stayed in.

Siding with longer cut. This film is an experience. So the journey is the fun. The longer, the better. Anyone going to see this at the Alamo Drafthouse here in Brooklyn? I know it's already sold out (both showings), but just curious if anyone here goes out to these things.

[Ray Jackson]

This would make such an epic Criterion release.

[Axl Rose]

Originally Posted by bobbyh64

Where did you hear that Stephen King now likes Kubrick’s The Shining? All the articles I’ve read and King interviews I’ve seen about this topic are about how much he hates the film.

If King's mini-series is right then im glad Kubrick got it wrong.

[Rory]

You know a flaw I think I see in The Shining... the TV in the apartment in the hotel, the TV Danny watches the Road Runner on... looks like a European PAL TV.

[bobbyh64]

Originally Posted by Rory

You know a flaw I think I see in The Shining... the TV in the apartment in the hotel, the TV Danny watches the Road Runner on... looks like a European PAL TV.

That TV looked like it didn’t even have a cord. How was it turned on?

[Martoto]

Originally Posted by surfdude12

Lots of people visit bars to drink who aren't alcoholics. Hell, who wouldn't want a drink being stuck up in a hotel for 5 months? Anyone.

Learning 66 minutes into a film that someone visits a bar looking for a drink makes for a completely different movie experience than definitively learning 12 minutes into the film that
(a) a man is an alcoholic
(b) has given up boozing for months
(c) has hurt his kid from drinking

Also, UK cut removes scene at bar where Jack exclaims "here's to 5 miserable months on the wagon..." before drinking the bourbon

I ion't know what point you are making. That the impression the UK version has always given me is invalid unless it is unambiguously explicated and validated in the dialogue or because it's not pre-loaded in the initial characterization at the beginning of the film?

The fact that Torrance is making a retreat to a place with a bar but no booze, supposedly in order to "work", was enough to impress me that he was a man with problems. And that gets paid off by the way he begins to react to the hotel, in the empty bar with an imaginary barman and imaginary booze that still makes him drunk.

The UK version does not cut out Jack's alcoholism. It just doesn't exposit it in the way that US cut viewers are accustomed to.