Who all is insane?

Rating: 10/10 (6 August 2005)

Since everyone knows the story, I'll go straight into the analysis. There is no doubt that Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) has gone insane, but what about Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and Danny (Danny Lloyd)? All what happens in the hotel does not make much sense, BUT THEY ALL SEE IT. Specifically, after Wendy locks Jack in the pantry, Grady lets him out. We never see Grady in that scene, but the door didn't just open itself. By the end, we are not sure whether the Overlook is haunted, or whether everyone is having a group hallucination.
What about some of the other aspects? When Lloyd serves Jack a bourbon, Jack tells Lloyd "White man's burden". What does he mean? Maybe it has something to do with the hotel's history: we heard about how they built it on an Indian burial ground, and Grady calls African-American cook Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) "the (N-word) cook". These two points bring up something interesting: we expect the Indians to take revenge on the white people, but that never happens; also it sort of shocks us when Grady uses the N-word, because we don't really expect an upper-class Englishman to use that kind of word, regardless of his opinion of black people. And the final scene? In a book about Stanley Kubrick, I read that it poses the question "How independent are we of the forces that govern us?" Ironically, it happens on Independence Day.
As for camera angle, the scene where Jack first (?) meets Lloyd, he's lit from beneath, which illuminates his already ominous features. When Wendy finds "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", she is positioned right in the center of the scene and it's red right behind her (Kubrick always makes interesting use of red). Then, what appears to be a POV shot moves towards the chamber, but it turns out not to be; Jack moves into the scene.
The point is, "The Shining" makes us ask what exactly is up with the Overlook Hotel. We cannot be totally sure. Just a personal note, my parents saw this movie when it first came out. My dad didn't have any problems with it, but it unnerved my mom: Danny looked like my cousin. Creepier and creepier still. This may be the greatest horror film of all time.