Writer's Block Turns Terminal

Rating: 8/10 (14 December 2004)

Writing is hard business, and there's a great scene in "The Shining" which shows it all. If you've seen it, you know it. Jack Torrance is typing away in this terribly non-conducive writing space, huge and imposing. Just then his wife Wendy walks in, asking him if he'd like some sandwiches, maybe let her read what he's written.
Jack Nicholson is a marvel in this moment, letting her have it with both barrels for "breaking my concentration." Whether she hears him typing, or doesn't hear him typing, she's not to walk in and disturb him, he tells her, not putting it nearly so pleasantly.
As a writer, I laugh with recognition. But it's kind of a problem moment because it kills dead any concern I have for Jack Torrance 30 minutes into the movie. He's a bully as well as a deadbeat, who has cooped up his wife and kid in a snowbound old hotel with bad mojo leaking out the vents and then springs some heavy 'tude on the old woman for simply trying to offer him friendly company.
"The Shining" is the horror film by Stanley Kubrick, a mega-talented but overrated auteur of several very well regarded films, five of which are in the IMDb Top 100 list (and a sixth, "Full Metal Jacket," hovers just outside.) "The Shining" is the fifth most popular, but next to "A Clockwork Orange" my favorite, and probably the most enjoyable.
It's a very disturbing and violent film in parts, more a mood piece than a gore fest but with some scary moments. Kubrick never had much of a sense of humor, and the film sleds quickly over a lot of territory author Stephen King explored more compellingly in his great novel. Certainly Jack Nicholson, who seems to be doing some kind of Bruce Dern imitation here, doesn't really give us a character so much as a caricature, and of the three principal actors, his manages to be both the weakest and most memorable.
But "The Shining" is a great film once you realize Kubrick's vision here is to create an absorbing entertainment. For all his faults, he was a master of control, and demonstrates that here with shots that have become indelibly etched in cinematic history, like little Danny riding his Big Wheel across carpeted corners, Jack taking an axe to a door, and Wendy cowering in a corner screaming. It's a bitter story, and while I miss at times the humane angle King brought to the book, it's probably good that a movie version was helmed by someone as legendarily hard-hearted and unsentimental as Kubrick.
I think "The Simpsons" have raised this film much higher in general estimation with their many nods and parodies in "The Shining's" direction. But "The Shining" speaks well of its creator Kubrick on its own terms, kind of as his goofball effort amid heavier-themed pictures and kind of as his demonstration of supreme technical craft. There's a great documentary attached to the DVD of this film which shows Kubrick setting up scenes, coaching little Danny Lloyd as Danny, and arguing with Shelley Duvall, who for my money gives the best performance as the only relatively normal denizen of the Overlook Hotel. It's really something to watch Kubrick so in his element.
"The Shining" is all about Kubrick in his element, isolated, cold, squeezing the viewer's field of perception from every angle. It's a memorable ride from its opening fish-eyed tracking shot of a river road to the final black-and-white image, and a masterpiece that is impossible not to love on its own, unembraceable terms.