Heeeeeeres Stanley

Rating: Null/10 (23 November 1999)

It would take a 200-page novel to fully explain everything explored in Kubricks The Shining.It would take more than 1000 words to give high enough praise to Jack Nicholson for managing to give a performance that is at once incredibly horrific,and at the same time,darkly comic.Nicholson portrays Jack Torrances slide into madness vey subtly,giving us only clues to the approaching insanity that will lead us through room 237,dead black chefs and doorways in desperate need of carpentry work. Kubrick allows the film to start off excruciatingly slowly,and we get to know the hotel as almost human before it starts to exert itself on the mind of its inhabitants.The cop-out that The Overlook was built-on-an-indian-burial-ground is merely an excuse for the viewer not insightful enough to see the true reason for Torrances decline:isolation,and the paranoia it creates.While Danny can see the past and the future,there is nothing really supernatural going on at the hotel,merely psychological. The film supports the theory that all of Kubricks work is devoid of emotion,there is no happy ending,no moments of tenderness,no fleeting declarations of love,but why should there be ? This is a horror film after all,with all the requisite features:decapitated children,waves of blood,naked women and an axe murderer.What more can you ask.And its all masterfully portrayed by Grandfather Kubrick.