Just Too Much !

Rating: 2/10 (20 November 2009)

Some movies gained over-hyped fame and so many praising epithets along the years to an extent that makes discussing them a kind of blasphemy!
(The Shining) is one of these movies. It embodies the blind glorification at its best. But I won't be terrified. So.. Let's blaspheme!
This movie has a clear problem. It wants to say a lot in the same time. After 3 viewings, I couldn't settle what the main theme was? There is a writer who can't write. A shining thing between his little kid and the old guard. A hunted house with ghosts. Maybe a satirical message; with the "hotel" that was built over red Indians' cemetery, the maze, and the presence of the American flag which could aim at America and its end as bankrupt crazy frozen??
Moreover, there are twin silent sisters (?), beauty that turns into corpse (life ends fast isn't it?!), a kid who repeats one word backwards (may god help him), and a bear having sex with a man at the end (a thing that provoked me to the MAX!). And finally, a reference, at the last shot, to a transmigration of souls??!! This is too much already!
Plainly, whatever Kubrick forced of high issues, and ciphers to express them, seemed inharmonic, complicated the movie, and chopped off any simple drama - or drama - it had, along with any coherent one meaning.
It looks too artistic; which differentiates it between any usual horror. But what this quality did further than making it visually polished?! Most of the classic tracks were shockingly boring. The movie is long. Ahh, this is to contemplate. But what was there, and solid, to be concluded?! The performance, especially from the kid's side, was laughable yet shown as extremely serious, so it was scary enough! Generally, when a movie achieves this degree of being not understood, and not enjoyable, then this is failure. And with commendable novel, and one of a kind director, then this is turkey!
I believe that (Stanley Kubrick) got conceited as he aged. Look at his late movies to understand that well. Just read this: "Stanley Kubrick ordered more than 120 takes in the scene where the camera simply slowly zooms in on Scatman Crothers as he "shines" in his bedroom. Kubrick wanted approximately 70 takes of the scene where Halloran gets killed by Jack Torrance, but Jack Nicholson talked Kubrick into going easy on the 70-year-old Crothers and stopping after 40. At one point, during the filming, Crothers became so exasperated with Kubrick's notorious, compulsive style of excessive retakes that he broke down and cried, asking: "What do you want, Mr. Kubrick?!!", Ok, I have no idea what (Kubrick) wanted. And this confusing question can fit for the whole movie as well!
Strangely, among this heavy mix and this bad ego, the movie managed to be scary. Its general dark character, unfamiliar artistic taste, with Nicholson's charismatic madness made it an exceptional horror. Then its forever vagueness gave it a certain magic. Millions think that Comprehensible + Kubrick = deep stuff, high art, and most of all: something can't be criticized! In fact, being mixed up, long, overstuffed, perfectly ambiguous, not to mention "Kubrick's" left all the chances in the world so the die-hard fans could put their own explanations in the large empty spaces, making up disparate, or rather desperate, theories. However, none of them would ever have the ability to connect all of the movie's mishmash. See how this movie's faults are big part of the very reason why it's cult classic!
It's nothing but a lost movie in the maze of its director's very own viewpoints towards many issues. (Kubrick) kept mixing a lot of constituents till the final product became just like the movie's hotel: huge and blank, with different ghosts and unexplained everything!
Too much of something is bad enough. So how about too much of many things!