Stanley Kubrick directing techniques and styles showcased in a precise and acute manner.

Rating: 8/10 (20 October 2018)

Forward: to be frank, I know that Stanley Kubrick is highly regarded as a director, his work has won many awards, and he inspires many to be and existing directors. Yet, I think he has a pattern like many of his other films, that display his own ideas and his personality even when may not have wanted to display them. The shining has already been heavily critiqued and digested since it's inception, what I'll add is my personal opinion.
The shining is a Kubrick classic. Well known for his critical use of dialogue and long-takes and moving imagery, the shining is a "shining" examplar of all this. Oh yes, and it's horror. I'm not the biggest fan of horror but The Shining isn't really the scariest movie out there in terms of what it is.
I think the movie is essentially a movie about retellings. This movie foreshadows a lot of its horror aspects. It tells the audience what to be scared about. But it also shows the audience clues of common horror themes. What I'm trying to say is that, by saying something like the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground, our idea on the film is already shaped by our preconceptions. It makes us seem to understand what is going to happen as we have already come to understand common tropes in movies. There's an idea that the movie is entirely imagined and I think that idea is important as it places the importance away from that story and to look at it like a skeleton of ideas. We get a lot of cycles in the movie. Jack is perhaps living a cycle of madness as he reincarnates over and over. Death is a cycle in the hotel. When Dan is scootering he can always turn right in the hallway. I think that it shows that ideas are often repeated, that it's what happens naturally and we shouldn't let that affect the movie but accept it as a concept of human ability.
Ideas are often repeated and that's a common theme in literature. Because they are pervasive in our identity. Thus the movie wants to show that, that we have to accept that, in a way it's kinda meta.
Anyways, that's just a theory, one that I thought about as I reflected about the movie as the ending so brutally called me to. Asking me to critically evaluate the film. The best part? Everybody has their own ideas about the film, and that's one of the reasons why Kubrick is so respected: he's movies are open ended, open up to interpretation.
Which brings me to my main point. Kubrick wants his movies to be open ended, he wants us the audience to come up with our own ideas, because as ideas are repeated and repeated the way they are delivered always changes. And what better way to incite that than by film?
Thanks for reading!