Do we shine at the end?
THIS POST IS FOR THE SHINING…. don’t know why it doesn’t show up in the regular forum section.
That is an interpretation that I had never heard of before. It is quite interesting.
As a lover of the film, I have not really studied it as closely relative to this question as you have. My impression, though, is that however you look at it, Jack has definitely been possessed by the hostile spirit in the hotel, as all the later scenes show us, and I believe Kubrick wants us to believe (whether you buy into or not), that Jack has always been there, and is there now, with that malevolent spirit that first inhabited him. The film works on several levels at once, for instance, the whole maze theme that permeates the movie from beginning to end (and ends in the real maze), that you cannot look at the movie as anything else but supernatural.
Jack has always been there alright, as the picture clearly attests, just like the murdered girls still haunt the hotel – in the context of the movie. Besides Jack, his son, who is psychic, clearly sees the girls and the dead woman – they are there.You have to suspend your critical belief for the supernatural storyline to work, but the intense atmosphere that Kubrick puts into every scene just makes it work all that much better. We only see the picture at the end, because Kubrick didn’t want to reveal his hand until then – that it is all some kind of cosmic trick that has captured Jack, and us, in its web. I’m not sure if this has addressed your point, but just an observation. I’ll check out your references to furniture movement, etc, in my next viewing.
If your second post refers to the fact that you chose the movie from the available options, and it then didn’t show up when you posted this – that doesn’t seem to work for me either when I have posted a thread and chosen a film, too. The site will have to work that one out.
Kubrick changed the furniture to throw our sense of reality off balance. It is not to be taken literary, although there is room for multiple interpretation, such as yours.
I believe Jack was always there, but what is seen by him and seen by us often counterparts the reality of the story, which no doubt Kubrick grounded the narrative on.
Kudos for that observation Fletch.
Kubrick changed the furniture to throw our sense of reality off balance. It is not to be taken literary, although there is room for multiple interpretation, such as yours.
I believe Jack was always there, but what is seen by him and seen by us often counterparts the reality of the story, which no doubt Kubrick grounded the narrative on.
Kudos for that observation Fletch.
A new reason to again watch this film. I never tire of it. Even when I come across it on the tube, I always stop to watch it, no matter where I come in. I’ve always had a problem with Wendy seeing ghosts. Unlike her child, and psychotic husband, she is not special. For that matter, Jack isn’t special either. But he has failed in life, is an alcoholic, lives with his own demons and is thus receptive to the horrors of The Overlook Hotel. Wendy is batshit crazy, but not special. Yet, at the end, she is pulled into the murderous psychic field of the hotel. My workaround is that her being the child’s mother makes her some kind of conduit.
If Maurice Pialat had ever made a horror film, it might have been The Shining.
Fletch,
I like your interpretation of the picture and what the intent might be.
I think in ‘The Shining’ Kubrick gets even more elliptical than normal in terms of questioning and forcing the audience to come up with interpretations, because the material lends itself so well.
With the picture on the wall of Jack, the notion of re-birth in the service of the malevolent spirits seems to make some sense. Jack has been to the hotel back when, and has been re-born as the writer to come back and ‘do his duty’ again.
Or alternatively, he has arrived to take his turn as one in a line of caretakers (murderers), and upon fulfilling his duty, he is included in the picture gallery, which means that elsewhere on the wall, there should be another picture with Grady in it.
There is one element I have yet to understand: when Ullman the manager sits at his desk and talks to Jack, at one point Ullman reaches down towards his pocket, but doesn’t pull anything out. Later, when Jack talks to the bartender, he does the exact same move, again just a gesture. I feel it must have something to do with the end scene that was shot with Ullman, but removed from the edit. I don’t think those two gestures are by accident.
Increasingly, I do love ‘The Shining’. It’s a film I don’t think anyone will ever fully explain.
I promise this isn’t my own blog i’m promoting.. but it’s in line to what I thought after my 8th viewing or so.
http://faqtheshining.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-happened-to-jack-in-end-of-movie.html
(with pictures)
I’ve returned to this thesis in my mind, I think it’s a fascinating idea. And certainly a valid one, since Kubrick was often a filmmaker who wanted to engage the audience to “complete” the movie, so to speak. The endings of 2001, Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut, all involve a certain degree of speculation on the viewer’s part. One could say that much of Kubrick’s philosophy as a filmmaker was to make people “not trust their own eyes.” Everything is on the one hand very straightforward and all too literal, like the sinister orgy in Eyes Wide Shut, but then we’re told it doesn’t mean what it seems to mean; and then we’re given reasons not to believe that, etc. The Shining has an equally complex pattern to it: as a ghost story it sort of violates some of the unwritten rules of the genre (Grady unlocking the door, for instance, is not something ghosts usually do — poltergeists maybe). Scatman Crothers and the little boy can see the ghosts because they already have the ability to “shine,” but why does Jack develop this ability? And finally, why does Wendy develop it? It is as if the power of the ghosts to make themselves seen and corporeal were spreading exponentially. Under different circumstances, neither Jack nor Wendy would be so attuned to the spirit world, it seems. So, why not extend that to us at the end? It’s as if Kubrick went by the title of King’s book and the very suggestive name of the hotel itself — the “Overlook” — to make a film about visibility, blindness and seeing.
Justin, Jack too always had the ability—that’s why the hotel does reach out to him (one could critique King, actually, by the connection of children and African Americans and playing on some stereotypes) but he doesn’t have the same understanding of the Shining. It’s a bit of the return of repressed. In the book anyway, Danny serves as a battery for the hotel to use and make its hold stronger. One thing that is fascinating in terms of the differences between the novel and the movie is that King tends to explain most things, whereas SK doesn’t. For instance, the dog-costumed fellatio scene. In the movie, it’s bizarre and uncanny. In the novel, there’s a backstory that makes sense of that image. In a sense, then, what we have is our eyes and as Justin says, we doubt them et it ins’t clear how or why we make meaning the way we do.
Ah. Thanks Richard for clearing up those important distinctions between the book and the film. I didn’t realize that Jack had that gift too from the beginning. Danny as a battery to energize the hotel is a nice way of putting it.
I’ve always interpreted the photo at the end as sort of an “honor roll” kept by the hotel, something like Jonathan Romney wrote about in Sight and Sound:
“Hence Jack’s reward after his defeat: a central place among, who knows how many other doomed variety acts on the Overlook’s wall of fame. He’s added to the bill on the Overlook’s everlasting big night back in 1921. And having done his stuff, he deserves an acknowledgement from us too as we get our coats and leave. And that’s exactly what he gets. The last thing we hear in the film after the echoing strains of midnight with the stars and you is a round of polite applause over the end credits, which then dies down as the ghouls leave the theatre.”
I’ve always interpreted the photo at the end as sort of an “honor roll” kept by the hotel, something like Jonathan Romney wrote about in Sight and Sound:
“Hence Jack’s reward after his defeat: a central place among, who knows how many other doomed variety acts on the Overlook’s wall of fame. He’s added to the bill on the Overlook’s everlasting big night back in 1921. And having done his stuff, he deserves an acknowledgement from us too as we get our coats and leave. And that’s exactly what he gets. The last thing we hear in the film after the echoing strains of midnight with the stars and you is a round of polite applause over the end credits, which then dies down as the ghouls leave the theatre.”
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that’s what I thought as well….in some ways, to better understand the relationship between Jack and the man in the picture, we need to look at the relationship between Charles and Delbert Grady…
Wow, this thread was started two years ago and now it just shows up again?
This is an excellent topic and reminded me to take another look at THIS website:
“Five Things You Probably Didn’t Notice About The Shining”
http://www.dareland.com/kubrick.htm
By the way, am I the only one here who thinks Shelley Duvall was really hot? She seemed to land herself in gawky unglamorous roles. I think she’s a very underrated beauty, much like Sissy Spacek and Karen Black.
Saucer-like eyes, cheekbones upon which you could cut diamonds, pouty lips, the neck of a swan—she has the sort of features many women covet.
honovic
Just saw The Shining back to back last night on TV. I’m wondering who believes that it’s us at the close of the film that SHINES and puts Jack’s picture on the wall in the 4th of July ball photo, because we WANT to believe that something supernatural is happening… Up to the point of Grady unlocking the storage room, we are to believe that it’s simply Jack going insane, then we have Wendy seeing images (dead party guests), furniture changes position, and the photo referenced above appears not to be there in any other scene, until the last.
Are we to believe that we forced it on the screen… surely someone like Kubrick wouldn’t have goofed and put an Indian tapestry on the wall instead of two mirrors. That and other inconsistencies, such as sheet-coverd couches change from scene to scene. I don’t believe that Jack was EVER there. To explain the line that he’s always been there could be a reference to the spirit of the Hotel that appears to assumed Jack’s mind and is now controlling it.
Thoughts?