I have a lot of strong feelings and opinions about a lot of movies that are almost universally beloved in film circles. I have some strong opinions about some films that are a lot less beloved. This first installment in this series concerns The Shining. My goal with this, and future entries of this series, is not to make you dislike a specific film. As was the goal my previous post on auteur theory, the goal is that you think critically of about the voices that are embodied in art and even more critically about the ones that are excluded.
In talking about The Shining, my argument contains three unpopular threads:
- The Shining is not a great horror film.
- Stanley Kubrick is not a very good director.
- Shelley Duvall gives the best performance in The Shining and, generally speaking, is as good an actor as Jack Nicholson.
I believe strongly in these opinions, and will now use this space to make my case as to why I think you should, at the very least, give them some careful consideration.
The following contains a discussion of domestic abuse and psychological manipulation as those are central to The Shining.
First some context as to why I would pick this moment, randomly and in the middle of April, to revisit a movie I’ve seen a few times and generally don’t like. There are two main factors behind this rewatch. The first is Barry season 3. As I wrote about previously, Barry season 3 upended my conception of the antihero on TV, but it also got me thinking more about abuse on screen in TV and film and how it is portrayed. At the same time, I was planning to watch David Lynch’s Lost Highway, now streaming on Criterion Channel. In advance of watching that, I wanted to revisit Maggie Mae Fish’s video on The Shining and Lost Highway. Doing so in light of what I’d just been thinking about Barry made me want to write up some formal thoughts on the matter.
Now, a brief summary of The Shining. Despite the fact that pretty much everyone who might be reading this now has surely already seen it, this is important because there are two very different general perspectives of The Shining, and your interpretation probably falls somewhere between the two.
The first is what I’ll call the supernatural interpretation. In this version of the film, the family man Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the winter caretaker at a remote hotel in Colorado. He, along with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) will spend five months at the hotel. Jack plans to get serious work done on some kind of writing project. But once there, things quickly go awry. The hotel is haunted, full of ghosts like dead twin girls killed ten years ago by the previous caretaker, Delbert Grady. The haunting, coupled with cabin fever, causes Jack to quickly lose his mind. He interacts with the ghost of Grady (Philip Stone) (who has no mark of a gunshot wound despite our being told he shot himself) and is compelled to a murderous rampage. While he does this, Danny gets increasingly unsettled visions of supernatural happenings from his “imaginary” friend Tony. As part of this, he calls supernaturally to Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) for help. Hallorann comes to the aid of Wendy and Danny but gets killed by Jack. Jack chases Danny out to a maze, but Danny loses him. Wendy and Danny escape and Jack freezes and dies. The last shot is of Jack at a party in 1921 surrounded by some of the ghostly hotel customers we saw earlier.
The important part of this interpretation: the Overlook Hotel is haunted; the haunted nature of the hotel drove Jack to his murderous rage.
The second interpretation, and the one I much prefer, is what I’ll call the normal events interpretation. I’ll confess that I think this one is a better interpretation of the film and, even more importantly, makes it a much more complicated and interesting movie. In this interpretation Jack is already an asshole and shit father. Three years prior he dislocated Danny’s shoulder, and recently “stopped” teaching. No reason for this change in the profession is given. He’s coached Wendy on how to keep up appearances so that when she interacts with a doctor about a different matter related to Danny, she can tell the story of Jack’s preferred way in which Danny’s injury was an “accident” as Jack puts it later. They go to the hotel, allowing Jack ample opportunity to be verbally abusive toward Wendy, and also physically abusive to Danny on one occasion. There are no ghosts. Danny’s friend Tony is a manifestation of his trauma. The other ghosts are reflections of this trauma, Jack’s attempts to convince himself of an alternate reality, or patriarchal power (more on that later). And if you want explanations for the more “supernatural” seeming elements, like how Jack got out of the storage locker, there are plenty of such videos on YouTube. The end events play out similarly, though the significance of Jack’s only murder victim being the film’s lone Black character is more significant in this interpretation.
The important parts of this interpretation: the Overlook Hotel is NOT haunted; Jack is abusive and rage-filled from the beginning.
One final point I want to make is that neither of these interpretations is particularly close to Stephen King’s source material. The book is a mix of both of these readings. In King’s novel, there is definitely supernatural stuff going on. But also there is no gray area around Jack’s abuse of Danny. There are multiple known instances of abuse, the most major one being that Jack breaks Danny’s arm. You find this out in the very early stages of the novel. It’s stated explicitly and not subtly. More on the relationship between the film and the novel a little later.
With this background, I can get to my main points.
1. The Shining is not a great horror film.
This point needs the context that was provided above because, as noted, there are two major interpretations of this film and they are very different. When I say that The Shining is not a great horror film I’m speaking mainly of the supernatural interpretation. In my experience, this is the dominant interpretation, especially until quite recently. This interpretation is no doubt bolstered by the fact that King’s novel is heavily supernatural and that King’s writing in general often also uses supernatural ideas to convey points. And the film does have “horror moments” like the elevator of blood, the twins’ jump scare, or the chase in the final act. I will contend that, at least at the very end, it’s basically a horror movie or at least some kind of thriller.
But it’s still not a great one for two reasons: 1. I’m not scared, and 2. It’s not clear what I’m supposed to be thinking about. These may sound like overly subjective gripes, but horror is a subjective genre. But it’s also one highly driven by the emotive response (the fancy theory word is affect), and this is easier to analyze.
Let’s think about those moments of “horror” in The Shining. First the elevator of blood. Yes, this is strange, and the editing around this appearance is uncanny, but what is the locus of fear? A character isn’t even on the scene. Same with the “jump scare” appearance of the twins. We know that they are dead, but their appearance poses no real threat to Danny other than just the idea that ghosts are scary. That fear doesn’t translate to viewers. And, as I’ve already conceded, the end sequence in the maze is scary because we know the threat—Jack—and have emotional stakes—wanting to see Danny survive.
Because actually, The Shining is, in fact, a good horror movie…but ONLY under the normal events/child abuse interpretation. Through this lens, there are plenty of moments of horror. This is easily my pick for the scariest scene in the film. It’s where Danny, attempting to retrieve his toy, disturbs his father. Jack turns his head and looks through the doorway in a perfect mirror image of the bear costume blowjob tableau that Wendy sees later. He calls Danny into a clearly uncomfortable embrace, an embrace similar to the one Jack has with the naked lady (I should also note that the shot of Jack approaching the bath is similar to very early in the film where Danny is in the family bathroom, talking to Tony). Jack in this scene says very intense things, and after it, Danny has a bruise on his neck.
So I’m scared only at the moments that don’t seem to be trying to scare me—the horrors of abuse ringing far more powerfully than those of ghosts—and only under a minority interpretation of the film. But even if it eventually gets to be somewhat scary, it’s still not clear what The Shining is saying.
This is not a matter of subtlety. Plenty of good horror movies are subtle. The connection between divorce and family is unsettling in The Exorcist (Friedkin 1973). The timeline of events in Don’t Look Now (Roeg 1973). The mixture of faith and doubt in The Witch (Eggers 2015). Commentary on recession, housing, gender, and race in Barbarian (Cregger 2022). These are all subtle horror movies. It takes multiple watches to really tease out what they are saying. But there is something they are saying. Don’t Look Now says something about grief. Barbarian makes a critique about the hidden forces of patriarchy, particularly as it relates to housing. You watch these films a few times, you analyze them, and they present ideas of substance.
What does The Shining say? I’ve seen it about 4 times and watched a dozen video analysis essays on the topic. It almost says many things. There’s almost a comment on Native Genocide. There’s almost something about child abuse. The closest it gets to saying something, I think, concerns patriarchy. There’s a clear difference between how Jack acts all buddy-buddy with the hotel staff versus how he acts toward Wendy. The head of the hotel further says, that back in the day, the hotel hosted presidents and movie stars, described as “all the best people.” By extension, this means that people outside that realm of white power and influence are deemed not the best people. Such a comment, and a very subtle one at that, indicates the patriarchal forces built into the hotel. These forces are very white—Grady making it very clear that the “n***** cook” is Jack’s biggest threat—and they’re very American. The final photo is, of course, dated July 4th, 1921.
I might even concede that, in these few moments, the film does say something about white patriarchal power in America, but it doesn’t critique it and it doesn’t connect it to the rest of the film (the stuff about child abuse). As Maggie Mae Fish puts it, “description is not analysis.” This is what I find so frustratingly half-baked about The Shining. It describes, or presents, a number of ideas without indicating how it wants us to analyze them. Is patriarchy bad? In this movie, it’s not clear. It gave Jack a lot of power and, even though he’s dead now, seems to make him immortal. Is white supremacy bad? In this movie, it’s hard to tell, as the death of the Black man does help our characters escape (both by giving Danny the opportunity to get a head start in the maze and then by providing the vehicle of escape). In short, it’s really messy. There’s a good kind of messy in horror movies, where scenes and ideas eat at you for years on end, and a bad kind of messy, where you keep chewing and getting no sustenance.
For what it’s worth, modern horror director Ari Aster said in an interview that he thinks The Shining works best as a comedy. So if the guy who made two of the most widely praised horror movies of the last few years (Hereditary and Midsommar) doesn’t see this as much of a horror movie, maybe we shouldn’t either.
2. Stanley Kubrick is not a very good director.
First, I want to say that there is a substantial difference between making great movies and being a great director. You’re welcome to disagree with me on this point, but that’s what I think. When it comes to making great movies, all we have to do is watch the movies, assess if they’re great or not, and move on. And to this end I will say that I think Kubrick has made some great movies. Dr. Strangelove is a great movie, as is Barry Lyndon.
But when it comes to being a great director, I think there’s more one has to consider, such as how actors feel about working with the director. This matters because actor/director relationships are the core of directing. The director’s job is to actually direct the actors and other components of the film. And on this count, Kubrick falls well short many times over. His overbearing nature on set is well-known, often making actors do the scene many times over without offering much in the way of constructive feedback. Tom Cruise was involved in shooting Eyes Wide Shut (1999) for over a YEAR. This absence was felt by the whole industry, delaying many other projects like Mission Impossible sequels. A “great director” does not need to monopolize the lives of their actors for over a year, five or more times longer than typical movie shoots. Furthermore, Malcolm McDowell, star of A Clockwork Orange (1971), has said in interviews that Kubrick had a “lack of humanity.” That’s a harsh critique, one often echoed by other people reflecting on their experience with Kubrick.
When thinking of being a great director, I also think it’s worth considering the director’s regard for their source material. By “regard” I don’t mean keeping strictly to the source material and producing a “faithful” adaptation. There are plenty of worthwhile adaptations that make notable changes to their source material. That’s fine. But I don’t think Kubrick faces enough scrutiny for his adaptations. To state the obvious case, Stephen King hated what Kubrick did with his book. I suspect this is because, as noted earlier, it downplayed both the major themes of domestic violence and abuse and the supernatural elements.
But this point is made even stronger with A Clockwork Orange. I’ve read Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange (1962). It’s a very good book, a classic of post-WWII British fiction. It has 21 chapters framed around the idea of 21 as the age when you become an adult. American versions of the book at the time had 20 chapters. Kubrick, being American, made his movie based on the American version of the book. The problem is…the last chapter changes everything. It’s honestly worth reading the whole book just to get that perfect conclusion to the arc of the story (the Wikipedia article on the novel gives a bit more context to the particulars of this matter).
I know the Internet wasn’t around in 1971 and so Kubrick could not find this discrepancy as easily as today. But we still face a choice. Either no one in the course of making this movie realized that this wildly popular contemporary novel had a different version in England than the US. OR Kubrick and/or others did realize it and didn’t care, opting for the ending that is more ambiguously violent. I’m inclined to believe the latter, but it doesn’t matter, because I would say that a “great director” wouldn’t do either. Hitchcock famously bought up every copy he could of Psycho so people wouldn’t know the twist. And I’m supposed to believe that Kubrick never saw a British copy of this book?
In short, my visceral distaste of auteur theory should make it pretty apparent that I’m not going to equate making a great movie with being a great director. To be a great director, I’m also very much going to take into account your personal conduct, how actors feel about you, and how you approach the different aspects of the craft, such as adapting material and actually instructing your actors.
3. Shelley Duvall gives the best performance in The Shining and, generally speaking, is as good an actor as Jack Nicholson.
There are two parts to this, one that I think is pretty easy to argue and one that is very subjective. I don’t have a lot of difficulty suggesting that Duvall gives the best performance of The Shining. Whereas Jack is one-note in his extreme behavior, often shouting or staring blankly, Shelley uses her few scenes to communicate the depth of the story. Without her sensitive work at the beginning addressing Danny’s doctor, the emotional core of the movie wouldn’t have much to go on.
She was nominated for a Razzie for this part. I’m serious. They rescinded it last year—good—but come on! This says a lot of fascinating things about misogyny and character identification that I don’t have space to address here, but I do want you to think this through. If you think Nicholson’s performance in this movie is particularly good, why do you think that? If you think Duvall’s is particularly bad, why do you think that? Judging acting is hard and subjective, but the strong reactions people have to these performances are worth unpacking.
It’s harder to make the case that Duvall is a better actor than Nicholson, but I think I can, at the very least, defend her here as a very good actor. She has small parts in the Altman movies McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and Nashville (1975), but she makes her small amount of screen time count. She even won the Cannes Award for Best Actress for 3 Women in 1977. Duvall also appeared in notable movies like Time Bandits (Gilliam 1981) and Portrait of a Lady (Campion 1996). I haven’t seen those yet to speak specifically to her performance, but given the accolades of those films, it’s hard to imagine that Duvall doesn’t bring something to what makes them great.
Duvall worked with Altman 6 times, through the most significant part of his career. I think that says quite a bit about her as an actor, and Altman as a director.
I’ve made my case. You’re welcome to reject it. Despite what I’ve said, I don’t hate The Shining. I do find it massively overrated, largely lacking in substance, and it truly does bother me that it’s held up as the poster child for the “best horror movie” while other horror masterpieces from around the same time, like The Exorcist (1973) or especially The Wicker Man (1973) are mostly ignored by younger audiences.
But The Shining is just a catalyst for me to pose questions that I think are a lot bigger and more important than this movie. When a film is included in the upper echelon of the Canon, my hope is that it’s actually a movie with something to say, that it more directly critiques problematic systems rather than implicitly upholding them. And I hope that the directors of such movies are, at the bare minimum, not people “[lacking] in humanity,” because the film, like other forms of art, does a lot to inform our relationship with humanity, both that of ourselves and others.
As I said at the beginning, season 3 of Barry has now provided a template for what a really powerful narrative addressing domestic abuse and violence can look like. In doing so, it’s greatly reduced the shine of something like The Shining that simply gets to nowhere near as rich or complex an idea. That The Shining can be, and usually has been, read as a story where a hotel drives a man crazy. Such a reading massively undercuts whatever potential the film has to say something meaningful on this topic, or the many others related to American identity that it frequently dances around.
There’s a scene toward the end of the film when Jack is trying to convince Wendy that Danny is crazy, that Jack didn’t hurt Danny. It’s a clear moment of gaslighting, and in this scene he says, “Once you rule out [Danny’s] version of what happened, there is no other explanation.” For too long I think many viewers of The Shining have similarly been convinced of one explanation—the supernatural one—causing us to not see the plain harsh reality in front of us. And I think this is hard to see because Kubrick often intentionally obscures this reading, wanting us to sympathize with Jack and hate Wendy. I’m of the opinion that this makes Kubrick a bad director forcing a problematic reading onto the film, and it makes The Shining fall well short of its potential to actually say something about patriarchal power, American identity, or domestic abuse.
It seems pretty obvious to me that Kubrick didn’t want the film to actually say anything on the matter, and so it doesn’t. As such I’m left asking what might have been while I search out other films that actually say something about these themes.
It’s not surprising that Kubrick, a powerful white American man benefiting in numerous ways from the power structures of patriarchy, wouldn’t want to bite the hand that feeds him and actually critique such systems.
It’s kind of surprising that it’s taken us this long to notice.
And it’s definitely surprising, to me at least, that we keep letting Kubrick and The Shining get away with it, acting like it does say something that it quite clearly does not.
