THE INTERVIEW
-- A little "toy" axe is in the pencil holder on Ullman's desk during
the interview. [this is barely visible on VCR tape. -- B.K.]
(K.L.)
-- So is an American flag. (G.A.)
LATER
-- "Danny": possibly short for "Daniel," who, in the Old Testament,
was the one capable of reading the handwriting on the wall. [On pg.
3 of THE SHINING, King has Ullman referring to Danny as "Daniel,"
and on pg. 306, we learn that REDRUM has been written by a
"hand dangled limply, blood dripping from the tips of the
fingers."] Here are excerpts from DANIEL 5:
* * * * *
4 They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of
brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote
over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the
king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
6 Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts
troubled him . . .
7 The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans,
and the soothsayers. And the king spake, and said to the wise men of
Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the
interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a
chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the
kingdom. . . .
10 Now the queen by reason of the words of the king and his lords
came into the banquet house: and the queen spake and said, O king,
live for ever: let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy
countenance be changed:
11 There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy
gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and
wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him . . .
interpreting of dreams, and shewing of hard sentences, and dissolving
of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king named
Belteshazzar: now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the
interpretation.
13 Then was Daniel brought in before the king. And the king spake
and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children
of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of
Jewry?
14 I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in
thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found
in thee.
15 And now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in
before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me
the interpretation thereof: but they could not shew the
interpretation of the thing:
16 And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations,
and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make
known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with
scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the
third ruler in the kingdom.
17 Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be
to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the
writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation.
18 O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a
kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour:
19 And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and
languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and
whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he
would he put down.
20 But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in
pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory
from him:
21 And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made
like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they fed
him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of
heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of
men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will.
22 And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart,
though thou knewest all this;
23 But hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they
have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy
lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and
thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood,
and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose
hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not
glorified:
24 Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing
was written.
25 And this is the writing that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL,
UPHARSIN.
26 This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered
thy kingdom, and finished it.
27 TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
. . .
-- Danny explores the Hotel; his parents work in it. So Danny has
a greater opportunity to see what is on the rooms "on the fringes."
-- Wendy to Danny: "Loser gets to keep America clean." That's a
pretty damn strange thing for her to say: particularly since she
and her husband are the Hotel's Janitors. Danny "wins."
-- Two of Danny's sweaters "reflect" two other Kubrick films:
1) BACKSHADOW: "Apollo 11" (2001)
2) FORESHADOW: "Mickey Mouse" (FMJ)
-- I have noticed that Kubrick uses an almost rough cut editing style
for many of the dialogue scenes. For example, when Halloran gives
Danny ice cream, the editing pattern is something like: Halloran
speaks a line. Pause. Cut to Danny. Pause. Danny speaks a line. Pause
Cut to Halloran. Pause. Halloran speaks a line. Pause. Etc. Most
movies will cut out the dead air between lines by cutting to Danny
while Halloran finishes speaking his line and then having Danny
answer right away, then maybe cut back to Halloran while Danny is
still speaking, etc. Overlapping image and dialogue like this really
quickens up the pace. But Kubrick chose to give almost all the
dialogue scenes this very weighty, deliberate pace . . .
(G.W.)
-- "The Gold Room"; from a distance, the typeface Kubrick has chosen
for the sign makes the "G" look like a "C" -- "The Cold Room."
-- "I'd give my soul for a drink . . ."; moments later, we find out
Jack has no money -- so how can he pay for the drink? Credit . . .
-- "All work and no play": two interesting misspellings a line above
the paper guide: "boy" is misspelled as "bog" and "bot".
-- Wendy had two choices: put Jack where he could get food and
stay alive, or put him under deep freeze (recall Halloran's
earlier tour of the kitchen). She chooses the former; but
all she did was put off the inevitable, at great risk to
herself and her son.
-- In the food pantry, a "Tang" container (the drink of astronauts)
is seen above a "Calumet" container (with a silhouette of the
head of an Original-American); the top layer is space, the bottom
is ground. One is built over the other.
-- Jack: "I need a doctor." Danny's nickname is "Doc."
-- Jack does not sing "fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an
Englishman"; however, this reference is implied when he reads
the Big Bad Wolf's line.
-- At a couple points, there is a rapid cut from Danny's vision of
the blood pouring from the elevator, to Jack, in his mad glory. The
more overt Jack's insanity, the more lurid and gory Danny's
vision -- until finally, when Jack is advancing on the baseball-
bat-swinging Wendy ("I'm not going to hurt you, I'm going to bash
your fucking head in") the camera is obscured, awash in blood. All we
can see is a red haze. Jack's madness is a "red madness" and it's no
coincidence that Jack is often associated with bright colors, yellow
(the "Gold Room"; his yellow Volkswagen) and red (the garish red
bathroom.)
(E.T.)
-- Danny, Jack, and Wendy all shine different things because their
"shinings" are filtered through their own fears, desires, and
perceptions. Hence, Wendy sees stuff out of her ghost stories, and
Jack gets things that he wants, like alcohol. (And eventually,
immortality of a sort.) Danny seems to be more passive, though. He
sees what Jack sees (the red madness, also the room 237 sequence that
he "relays" to Hallorann), for example. Other of his "shinings" seem
similarly, I don't know, _supplied_ to him, and having little to do
with anything that Danny _wants_ to see.
(E.T.)
-- Jack degenerates into a shambling, moaning human ape, unable to
even make any articulate sounds. . . . Jack in the progress of his
madness shows signs of childlike regression. "Jack is a dull boy";
Oreos; baby-talk ("my head hurts _real_ _bad_"). If Jack gets what he
wants when he "shines", then why did the room 237 "shining" turn on
him so shockingly and viciously? It almost seems like the Hotel was
playing "bait-and-switch".
(E.T.)
-- When Wendy flips through the sheaf of Jack's type-script (each
page individually typed -- what a nice touch!) the arrangement and
spelling of the "All work and no play...." sentences becomes more and
more erratic as she progresses through the sheets. . . . other
pages are increasingly stylized, with weird indentations and abstract
patterns formed by the words. I'm reminded of something I saw a long
time ago, in a book -- a series of drawings of cats done by an artist
who was slipping progressively into psychosis. The drawings became
more and more abstract, with much stylization and use of intricate
geometric shapes and brilliant colors, until finally you could hardly
recognize the drawing as a cat at all.
(E.T.)
-- The woman in the bathtub: she, like the hotel, is outwardly
seductive, but is death when embraced. Note how she remains
motionless as a corpse during the entire kiss.
(D.M.)
-- There is a scene that I'd always found oddly disconcerting and
even disorienting although I'd never been able to put my finger on
why until recently -- the scene in which Wendy serves Jack breakfast
in bed. We see Jack asleep in the bedroom mirror as Wendy wheels in
the cart with breakfast. The camera slowly zooms in again until the
edges of the mirror are no longer visible as we watch the beginning
of the dialog. The next shot is of Wendy's face as she explains how
scary she thought it would be to be staying at the hotel. Then the
camera returns to a position that looks like the previous one. But it
isn't. We're no longer looking at the mirror image, we see the direct
image, but shot in such a way that a casual observer would never
notice the difference. It is at this point that Jack speaks of "deja
vu" and recognizing things everytime he turns a corner. This is the
first and last time Jack ever tells Wendy about things he finds
personally unusual about the hotel.
(D.M.)
-- "White Man's Burden": the title of a poem by Rudyard Kipling which
spoke to the virtues of colonial ambition, and conferred the duty of
"uplifting" native peoples upon the Imperial White Man.
(D.M.)
-- Two of the weapons used in the film are a baseball bat (American)
and a fire ax (Indian tomahawk).
(D.M.)
-- Wendy in the boiler room: Isn't this the job that Jack is supposed to
be doing?
(D.M.)
-- "KDK-1 calling KDK-12. Can you read me? Over." repeated incessantly,
with no one answering. (The "one" calling the "many": 12 disciples
in the New Testament, Twelve tribes of Israel). This may be
Kubrick's oblique way of that he feels like he's "talking to himself"
(Joyce: "loonely in me loneness."). "KDK" = "KBK" phonologically.
"KDK," like HCE in Joyce's FINNEGANS WAKE, can of course go way
beyond Kubrick, to a more general and universal idea.
-- Danny can read the handwriting on the wall; but only if he knows
how to decode the message (seen head-on, the message refers only to
the medium used to create it ["red-rum" lipstick]. The filter of the
mirror brings out the depth via a process of transformation; a
sinister depth, under a benign exterior. Slick . . .
-- In this case, the wall is a door . . .
-- Danny doesn't just "read" the handwriting on the wall; he "writes"
it as well. Danny does it all . . .
-- Note how earlier in the film, the camera shots are largely neat
and parallel to the lines in the room. By the time we arrive at the
"redrum" scene, we are seeing the action from strange, oblique
angles.
(D.M.)
-- While Jack and Danny are locked in a sort of pre-destined combat,
Wendy does indeed appear to "shine" -- prisoner to the past horrors
of the Overlook Hotel. During these last hysterical moments of Jack's
bitter life, both husband and wife are frantically making their way
through their own "maze": Jack through the hedges, Wendy through the
Overlook itself. But while Jack is on the prowl for his son, Wendy is
almost attempting to CLOSE HER EYES to the horror and -- this is the
key -- PERVERSION of the Overlook's past. But she is unable to
finally escape the dominant images of the skeletons, the bloody lift,
and the split-skulled partygoer . . .
(D.Z.)
-- Road Runner ("Beep, Beep")
The coyote's after you . .
Road Runner ("Beep, Beep")
If he catches you you're through . . .
-- Jack carries a fireaxe into the maze, and goes wrong four ways:
1) The maze is freezing, not on fire.
2) A ball of string would be more helpful.
3) Jack can't make the MoonWatcher frame shift, and use the
axe and chop his way through the bushes.
4) Jack thinks he's going to kill Danny, but maybe he's been
lured there on purpose into the only place he can be killed.
-- In Dante's INFERNO, the bottommost Circle of Hell is reserved for
those who have committed TREACHERY AGAINST THOSE TO WHOM THEY WERE
BOUND BY SPECIAL TIES. And the punishment? Encasement in ICE.
-- Lyrics heard as we see Jack's picture at the end of the film.
Note, too, that this tune is also heard when Jack meets Lloyd for the
second time.
Midnight with the stars and you
Midnight and a rendezvous
Your arms held a message tender
Saying I surrender
All my love to you
Midnight brought a sweet romance
I've known all my whole life through
I'll be remembering you
Whatever else I do
(transcribed by D.M./J.T.)
21/12
1) Date on picture: "1921"
2) Room 237: 2 + 3 + 7 = 12.
3) KDK-12.
4) "21" is a mirror image of "12" (reversal).
5) 2 parents, 1 child.
6) 21: age of adulthood.
7) 12: last age of childhood (before becoming a teenager like Alex).
8) Jack thinks he has "two 20's and two 10's" in his wallet.
9) Film on TV: "Summer of '42" (42 = 21 x 2)
10) Number on Danny's jersey: "42"
CARTOON IMAGERY
-- Danny is always associated with cartoon characters. When he lays down
on his bed after the seizure, his head goes on a pillow with the face
of a cartoon character on it -- it resembles the one Wendy sees.
Danny's face is juxtaposed to this pillow, and we see their faces
side by side. Danny also wears a sweater with Mickey Mouse on it, and
we see him watching the Roadrunner cartoons.
(C.G.)
ORIGINAL-AMERICAN IMAGERY
-- Shelly Duvall's wardrobe reminds us of a squaw and Nicholson's
attitude reminds us of the arrogance of those early settlers. The boy
is the innocent caught up in the middle. The hotel is the graveyard
for the souls of the long dead Indians. A number of the larger rooms
are dressed with distinctive American Indian artifacts.
(A.E.)
MIRROR IMAGERY
-- Folks keep being confronted by truths in the film when looking in the
mirror: Redrum becomes murder, Jack sees the old crone in room only
in the mirror, etc. Contrast with symmetry: Halloran's room, before
he comes back to "save" Danny, the bar behind Lloyd, the twin
elevators -- and that lovely just-off-symmetrical shot of Jack at his
writing table, just before he blows up at Wendy. It WOULD be
symmetrical, except for that lamp to one side. You know something's
wrong, because of that lamp throwing everything off.
(A.K.)
-- After seeing the woman in room 237, Jack comes back to Wendy
andsays, "I didn't see anything." At the moment he says this,
his back is to a mirror in the hallway.
MAZE IMAGERY
Throughout the film, we see images of mazes:
1. For example, during the opening credits, we see a very narrow,
mountain side road, where Jack is traveling. The road curves and bends
around the mountain, giving the illusion of a circular maze.We see this
same road, only from another side - a mirror image if you will (The
opening shot shows Jack's car moving along the left side of the
mountain. Later, when he and his wife and child are traveling the road
to the Overlook, we see the car and road on the right of the mountain.
2. When Jack is in the office for the interview, he states that he gave
up teaching and is now a writer. He said, "teaching was a way to make
ends meet." The ends of a maze never meet, and in fact as a writer, Jack
ends up dying in the middle of the maze, unable to find his way out.
3. The rugs in the hotel lobby and in various other rooms, are maze-like
in their designs.
4. The hedge maze.
5. When the manager of the hotel takes Jack on a tour of the basement,
the camera pans along with them and it looks like they are walking
through a maze of long corridors.
6. Danny pedals his bike along the halls of the hotel, going in
different directions, turning corners -- again seeming to be passing
through a maze.
(C.G.)
The maze is a persistent theme throughout, and it is fitting that the
final "battle" takes place there. Jack can certainly be seen as a
Minotaur complete with ax. Halloran could even be seen as Danny's
Ariadne who provides them with the means to escape the larger maze of
their whole situation.
(G.W.)
FACES
During Danny's first shine, the toothbrushing in the mirror sequence in
which we first see the blood flood from the elevators, there is a
fascinating and subtle match cut. We see Danny's shocked and frozen
eyes, wide whites with irises halved by his lower eyelids -- and the old
style elevator dials above the red doors seem to mimic his expression
(with menacing glee.) Face to face. Eyes to eyes. Danny and the hotel
are introduced to each other. There are many other "faces" to be seen in
the Overlook's interior design, and observations of these have lead me
to believe that Kubrick's frequent use of bilateral symmetry in long
static shots capitalizes on the rorschach quality of such scenes.
(J.D.)
I too noticed many faces in the film. Did you catch the faces on the
boiler? The boilers look like pigs. As the camera pans past two boilers
which look like pigs it stops at a wall where Wendy presses 2 buttons
which look like the mouth and left eye respectively of a face. There are
3 boxes here each with a face like this. Two eyes and a mouth. The
mouths look like they're smiling.
(G.W.)
There is another face which is prominent in The Shining's mise-en-scene.
The Colorado Lounge, where Jack works, seems to be designed to resemble
Jack's face. Review the scene in which Jack establishes the "new rule."
-- Dolly-in to lounge, Jack's back to camera. Jack is typing, and the
lounge's "Jack-face" is perfectly framed by the entryway though which
the camera has just passed. Now, reverse angle (what I contend is a
match cut) and dolly-in to Jack's face in CS as he is typing. Following
this reading, Wendy, when she enter's the lounge ("Hi, Honey!), is
visually entering Jack's head. Exquisite . . .
(J.D.)
MISCELLANEOUS
-- Outtakes from the opening scene were used at the end of the 1982
BLADE RUNNER release.
[From BLADE RUNNER FAQ at:
http://www.uq.oz.au/~csmchapm/bladerunner/
OR
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/movies/bladerunner-faq]
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