"The Shining" - remastered

The Shining is showing again today, on Tuesday, October 1, in Cinemark (7:00) and AMC (7:30) theaters. I saw it on Thursday, and since tickets are just $5.00, I will view it again this evening. 

My reactions to the movie continue to change. When I first viewed it in late October 2013 (and all my viewings have come in the theater), I found the movie to be "great"—an electrifying exercise in style and irony. I found the scene where
When I saw The Shining twice in late October 2016, I deemed it "good" on both occasions, which is probably the only time that I have downgraded a film that I originally considered "great." With a horror movie—one that relies so much on scaring or creeping out the audience—I suppose that reactions to multiple viewings can prove more unstable. I still found the ax murder jolting, the bedroom scene creepily strange, the scene with a bloody Grady shuddering, and the photograph of Jack eerie, but my reactions were not nearly as intense or searing. And while I still deemed the movie effective, I also sensed a certain stilted quality and understood why some people disdain The Shining, even as others love it.

With my most recent screening, on Thursday evening, I liked the overall film a little better—"good/very good" constituted my assessment—but I now found it to be almost totally not scary. Aside from the dramatic score, all those climactic scenes at the end that I just mentioned felt fairly blasé; as a result, I now recognized that the scene in the something that had not fully registered with me previously. In other words, I could now simply interpret matters intellectually—the horror aspects had become merely academic.

That said, The Shining is certainly atmospheric and mesmerizing, starting with those jaw-dropping long tracking shots up the mountain highway to the Timberline Lodge and accompanied by the spooky score. Overall, the quietude, dread, rich mise en scène, and mix of still frames and tracking shots make for an enveloping experience, and the scene remains disorientating. Indeed, the source material from Stephen King is compelling.

What I found curious, though, is the way that Jack Nicholson's performance uneasily fits into director Stanley Kubrick's vision. Nicholson's portrayal is iconic and unforgettable, with his naturally stylized facial impressions, mannerisms, and intonations. It is almost the epitome of a "horror" performance, to the point that it actually feels implicitly parodic and comedic, almost like something that belongs in a Mel Brooks movie. Yet The Shining, while arguably ironic and certainly stylized, is not a parody—it is essentially a straight horror movie (any satirical aspects are abstract at best), and all the other actors, including Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and child actor Danny Lloyd, perform in that straight vein. There is not a hint of parody in anyone else's performance, yet Nicholson's portrayal proves parodic from the start. Not only do his facial expressions and dialogue deliveries foreshadow matters quiet obviously, but they suggest that he and we are all in on some kind of big joke. 

In this regard, Nicholson's performance proves paradoxical. On the one hand, imagining any other star of that era, or of his generation, in the role of Jack Torrance seems impossible. Clint Eastwood? No. Steve McQueen? No. Paul Newman? No. Robert Redford? Certainly not. Dustin Hoffman? Certainly not. Warren Beatty? No. Nicholson's performance is that iconographic and defining, yet its tone and that of the The Shining are essentially out of sync. I am not sure whose fault that happens to be, and if anyone's, it is probably Kubrick's, who apparently shot about eighty takes of most every scene. But if there is something a bit "off" about the movie, which is what I seemed to sense in 2016, I would now venture to say that it comes in how Nicholson does not appear to quite be on the same page as everyone else, for better or worse. And ultimately, the blame would probably reside with the director, Kubrick. Even though Eastwood, for instance, certainly could not play the character of Jack Torrance like Nicholson, his performance in his surreal Western High Plains Drifter (Eastwood, 1973) serves the interest of actual "horror" more so than Nicholson's in The Shining. Also, contrary to the fervid imaginings of some critics, I do not believe that Kubrick in The Shining offers some grand statement about Native Americans and their mistreatment. Yes, as noted early in the film, the hotel had been constructed on Native burial ground, thus offering the prospect of it serving as a haunted house. But that idea is never developed beyond one line early in the movie, and that statement serves more as a throwaway historical anecdote similar to the early discussion in the car about the Donner Party. Indeed, none of the movie's attempts at invoking the past—including the climactic one—seem profound. 

Anyway, the restoration is impressive and Kubrick's colors are vibrant. 

... and that may have been what happened with Nicholson's performance—it is memorable and extremely entertaining yet not necessarily in the way that director Stanley Kubrick may have intended it.