Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick
Text / Black Meow
First, about the director
The divisive words of the film's exploration have constituted a ridiculous existence on a considerable scale, and they are like a pile of ruins, holding up this "Shining" - in that high spire, you witness its loneliness more and more.
It was Kubrick's loneliness, far greater than Hitchcock's.
The people who say "the movie sucks" shake a sizable audience, and I'm on the verge of compromising.
However, the famous American film magazine "The Hollywood Reporter" ranked 40 "most influential" directors out of 500 directors in the world, and Kubrick ranked fifth.
The American film historian Peter Covey once said: "Kubrick dared to defy social conventions and expand the subject matter." None of his works are mediocre over time. ”
The American Kubrick settled in England, hated Hollywood, and was also very unpopular with the media. In the few 20 or so films of his life, the big hit did not represent his true intentions, and he refused to ask for credit; the actor did not like him because of his harshness.
Taken together, how can you doubt his sincere pursuit of a movie?
The Shining original
Second, about the original work
I love Stephen King's novels, remember the thrilling atmosphere of the unmanned car killing in "Christine", and the great movie "The Shawshank Redemption", as well as "Miracle in the Green" and "1408 Phantom Murder", are all Stephen King's original works.
When Kubrick chose The Shining, the writers hired another writer who preferred Gothic and Hitchcock more than the original. The resulting film is a far cry from the original. Stephen King expressed considerable dissatisfaction.
Kubrick also challenged the Master of Terror. Can we suspect that he was just a momentary hot-headed, excited?
The Shining Stills
3. About this film
The film tells the story of Jack, a writer with exhausted thinking, who goes to guard a hotel that has been closed by heavy snow, and by the way, he looks for creative inspiration, but inexplicably becomes a madman who hunts down his wife and son, and is finally defeated by his son and freezes to death in the labyrinth of trees.
The filming lasted three years and cost 20 million yuan, but it is a horror film that is not terrible.
When we finish watching "The Grudge" or "Midnight Bells", the horror is almost collapsed and we can't sleep, we can't think about it, and in fact, the movie doesn't leave a problem for the audience to think about. This was clearly not Kubrick's pursuit.
Fourth, about superpowers
Kubrick needs us to think.
His interest in supersensory perception and supernatural forces was strong, and he was convinced that he saw this phenomenon in his own cats and that one day it would be scientifically verified.
When unable to convince the audience, he hopes that the audience will first see a madman, and everything related to the madman will be easy to accept, and his final point is the supernatural force - the former caretaker who killed his wife and daughter and has committed suicide has opened the door of the storage room for Jack; the Son Danny"'s "mouth" to tony has been giving him many hints to perceive the past and foresee the future...
The audience is most controversial about who has this ability and who does not. Some have defined that only Danny and the black chef have the ability to shine.
In fact, after people's subconscious is stimulated by extreme fear, the deeply hidden supersensory perception may be awakened - Jack communicates with the dead soul, Wendy sees the undead in the hotel, even if it is not used for picture performance, it can also be imagined through the cause and effect of the event, and the imaginary image is presented, which is a method of the movie, stream of consciousness, absurdity, are all to enrich the elements of horror films.
Fifth, the horror behind the absurdity
Anti-tradition, anti-rationality, anti-logical coherence is called absurdity, and behind the absurdity, the theme of symbolism and metaphor is what we should pay attention to.
Jack was crazy, illogical, crazy and broken, but there was a rationality behind it.
His past, a large part of his life, is not in the film lens - Kubrick is not filming Jack's life, he only chooses a small (months) of Jack's life, in a specific isolated hotel, on a specific Indian cemetery, in a specific period of anxiety when the mind is exhausted.
The wife can't communicate with him, because he is drunk and hurts her son, so she no longer trusts him, she always asks him to leave, despite the pressure of his family, the pressure of responsibility to guard the hotel, etc...
The best metaphor is the naked female corpse. When Jack sees the beauty move, to the point where the excitement suddenly disappears, this interruption reflects his real life—in Freud's theory, his psychiatric dysfunction existed long ago.
The metaphor of this beautiful woman turning into a rotting old lady is really the most absurd! The "absurdity", in Sartre, manifests itself in the meaninglessness of human existence; in Camus, in the Sisyphusian tragedy; in Kafka, in alienation, loneliness, in vain and sin... And the carrion of the Shining Spirit covers everything.
There is no need to seek an explanation for everything, and there are few phenomena in the world that cannot be explained? And what is more powerful than the absurdity of life and events than an absurd film?
Therefore, in the photo on the hotel wall at the end 50 years ago, Jack's hesitant look is exactly Jack who was burned to death by a fire 50 years ago.
When the undead who killed his wife and daughter said to Jack, "You've always been the keeper of this place," it was another of Kubrick's absurd tricks—the disillusionment of life is long, reincarnation after reincarnation, and you live only in a hotel you can't get out of, or rather, in a grave.
Jack wouldn't come here and would go elsewhere. Life is originally going around in circles, sunshine beach, and what is the difference between the hotel tomb?
When you were born, you were already dead.
At the beginning of the movie, on the way to the hotel, Jack explains to his son a party: the game of man eating people.
The film reveals the shadow of war, the shadow of Independence Day, all kinds of shadows that cannot be explained... All the pieces, without having to find a complete plausibility of connection to the film's story— allude to the theme of "man eats man", they are enough.
Pessimism to this point, despair to this point - this is the greatest horror.
When you realize this, you come close to Kubrick's loneliness.
The Shining the Shining (1980) (Drama/Suspense/Horror UK/USA)