Movie Critic Review: The Shining (1980) Part One

People Who Shine Can See

Jack Torrance, a writer seeking to be on his own for a writing project, accepts a job as the winter caretaker for an off-season, isolated hotel situated in a snow-stricken mountainous area. On interviewing the writer for the job, the hotel owner felt obliged to warn him that the person who took this job before underwent sudden mental collapse which led him to kill his wife and their twin daughters and then shoot himself to death. Nevertheless, the writer accepts the job and is accompanied by his family (wife Wendy and son Danny)into a life of solitude and isolation which is gradually wrecked by unusual events that lead the writer to attempt to kill his family.
The film bases itself on the origins of these events and whether they are psychological or supernatural.
The writer who is apparently frustrated and prone to mental disease as is manifested by his inability to start or resume his writing project* and who is evidently an alcoholic, rapidly falls prey to anxieties and fears aggravated by the claustrophobia or "cabin fever" of the place.
The son, Danny, who has suffered from his dad's physical abuse and consequent psychotic behavior, senses early on the eerie atmosphere of the vacant hotel. This intuitive capacity in the child is noticed by the hotel chef ;Dick Halloran (played by Scatman Carothers)who confides to the child about this capacity that he called the shining: "Maybe things that happen leave other kindof traces behind. Not things that anyone can notice. But things that people who shine can see. Just like they can see things that haven't happened yet...sometimes they can see things that happened a long time ago. l think a lot of things happened right here..in this particular hotel over the years."

 

The opening of the movie is ominous and nauseatingly uneasy. Attached to a helicopter obviously piloted by a cinema techy, the camera tracks higher and higher accompanied by a sound-track that feels like a ritual chanting and/or wailing. Some dreadful human voices. Vocal sirens from the outset! This anticipatory atmosphere is condensed by the conversation the family was having inside their car (a VW bug) while driving uphill to the Lookout Hotel:
"Wendy: wasn't it around here that the Donner party got snowbound? Jack: I think that was farther west, in the Sierras. Danny: what was the Donner party? Jack: they were a party of settlers in covered wagon times. They got snowbound one winter in the mountains. They had to resort to cannibalism in order to stay alive. Danny: you mean they ate each other up? Jack: they had to, in order to survive. Wendy: Jack! Danny: don't worry, mom. I know all about cannibalism. I saw it on TV. Jack: see, it's okay, he saw it on the television." This piece of conversation seems to refer to the remote origins of the impending dangers in the horizon.
The music here is eerie and plain scary! Ominous, in another word. Also, in this scene you will notice the superb acting by the three but notably by Shelley Duvall (as Wendy).

Upon arriving in the hotel, Danny (presumably) shines with the chef who gets concerned and strictly prohibits Danny from room 237. Riding his tricycle in the long corridors of the hotel followed by a tracking camera called the 'Stedicam'  which was first used and operated by its inventor, Danny seems to be looking for the room he is not supposed to enter. This is how Kubrick scares.
By nuances and by nursing your faint sense of fear. These corridor scenes are capable of throwing one off balance, in a way!

Then in a turn of the corridor, Danny is face to face with the twin daughters. The dead daughters of Jack's predecessor in the job! Or is Danny imagining?