The Shining

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a masterpiece. Let's get that out of the way. How much of a masterpiece it is, I don't know, and whether it's a masterpiece on the level of 2001 or Dr. Strangelove is doubtful, but it is a masterpiece none the less.

And the single reason why it is a masterpiece is that it never gives any indication of how a viewer should feel about it.

Is it a story about a recovering alcoholic writer and abusive father who's former demons spark up when he relocates his family to live in an isolated mountain top hotel for the off season?

Or does he actually sell his soul to the devil for a drink in that scene at the bar, forever doomed to repeat this horrible experience for the rest of eternity?

Maybe it's a film about a mother who is desperately trying to save her son from a deranged and abusive husband who tries to murder them after falling off the deep end into insanity?

Or maybe it's about an emotionally abused child who buries his pain so deep inside that he creates an alternate personality and horror fantasy in his mind in which the abusive drunken father who terrifies him is driven into a murderous rage? Is the entire hotel a stand in for the kid's imagination?

How about it's an object of study because of it's mysterious auteur who rarely ever gave interviews and even more rarely ever spoke about his work? As if the artist has left his art in order for paranoid intellectuals to sift through in hopes of unlocking something about Kubrick's inherent inner genius?

But then the film is more yet. It's a brilliant psychological experience in which we encounter first hand the madness going on inside the head of each and every character. It's also an exercise in perfect film form and style.

Every note on the score is calibrated to coincide with what is happening on screen; every performance plunging deep into the madness and torment of these characters as it escalates. Every perfectly composed frame indicating a certain unease that must be lurking just below the surface.

It's also a European art film dragged through the dung heap of American popular culture.

And an adaptation of a great American horror novel.

It's also a perfect example of how to build tone and mood up until a breaking point in which all holy hell breaks lose, in this case, in an extended sequence of terror that is so frightening in how engaging it is that you don't care how it ends, just for the love of god let it end already.

And with that, it's also a hell of a genre flick.

At the end of the day, there is no relief from this film. That's why we keep coming back to it. That's why there is soon going to a feature length documentary trying to shed some light on it and explain all of it's mysteries.

So, The Shining is a masterpiece then not only because Kubrick gives us no easy in or out or indication of what all of this means, but because, no matter which angle you look at it from, it's nearly flawless from all of them.

Whether wanting to sift through the mysteries of the plot, look at pretty pictures for two and a half hours or just have the holy fucking bejesus scared out of you, you'll walk away feeling sure you've seen a masterpiece every time.

That's what truly makes it special: It's a masterpiece in it's details which all come together to create an even bigger masterpiece.

October Fright Nights #1: Don't be Afraid of the Dark

Counting the days until Halloween one horror movie at a time.

I've seen this one before. An emotionally isolated girl is sent away by her L.A. mother (no more characterization needed there) to live in Providence in an old haunted mansion with her oblivious to the point of cruelty father (Guy Pearce, wasted as the straight man) and his new squeeze / interior decorator (Katie Holmes). The kid is unhappy, lonely, unloved, etc. Computer generated demon things whisper out from the basement; the kid explores but no one will listen to her cries of imminent danger, because, for christsakes she's just a kid; even after the groundskeeper, lying mutilated and bloody on a hospital bed, doesn't stutter when he tells Ms. Holmes to get the kid and get the hell out of town.

In 1980 the horror of a belittled and abused child was called The Shining and was a masterpiece. In 2012 it's called Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark and treads the same waters but replaces the cold detached sarcasm of the internal drama with fantasy horror held together with the broad strokes of American melodrama, letting dad off to learn his lesson the easy way. From melodrama is born caricature and from caricature is born films like this, which visually is beautiful (even if it doesn't do enough to make the house the true main character), but is then, as where melodrama often leads, average to the core.

Dad is cruel and won't listen; the kid (Bailee Madison) mopes and cries; and the squeeze tries her best to relate to the kid so that she has a purpose in a screenplay that didn't want to write more supporting characters. And just in case anyone wasn't paying attention to the obvious, the screenplay is nice enough to take the kid to a doctor to warrant a scene where a psychiatrist suggests that maybe the kid is creating the creatures in her mind as a result of a weak mental state. Do you think dad listens? But it's okay, neither does the screenplay.