nandywell

I'm aware that films of Dario Argento are regarded highly by many, if only for their artistic precision and surreal atmosphere. Last night, while in bed, I started to think about horror films and how people in the business perceive horror as a genre. Am I correct in thinking that horror is looked upon as being the 'opiate for the masses'? and also, that said, can or do 'high-brow' horror films exist? furthermore, your recommendations would be a bonus.

There are some intelligent people that trawl these boards, your thoughts would be very much welcome.

wearysloth

Horror or Sci-fi or bits of both:
Nigel Kneale's Quatermass series.

The Quatermass Xperiment
Quatermass II
Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass

Very clever.

I just re-read the novel of the final intallment, simply titled Quatermass...
Brilliant - just gets better with each reading.

TimR

A horror film that is also a classic work:


Nosferatu - Directed by F.W. Murnau

Nick Dando

And Nosferatu by Werner Herzog, too.

Alien?

Kwaidan.

Any of the BBC ghost stories for Christmas - The Signalman, Schalken the Painter, and the MR James stories.

The Unseen.

Nick

davidb

the wicker man

CaptainWaggett

Dead of Night has a much more intricate structure than most films whether horror or not and keeps you guessing as to the point of the framing device until the very final shot!

Third Man

Horror has a cheap name in the film business it's easy to see why, when the predominant point of a horror film is to scare or shock, many things can and do get put to one side in production and script to garner the required effect, just think of all those horror posters with their lurid copy promising--- hell will visit with you once you enter the cinema---slogans dashed across grotesque faces saying WARNING! THE MONSTER IS LOOSE or A NIGHTMARE OF HORROR! This is why you're going to see the film you want to be scared nothing else matters.

Of course there are thinking man's horrors and it's probably best done in literature where care and attention can be taken to convey a mood and create anticipation of the forthcoming events without cheapening or cutting corners to get to the coup-de-grace but when it comes to film the subject of highbrow horror could become a little bit subjective the term itself sounds a little bit pompous to me. Are we talking about a horror film that is cleverly written or maybe extravagantly shot--- perhaps an intricate storyline or a convoluted plot, all have happened in the genre ---- but perhaps not associated with it as much as other genres because of the reputation the horror film seems to conjure-up for people en masse.

To say I believe a horror film is highbrow I would have to think and therefore recommend a film that must demand attention it would take a little bit of or actually quite a lot of application in ones mind to understand what was going on and therefore you would only become scared or frightened when you understood what the film was trying to do or make you understand, therefore without a shadow of doubt, I think the most highbrow horror film that has ever graced our screens and unfortunately folks it's not a British film although it was partly made in these green and pleasant lands would be ....






Stanely Kubrick's The Shining

I could go on at lengths as to why I think this but I recently found what I consider to be the best analytical research of the film I have ever read here it is for your perusal..

Imperfect Symmetry- Understanding The Shining

by Jason "tieman" Francois

Full article here:
PART 11: Imperfect Symmetry

Kubrick approaches his films from 3 positions:

1. The adapted story (book)
2. The narrative structure (film)
3. The truth (life)

On one hand he's telling the simple story of the novel (a man losing his mind in a haunted house), but from 2001 onwards he further insisted that the narrative structure of the film mimic the themes of the story being told. So if Full Metal Jacket is about building up and breaking down men, the narrative itself will likewise follow this trend, falling apart in the second act and later reassembling itself in the third. If A.I is about contrasting the fantasy of a robot (I want to be real) with the reality of others (he is not real) then Kubrick insists that the film likewise contrast a fairy tale fantasy with a sci-fi reality. Similarly, if The Shining is a story about characters trapped in a maze, psychological or otherwise, the narrative itself will mimic a maze- weaving in and out, going down paths and ending suddenly when blocked. All Kubrick films reflect their themes in the way their narratives unfold, until film language is transcended and form literally becomes content.

___________________

Imperfect symmetry- Understanding The Shining

Kubrick’s films often convey their true intentions with their very first shot. The introductory sequence of The Shining briefs us on three important themes:

1. Mirrors
2. Mazes
3. Temporal motion

The first shot of The Shining features the largest and oldest mirror (water) in the film. We see an expansive lake with a near symmetrical reflection of an island and mountain range. This imperfect symmetry will feature heavily throughout the film, as Kubrick subjects us to an orgy of visual and aural duality, flawed mirror images, echoes, repetition and parallels in which characters and objects have doubles, twins, doppelgangers and alter-egos. Even dialogue is persistently repeated, both person-to-person and scene-to-scene.

After the first shot, the camera immediately swoops overhead and pulls in on Jack’s yellow Volkswagon. Volkswagon in German means ‘the people’s car‘ and it’s beetle design is often regarded as ‘Hitler's most lasting legacy to the world’ (Hitler designed the vehicle’s famous shape). These overhead tracking shots give the impression of a maze, Kubrick implying that Jack is already trapped (“You’ve always been the caretaker“). He’s being drawn to the Hotel, and ultimately, a predetermined fate.

Once the Volkswagon comes into view, Kubrick begins his first and only use of scrolling credits. The credits come from below as the car moves forward, creating a symmetry of motion. Essentially, Jack is trapped in a current, being pulled toward the Hotel. This dual motion applies later on, as the film’s narrative simultaneously “shines” both forward into the future and backward into the past. This backward and forward double motion itself is necessary when trying to negotiate one’s way out of a maze, a process in which you must not only search for the centre, but also remember your past route if you intend to get out.

Throughout the film, Kubrick uses these three themes to suggests that the present is merely an imperfect reflection of the past. Man (Jack) is trapped in a maze and is doomed to REPEAT his past horrors. Kubrick applies this theme to both a microcosm (family) and macrocosm (America) as I will later explain.

Throughout the film, Kubrick will show us the horrors of at least three generations of history. Delbert, Charles and Jack are interchangeable. They’ve each attempted to murder their families and all represent “man” at three specific points in time.

Furthermore, the current father and son roles of Jack Torrance and Danny Torrance are assumed by another Jack and Danny (Jack Nicholson and Danny Lloyd) thereby perpetuating the cycle of horror. Danny Lloyd's name itself is further fragmented in the Gold Room scenes which all involve Lloyd the bartenter (not named as such in the King's novel) and a large bottle of Jack Daniels. Note that the hospital scene at the end of the extended version of the film hints that Danny will later head back to the hotel and assume Jack’s role. So what we have here are various generations extending in all possible directions. The past (Delbert and Charles). The future. The present (Jack, inside the film) and outside the film (the real life actors).

Kubrick shows that these three generations of men live in a maze, a cycle whereby they repeat the same horrific actions in much the same way mankind is trapped into constantly repeating the same mistakes. Danny, however, unlike his father (forefathers), retraces his steps and takes a different path. By refusing to make the same mistakes, Danny escapes and survives, while his father is left trapped to die.

But the irony, of course, is that Jack was not trapped at all. In exactly the same way that we the audience are literally looking right at our answer, so to is Jack literally holding the solution to his predicament in his own hands. Trapped in a maze and carrying an axe, he doesn’t think of cutting his way out.

_______________________

"This sort of thing has happened before, and it has always been due to human error."- HAL, 2001 A Space Odyssey.

SCENE BY SCENE BREAKDOWN

1. Jack arrives at the Hotel and receives instructions from the secretary on how to get to Mr Ullman’s office (take a left turn). Already Kubrick is playing with the notions of the Hotel being a maze, as characters constantly make use of the words “right” and “left” as if laying out map plans. Mr Ullman (dressed in American reds, whites and blues) then asks Jack if he had trouble finding the place. Jack replies that he had no trouble at all. As the film progresses we will see that Jack’s problems arise only when he tries to LEAVE his maze.

2. Kubrick introduces Jack as a writer and a schoolteacher (“to make ends meet“). Jack reads The New York Book Review(apartment) and PlayBoy magazine(hotel). He’s a man of contrasts, educated and articulate at the start of the film, but increasingly primitive and incoherent as the film progresses. There are traces of past Colonial generations in him as well. He’s sexist and racist, referring to his wife as a “sperm bank” and being repulsed by the notion of nig*ers.

3. Wendy is likewise a woman of contrasts. Kubrick introduces her as a modern American woman and goes to unrealistic lengths to quickly depict her as educated and liberated (her introductory scene is awash with reds, whites and blues and she smokes cigarettes and reads The Catcher in the Rye). But of course she’s nothing of the sort. She’s a simple housewife (always doing housework), bullied and terrorized by a husband who has a history of alcoholism and child abuse- yet she doesn’t leave him for fear of being independent.

4. During an early bathroom sequence Danny experiences the film’s first shining. The audience is subjected to two short flashback/flashforwards. The first is of an elevator spilling blood, the second of the dead Grady daughters. Both images will be repeated throughout the film. Both show the aftermath of the film’s two horrors. The first horror is that of the Grady family murders, the other is of an apparent bloodbath. The elevators themselves hint as to when this bloodbath occurred. The left elevator is always portrayed as having stopped on floor 1 while the elevator on the right is always portrayed as being stuck on floor 2. Aside from the frequent doubling of objects, the numbers 1 and 2 feature prominently in the film:

1921- Date on picture
12- mirror image of 21
Room 237- 2+3+7 adds up to 12
“KDK1 calling KDK12”- past calling present
Jack thinks he has “two 20’s and two 10’s”
Film on TV- “Summer of 42”
Number on Danny’s shirt- “42”

So the hotel seems stuck in a time warp. In addition to the Grady murders, something horrific seems to have happened in the years 1921 and 1942 (or perhaps 1821 and 1842?). The torrents of blood squeezing through the shut elevator doors hint at some past mass killing. But what mass killing? Kubrick provides hints, but intentionally never spells it out. The lines “we had to fend off Indian attacks” and “built on Indian burial ground” suggest native Indian genocide, yet the date 1921 suggests the end of World War I (actually referred to at the time as "the war to end all wars"). Two decades later, and the date 1942 suggests Word War 2- man essentially repeating his mistakes with a second, more destructive world war. At any rate, Kubrick’s use of a moving timeline suggests that humanity has not learned its lessons. Man keeps murdering his family, forgetting about it, and then doing it again.

5. During her conversation with the psychiatrist, Wendy says that Jack hurt Danny’s shoulder “5 months ago, and hasn’t had a drink since”. Later on, Jack will tell Lloyd that the incident occurred “3 years ago.” Which one is it? It doesn’t matter. Throughout the film, time will be blurred. Violence is timeless. Ullman speaks of Charles Grady’s 1970 family murder, yet the audience always sees the dead daughters of 1920’s Delbert Grady. That’s a crucial point to the Shining - humans repeat past mistakes because human nature is inherently flawed.

6.a. The opening shot shows Jack's car moving along the left side of the mountain. In the second car sequence, we see the car and road on the right of the mountain. Mirrored events like this occur throughout the entire film. Weather reports will jump from sunny to snowy, characters will enter rooms on the right and exit on the left and several scenes will feature a 180 degree jump cut, essentially flipping the image around.

6.b. During the car ride to the Hotel, Danny and Jack have a conversation about cannibalism. “You mean they ate each other up?” Danny says. “They had to, in order to survive” Jack replies. Of course Jack’s casual defence of the early American settlers foreshadows his own forthcoming brutal acts committed under the guise of civility (his “duty”).

7. Jack, Wendy and Danny arrive at the Hotel and are taken on a quick tour. This sequence provides us with several important bits of information. Firstly, Kubrick hints that Danny is already able to navigate the maze alone. He’s alone in the gaming room and is then found “wandering alone outside” by a hotel assistant. Secondly, we learn that the hedge maze was constructed independently and is a separate entity to the Hotel. Thirdly, we learn that Wendy does not object to being indirectly told that her place is in the kitchen, and fourthly, by his glances at the female assistants, we learn that Jack isn’t sexually fulfilled by Wendy.

8. The Hotel itself is a place of contrasts. American flags, stark reds, whites and blues, US eagles, pre-packaged foods, and other trinkets of Americana, constantly clash with the Navajo Indian artwork, native murals and ornaments. We get the sense of two civilizations at war, a clashing of cultures symbolised in the final duel between baseball bat (America) and axe (tomahawk). This theme of doubles is carried out throughout the film. The narrative leaps forward in pairs of days (Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday etc) as well in times (8 am, 4 pm etc). There are also 2 pairs of bathrooms. Two associated with both the Torrance family and images of murder (in their Boulder apartment and their Overlook quarters), and two (the green and red ones) with Jack’s regression into madness and the hotel’s past. The Overlook Hotel itself breaks down into two sections, one old and one remodelled (one past and one present). The movie also ends with two frozen images of Jack - one frozen in death in the hedge maze, the other frozen in time in the photo from 1921. There are also two typewriters. One white. One Blue.

9. Hallorann then gives Wendy and Danny a tour of the maze-like kitchen (“I feel like I need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs”). He shows them 2 rooms. The Cold Room and the Store Room. In the Cold Room we’re shown stacks of dead meat. Frozen bodies of the past. This room mirrors the murkily labelled Gold Room, where the dead of the past, likewise linger frozen. The trio also don’t exit the Store Room via the door they entered. They enter the room via the right of the hall, and exit via the left of the hall.

10. They then proceed to the Store Room, which is filled with preservatives. Hallorann takes up position beside a stack of Calumet baking powder, his silhouette perfectly mirroring the image of a native Indian Chief behind him. Thus Kubrick mirrors one ethnic minority with another.

11. During the Store Room sequence, Danny learns that Hallorann can also shine. Shining is a process which allows one to both look into the past AND foresee the future, essentially allowing Danny and Hallorann to learn from the past and prevent future horrors. In Danny‘s case, this means breaking the cycle and learning from his father‘s mistakes. In Hallorann’s case, this means acting as a sacrificial warning to future generations (Danny) by dying himself.

11.b Both Danny and Jack are warned twice. Their first warning comes from the PRESENT, their second warning come from the PAST.

Warning from the Present:
1. Hallorann warns Danny.
2. Ullman warns Jack.

Warning from the Past:
1. The Shining warns Danny of Jack.
2. The Shining (nightmare sequence) warns Jack of Jack.

Both father and son fail to heed the warnings of the present, but unlike his father, Danny will later uses his shining visions to prevent his doom. In contrast, Jack succumbs and literally becomes his murderous vision of himself.

1. Danny ignores first warning.
2. Danny pays attention to second warning and overcomes the past.

1. Jack ignores first warning.
2. Jack ignores second warning and becomes the past.

12. Left alone, Danny and Hallorann have a conversation in the kitchen. They lean forward and fold their arms, creating an almost mirror image. Kubrick keeps the shots tight and the background constantly out of focus, until Danny delivers the line “Is there something bad here?”, upon which a menacing row of giant knifes suddenly jumps into focus and appears looming over Danny. (Scary as hell when you notice it.)

13. Wendy navigates the maze, pushing the breakfast trolley into the bedroom. In this sequence there are 2 Jacks. One in the mirror and one on the bed. Inside the mirror, Jack’s conversation with his wife is sarcastic and almost bitter, but when we jump to a direct image of Jack he opens up and speaks honestly. This is the first and only time Jack ever tells Wendy about things he finds personally unusual about the hotel.

14. Danny explores the Hotel on his Big Wheel. Once again, he encounters the Grady girls. Their line “come play with us forever and ever” mirrors Jack’s “stay here forever and ever”. Similarly, Danny’s line “it’s ok, they’re just pictures in a book” mirrors Jack’s “it’s ok, he saw it on tv.” TV and picture books record images in much the same way the Hotel records horrors from the past. The Hotel then replays these images forever and ever.

14.b. Television and other electric forms of communication appear throughout the film and are associated with Wendy, Danny and Hallorann. Jack, in contrast, lives a disconnected life with his typewriter. Wendy, Danny and Hallorann watch TV (summer of 42/roadrunner), while Hallorann listens to the radio twice and uses the telephone twice. When Hallorann leaves for the overlook, there’s talk on the TV of the Martin L. Kings assassination. Hallorann is warned of his death, but still carries on.

15. The tennis ball appears 3 times and is used by the Hotel to “play with” or control the film’s characters. It appears firstly when Jack repeatedly beats the ball against Indian murals (suggesting violence), secondly when the Hotel uses it to lure Danny to room 237 (where he re-lives his child abuse), and thirdly in the deleted hospital scene, where the Hotel again uses the ball in an attempts to lure Danny back to the Overlook.

16. While Wendy and Danny are constantly exploring or doing “housework”, Jack seems content to stay within his familiar surroundings, doing nothing. He spends most of his time at the heart of the Hotel, inside the Colorado lounge, moving in repeated patterns at the centre of his maze. Kubrick implies that Jack ultimately forgets how to deal with the basic paradoxes (mirrors) of his nature. Rather than exploring and discovering, making choices and risking success and failure, Jack prefers to sit in the centre of an enclosed world, looking at his maze from afar but never entering.

17. This repetition frustrates Jack and so he lashes out at Wendy whenever disturbed. When Wendy asks Jack to take her for a walk Jack refuses and says that he needs to “spend time writing”. But Jack’s book itself manifests his inability to risk change, and his preference for the ceaseless repetition of the familiar ("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"). Because of this, Jack is condemned to repeat the mistakes of his past again and again, and his descent into madness is the direct result of his inability to break this cycle.

18. When Wendy and Danny explore the hedge maze, they both repeat the line “the loser gets to keep America clean.” This line may relate either to the phrase “blood makes the grass grow” or to the American Indians (the loser in the war for America) who ironically are now more concerned with keeping America clean than their white victors.

19. Wendy uses the radio to communicate with outsiders, thereby completing her task of transcending her maze. Later on, Danny will transcend his maze by contacting Hallorann (“an outside party“).

20. As the film progresses, the Hotel will create personal demons for each character. Jack is haunted by alcohol and his past history of child abuse. Wendy, a “confirmed ghost story addict”, will be assaulted by an onslaught of pop-up ghosts and Danny by a violent father who he fears will chop him and his mother up just like the Grady girls.

21. The following sequence is the most important. Kubrick essentially shows us Danny learning and Jack forgetting. Enticed by temptation (“you have no business going in there”) Danny steps into room 237 where he suffers an unseen horror. This unseen horror is simultaneously mirrored with Jack’s unseen nightmare.

While Jack has a nightmare in which he (Grady) kills his family, Danny goes into room 237 where he relives his past child-abuse. So both father and son assume past roles and step into a horrific situation of the past. They re-live past events which we the audience (in the present) are unable to see, but which we (the audience) will soon observe in the future. Why does Kubrick keep us blind and not show these two scenes? Because both father and son are likewise blind. Both father and son are faced with two horrors: Room 237 and the Grady nightmare. Danny was repeatedly warned not to go into room 237, yet he still went in. But later on, Danny learns from this mistake and subsequently uses his “shining” (foresight) to prevent his and Wendy’s death.

Like Danny, Jack has been twice warned. But in contrast, Jack lives the horror of Room 237 but then promptly denies it (“there was nothing there”). His refusal to admit the past, opens him up to be exploited by all the Hotel’s past horrors. Suddenly the bar is stocked with beer, he has money in his pocket, he gets his orders from Delbert and the line between Jack and Charles Grady begins to blur.


PART 2 in next post...

Third Man

PART 2

22. After the nightmare, Jack breaks down and falls beneath the table. Kubrick uses the diagonal framing of the table to suggest Jack’s instability. When a bruised Danny walks in (his Apollo 13 T-shirt torn), Wendy stops consoling her husband and then accuses Jack of injuring her son.

23. Jack gets upset and seeks solace in alcohol. He heads down a corridor which leads to the Gold Room. This corridor is lined on the left, at regular intervals, with mirrors. As Jack walks down the corridor, he mumbles a line exactly when passing each mirror.

First mirror: Who? Me?
Second Mirror: *beep* you.
Third Mirror: Animal growl followed by outward slashing of his hands.

Jack is now aware of his mirror personality. On one hand he’s Jack Torrance, on the other, he’s an amalgamation of all the past caretakers, increasingly opening himself up to hurt his family. When he reaches the third mirror he slashes out with his hands, as if trying to push his mirror image away.

25. Despite knowing what alcohol led him to do in the past (broke Danny’s arm), Jack sits at the bar and says he’d “give his soul for a beer.” Of course the bartender then pops up and they have their famous conversation before a mirror. During this conversation Jack mentions “White Man’s Burden”, a poem by Rudyard Kipling which spoke of the virtues of imperialism. It was the European white man’s burden, or duty, to conquer native savages and aborigines, for they did not have European language, education, writing, medicine, or religion. The poem rationalized that it was noble to conquer these brutes - for their own good - and thus justified imperialism, colonialism, and the subsequent slaughter of indigenous people. In this same vein, Jack views it as his “duty” to “correct” his wife and child. This civic “It’s just business” attitude is carried on in Full Metal Jacket.

26. Wendy rushes to the Gold Room and tells Jack of a woman in Room 237. Jack visits the room and embraces the beautiful woman, but when he looks into the mirror (into the past) he sees her true ugly past self. Metaphorically, Jack embraces the beautiful but pushes away the ugly. Not only does he push it away, he DISMISSES it outright. The following scene has Jack (when standing before a mirror) denying seeing anything. So Jack has opened himself up to past demons by accepting booze and denying the past murders/horrors. He remakes mistakes, despite his awareness of the end result. He knows that alcohol led him to break Danny’s arm, and he knows that he has and will murder his family, but he just can’t break the cycle of horror. He can’t break out of his maze.

27. Jack then returns to the Gold Room where he is taken to the bathroom by another caretaker (butler), Delbert Grady. It is important to note that Charles and Delbert are two separate people. Charles killed his wife and family in 1970. Delbert, however, exists in the 1920s. Charles is the mirror image of Delbert, and exists IN the mirror behind the butler. Kubrick signifies a shift in conversation between Jack/Delbert and Jack/Charles by abruptly breaking the 180 degree camera rule.

28. Why doesn’t Jack encounter Charles outside of the mirror? Because Delbert represents the start of this cycle of murder. He has a British accent, embodying the British colonists who succeeded the American founding fathers. Delbert then relates how he “corrected” (Kubrick frequently portrays humans as having errors that need to be fixed - “What is your major malfunction soldier!”) his wife and daughters.

29. Grady recalls that he “corrected” his daughters and when his wife tried to prevent him from doing his “duty”, he “corrected” her as well. All this talk of “correction” and “duty” relates back to the White Man’s Burden, which uses burden and duty as euphemisms for conquest, murder and genocide. Murder is referred to as “duty” or “correction”. Human beings essentially hiding brutal acts under a façade of civility.

30. Wendy prowls the Hotel with a baseball bat. She does not believe Jack. She still believes that there is a woman in the Hotel. She believes her son, Danny. She stumbles across Jack’s manuscript and is shocked to see that Jack has spent all his time typing nothing, accomplishing nothing, moving nowhere.

31. Jack is back in his domain, at the centre of his maze. He finds Wendy in the Colorado Lounge looming over his manuscript. While Jack is awash with American reds, whites and blues, Wendy is increasingly made to resemble an Indian squaw. She’s taken off the yellow jacket with Indian stylings, but her long black hair is now worn down. She wears animal skin slippers and boots, and her earth tone clothes still feature native symbols. When attacked by Jack, Wendy proceeds to slowly lead him out of his maze. She BACKTRACKS (just as her son will do) across the Colorado lounge and leads him up the stairs, further and further AWAY from the centre. As Jack approaches the top, his verbal abuse gets desperate (give me the bat Wendy!). Jack is being drawn OUT of his domain and grows increasingly weaker. He lingers at the top of the stairs, leaning forward as if unable to go further. Wendy hits him.

31. Wendy has two choices, she can lock Jack away either in the Cold Room, or in the Store Room. She can freeze him (death) or preserve him (life). She opts for the later, thereby temporarily putting off the inevitable.

32. Jack, in the progress of his madness, shows signs of childlike regression. "Jack is a dull boy", “my head hurts real bad”. “I need a doctor” (Danny’s nickname is Doc) and he sits cross legged like a child, eating oreos and milk.

33. Grady taunts Jack in the food locker. “I see you can hardly have taken care of the business we discussed.” Again, civility of “business” is used to mask horror. American government referred to the stealing of Indian lands as “relocation”. Nazis referred to the extermination of a race as a “solution” and “cleansing”. Humans can come up with all sorts of flattering euphemisms to hide vile acts.

34. Meanwhile, Hallorann must navigate his own personal maze. His long and difficult journey to the hotel, involves many complicated paths and changes in landscape.

Hallorann. . .
1. Tries to make contact with the hotel by phone.
2. Tries to have the Forest service make contact with the hotel by radio.
3. Flies to Denver.
4. Lands at Denver.
5. Rents a car.
6. Drives to Boulder.
7. Tricks a friend in order to borrow a snowcat.
8. Drives the showcat to the Hotel.

During these scenes Kubrick always shoots Hallorann in profile, linking us back to that store room image of a native Indian silhouette.

35. Danny writes “redrum” on a door. Wendy sees this word reflected in the mirror as “murder”. The camera then zooms in quickly so that the mirror becomes the entire screen. Suddenly we’re in the mirror image. We’re in the reflected past where Jack mirrors the horrors of both Charles and Delbert Grady. Up until this point, Jack has metaphorically been two people: the present man with choices, and the past man who made the wrong choice. But now we’re in the mirror and there is no more symmetry, Kubrick shooting with oblique camera angles as Jack attacks his family with an axe (the word labyrinth originally meant ‘house of the double axe’).

36. Jack’s attack is halted when Hallorann arrives. Thematically, the cycle of violence is then closed. Delbert kills the black man (elevators of blood). Charles becomes Delbert. Charles kills his family. Jack becomes Charles. Jack tries to kill his family, but is interrupted by the death of a black man. Thus Danny prevents the past from reoccurring, albeit only the one generation he is mirrored with.

37. Danny races outside and Jack gives chase. Jack hesitates before stepping out of the Hotel. He pauses and flips on the lights, uncertain and scared of venturing outside.

38. Jack’s lust to kill results in a regression from human to beast. Jack’s facial hair grows longer, he loses all human speech when he’s trapped in the hedge maze and he limps hunched over- unable to walk upright like a human. By the end of the film, Jack resembles the ape-men of 2001, his axe gripped like the ape’s femur-bone weapon.

39. Danny and Jack navigate the hedge maze. The son/present is being chased by the father/past (I’m right behind you Danny!‘). But Danny retraces his steps and takes a different path, leaving his father lost to die in the maze.

40. Before he dies Jack yells “San Francisco here I come.” San Francisco gets its name from the monk St. Francis, whose followers were missionaries known as the Franciscans. These missionaries were heavily involved in the subjugation of native Americans. More importantly, the line relates to the Legend of St Francis, a story of a monk forgiving a wolf who had “done evil out of simple hunger.”

Here’s an excerpt, but you can find much more on wikipedia:

“Brother Wolf, you do much harm in these parts and you have done great evil…” said Francis. “All these people accuse you and curse you…But brother wolf, I would like to make peace between you and the people.”

Another, far more logical, interpretation of the strange San Francisco line comes from imdb user mpak3000. He suggests that Jack's line ironically links back to the earlier Donner party conversation. Jack is about to freeze to death, much like the Donner party did. The Donners were headed to San Francisco and Donner Pass is relatively close (less than a 3 hour drive from) the City. Again, this make complete sense in the context of the movie and supports the plot.

42. The final scene of the movie is a zoom-in on the picture of Jack in his past life at the Overlook Hotel. The caption at the bottom of the picture reads: "Overlook Hotel, July 4th ball, 1921". July 4th is the official demarcation of the birth of America as a country. A country built on horrors people often Overlook.

43. The credits roll and Kubrick simultaneously encourages us to remember, while acknowledging that we won’t. The lyrics from the film’s closing song (“I've known all my whole life through, I'll be remembering you whatever else I do.) contrasts with the sound-effect of people vacating a theatre, as Kubrick finally mirrors The Shining’s lost audience with the characters at the Overlook Ball.

_________


No horror movie that I am aware of has the incredible level of depth that this film has. In refusing to rely on any of the cinematic shock effects currently in vogue, Kubrick has made a film that gets more frightening every time you see it.

The film portrays America as Kubrick originally sees it. A racist, violent, sexist society built on violence and genocide. The use of a mirrored narrative throughout the film, enables Kubrick to examine, not only the imperfect symmetry between events and characters, but the duplicity of individuals and societies on a whole. Societies that manage to commit atrocities and then carry on as though nothing were wrong.

Furthermore, the act of structuring the film as a breadcrumb peppered maze, actually enforces the message being preached. Here we have a film where all the horrors are largely unseen because the audience itself is blind. Couple that with the further irony that this was Kubrick’s most profitable film and you have. . .I dunno, the cinematic equivalent of the second coming of Christ or something.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon

davidb

has anyone mentioned the shining yet ?

nandywell

What's The Shining?

Third Man

...it's that highbrow horror film

Simon

DB7

To some extent it's in the plot and visuals, cheap shockers will have the obligatory 'jump' scenes that seasoned horror fans can see coming, whereas the more 'high brow' chillers create tension and fear through atmosphere and allowing the viewers mind to summon up greater evils; many of the great horrors have little to no bloody scenes. As Hitchcock said: "There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it."

nandywell

Anyone come across Begotten? It's probably the closest thing to high-brow horror as you can get. It bores most people rigid, not me though.. I love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOP8w8DZPEo

billy bentley

I would have thought that the roots of the horor film would have been firmly planted in the "high brow" ground: Poe, Mary Shelley etc.) as opposed to the Western which would have had it's roots in the dime store novel) !

m35541

Horror as a film genre has always been something looked down upon and seen as something disreputable. It was always pidgeonholed into something done by exploitation movie makers with their own separate cast.

From the early 1930's (after 1932) to the late 1960's you couldn't get a major Hollywood star to do a horror movie at all. They are quite happy to be in war or western films but not horror. Hence, the horror genre build up its own stars such as Karloff, Lugosi and Chaney and then later with Cushing, Lee and Price. All of these were actors who basically were only stars in horror films - in other films they merely played undistinguished supporting roles.

This all changed in the early 1970's - The Exorcist was a big breakthrough here as this was a horror film done with "proper" actors and a "proper" director.

The horror film gets a lot of stick for violence and gore although, of course, in most horror films the actual body count is very low compared to action movies. Less than half a dozen die in Rosemary's Baby, the Exorcist, Dracula and the likes.