Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
Or, the world’s most persuasive argument for taking the stairs.
This movie scares the sh*t out of everyone.
But why?
It’s hard to say what exactly is wrong with this place.
Is it haunted?
Is it all in their heads?
Is it possessed by the devil?
Tony?
Something about an Indian burial ground?
"You're located on an Indian burial ground."
Whereas a lot of traditional horror gives us an easy-to-understand reason to sh*t our
pants, The Shining deliberately avoids an easily describable premise - and this is part
of what makes it so damn horrifying.
"You like it?"
It deprives us of logical explanation.
Kubrick accomplishes this in a variety of ways, but I’m here at the Overlook Hotel,
to talk about one of the most surprisingly simple: “perspective”.
One of the most effective ways to create a strong sense of perspective is through the
way a shot is framed and sequenced.
See, a shot can be objective, subjective, or fall somewhere in between.
Purely objective shots show us a scene “as it is,” a God’s-eye point of view, as
if we’re eavesdropping or watching a play.
Subjective angles directly insert us into the action, showing the view from, just beside,
or behind a character.
Purely subjective shots take us directly into the eyes of a character, usually by showing
their face first, followed by their visual perspective or emotional experience.
It can also invite us to question what we’re seeing, like an unreliable narrator in literature.
In this scene, we see a shot of Danny’s face, and then a cut to the girls, then Danny’s
face again.
With this simple sequence of shots, we are being shown the events through Danny’s mind.
Let’s see how Kubrick takes this basic principle of perspective to create an indescribable
supernatural feeling.
Consider the famous scene of Danny riding his tricycle through the hotel’s winding
corridors.
"Alright, Danny, gimme some skin!
...Alright."
Using a state of the art piece of equipment for the time, Kubrick is able to achieve supernaturally
smooth movements to follow Danny, showing us the hotel from a child’s point of view.
We follow Danny in a traditional subjective shot that emphasizes his experience navigating
a large maze-like hotel, but we don’t follow him perfectly - watch how the camera lingers
after he’s left frame… and then hurries to catch up with him.
One film scholar calls this “the wandering camera,” because the camera ambles along
like its own sentient being, or here, an imagined monster stalking Danny through the halls.
This creates the sense the hotel is alive and watching Danny throughout his sh*tty vacation.
When the twins show up, — "Come play with us."
— we move more intimately into a subjective sequence of Danny’s POV, flashing between
his bloody visions.
Danny covers his eyes, and looks again...
And now they’re gone.
So, perhaps the girls are just in his head?
By starting with Danny’s point of view as we follow him, but then shifting to to a possible
camera-monster’s point of view, and then back to Danny’s maybe unreliable own vision,
the film undermines our ability to interpret the events in front of us: whose point of
view is this?
Danny’s?
The Hotel?
Some Demon?
Now let’s consider Jack.
Is all of of this creepy stuff in his head, too?.
Did someone just spike the water with LSD in this otherwise normal hotel?.
Take this scene in the apparently empty Gold Ballroom.
In this scene, we go from a close-up of Jack, as he seemingly addresses an invisible being
— "Hi, Lloyd."
— to the reveal shot of Lloyd.
This subjective sequencing of shots could suggest that Jack is hallucinating.
And just when we’re sure that this is all a subjective delusion, Kubrick moves the camera
backward over his shoulder, taking the shot from his direct point of view to a more objective
one.
From there, Kubrick gives the scene an objective reality by showing both characters in a shot
together.
Lloyd’s the real deal… we think.
Until Wendy shows up, and the ballroom’s suddenly empty, and we’re left totally confused
and creeped out.
"Are you out of your f**king mind?"
So, what’s going on?
We don’t know, and the camera work makes sure we’ll never find out.
Now, at times, Jack’s point of view even seems to merge with that of the imagined predator
that was following Danny.
In this shot, Jack’s view looking down on the model hedge maze blends into a aerial
view of his family wandering through the actual hedges.
This effect happens again as he chases Danny in the final scene.
See how the same kind of shot that used to be stalking Danny through the halls has now
mingled with Jack’s point of view, further confounding the various supernatural elements
of the film.
When not using point of view to screw with reality, Kubrick also uses our perception
of physical space to creep us out.
How do you make a huge, otherwise normal hotel and present it as a claustrophobic nightmare?
Kubrick is famous for what is called one-point perspective, which adds to the cramped feel.
With “one point perspective”, near-perfect symmetry draws the audience's eye to one vanishing
point at the center of the frame, giving the sensation that we’re being drawn into the
shot, which is further enhanced by the tracking shot inward.
It feels uneasy, like the walls are collapsing inwards.
That’s why, even though the Overlook Hotel seems like a spacious setting, we feel increasingly
cramped as the movie goes on, almost like: "A kind of claustrophobic reaction, which
can occur when people are shut in together over long periods of time."
By juxtaposing large spaces with much smaller ones, Kubrick is able to get the viewer to
really feel claustrophobic.
This starts with the opening shot of the mountain, which cuts to the shot of the family, clown-car
style.
Then we move from the large sweeping hotel lobby to the Torrences’ small hotel quarters.
While the hotel may be large, the Torrences are trapped in increasingly smaller spaces
within it.
"Well, it's very... uh... homey!"
Eventually, Jack ends up locked in a fridge, Danny escapes through a tiny window, and nobody
has any elbow room.
Through these tricks in perspective, Stanley Kubrick is able to add a layer of creepiness
that evades simple description - and that’s why The Shining is so great, and why film
nerds will continue to talk about it for years to come.
There is so much more to talk about in The Shining, so if you liked this video, let us
know if you want us
to do another.
And as always, thanks
for watching.
Peace.