Overlooked! A detail in The Shining that you’ve never seen...
June 6, 2023 10:07 AM Subscribe

Stanley Kubrick scholar Filippo Ulivieri shares a hidden, almost subliminal aspect of Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining: quick, unsettling glances that break the fourth wall. (SLYT)
posted by swift (66 comments total) 59 users marked this as a favorite

Definitely seen this...nice to have it all in aggregate though. Such a cool film.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:11 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

As an alternative to the video there's also a long Twitter thread breaking it down in detail (same as the video, just in easily scrollable form with screenshots and video clips).

Also, a sort of update
posted by bitteschoen at 10:36 AM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

I can't believe that in all the times I've watched this movie, I've never noticed how often he pops the lens. I immediately thought of the scene cited from Funny Games. But this gradual and fleeting use in The Shining, never overtly addressing the audience, is such a more insidious ploy.
posted by in_lieu_of_fiction at 10:41 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

I love it! Very interesting and well illustrated. And creepy.

Thanks to bitteschoen too, for the twitter version--I've passed both along to friends, some of whom enjoy video essays, some of whom would prefer to read it, and it's great to have the option.
posted by theatro at 10:48 AM on June 6, 2023

I've seen a couple people pooh-pooh this observation and write it off as accidental, but A) Kubrick does dozens, sometimes hundreds of takes and will never let this sort of thing go if he didn't intend it to be there, and B) Jack Nicholson is a highly talented actor, and can be expected to only rarely accidentally look right at the lens. I'm absolutely convinced this was intentional and is a great, subtle, creepy detail.
posted by tclark at 10:51 AM on June 6, 2023 [43 favorites]

So much woah.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 11:01 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

These are really nice.

I think the easiest cases to see are shots where his eyes are mostly tracking a character that is slightly off-center relative to the camera, and then he quickly pans to the camera. In this one he even seems to grin at us.
posted by grobstein at 11:02 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

I don't think it's accidental. The twit thread does talk about a scene from a documentary of the filming where Kubrick tells Nicholson to look down towards where he is setting up the shot.
But I still keep thinking someone is going to start posting scenes from other Jack Nicholson movies, and it turns out it is just a Jack thing.
posted by bitslayer at 11:04 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Ooo, nice find.

This might not be Kubrick’s intent, but quick-glance thing is a con man’s tic, checking to see if you’re buying his con. And Jack is, if nothing else, a con man, even sober.

It also somehow makes you, the viewer, complicit in his behavior, and for me at least, makes me feel like Jack sees me, and I am (to him) one of the many ghosts haunting him.
posted by Silvery Fish at 11:12 AM on June 6, 2023 [27 favorites]

I guess it's possible that it'll just be a Jack thing, but even still, it would have to get past the Stanley gauntlet. If for some reason it turns out to be a Jack thing, I think it's also entirely reasonable that Stanley decided to pick those takes and use it.
posted by tclark at 11:13 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Agree with tclark, if this were any other director or any other actor at that point in time I'd be inclined to doubt it's credulity. However, we're talking about prime Kubrick paired with prime Nicholson. I feel like if you made this film in 1975* it wouldn't have been anywhere as well done, not to even mention what a 1985 The Shining would have been.

I've previously discussed the scene where Nicholson strides by the camera in a rage and *glares* into the camera for a frame or three, because it's so obvious that it looks like a mistake at first glance. After watching this video, I'm convinced that it wasn't. I'm also convinced that I should have given old Stan more credit.

I can't be the only person here who watched this waiting for the shoe to drop like 99% of other youtube vids where someone does a "deep dive" into five or six frames in a film and draws some asinine conclusion that makes my soul hurt. The VO is nice, calming and not someone who shouldn't have been let within fifty feet of a microphone. His conclusions are rational and follow the evidence provided. He's not pushing an agenda.

*I know King wrote the novel in 1977, but I'm speaking more from a filmmaking/writing/cultural aspect than something as mundane as the actual story.
posted by Sphinx at 11:18 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

I thought some of these must be accidental, and then I remembered -- Kubrick.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:19 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

It's a great question about the "why" too. I agree with the thread that the more typical theatrical and Brechtian interpretations are not quite satisfying. The suggestion that he is menacing us is, of course, right, but not all the way there.

I think he (Jack Torrance) is trying to implicate us. He is trying to bring us into his confidence and, thereby, to suggest that we are the same. These are conspiratorial glances, that menace indirectly because of the company they bring us into.

Kubrick expresses a rather dark view of humanity in just about all of his movies. Jack's evil is not just Jack's (and not just the evil of some specific haunted hotel). Same in the other movies. It's a human evil, maybe an American evil, etc. It's not just on the screen, it's in the world, ... in you. Or anyway that is a reading he promotes in his movies, even if it's not an unequivocal commitment. With these gestures, I think Jack is inviting us to accept this -- inviting us into the evil, to join him, to recognize his perversions and motives and urges.
posted by grobstein at 11:24 AM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

Eyes looking out at the viewer is a bit of a convention in horror art. Like, glancing over an image search for 'horror book covers face' and comparing it to a search for 'romance book covers face,' there are many instances for both genres--suggesting it's not intrinsically creepy and depends to some extent on other signals--but horror covers with a face on them seem ~50% more likely to lock eyes / eye sockets with the viewer instead of glancing off in other directions.

My guess would be Stanley Kubrick knew that or felt it intuitively and made it happen a bunch in The Shining, but saying it breaks the fourth wall seems to stretch the idea to the point where all the ghosts in the background of Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House are also breaking the fourth wall--that is, they're definitely staged to creep out the viewer rather than the characters, plus as a viewer you know that and start hunting for them in a 'meta' way once you notice them, but making them subtle to the point of not always noticing them is more like lightly touching the fourth wall.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:24 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I mean obviously he'd be keeping an eye on you; he caught you following him up the mountain in a fuckin' helicopter earlier.
posted by cortex at 11:39 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

he caught you following him up the mountain in a fuckin' helicopter earlier.

Nah, that's just a trick of editing. The helicopter was really following Deckard and Rachael.
posted by tclark at 11:59 AM on June 6, 2023 [20 favorites]

there are a few fourth wall shots that I didn't catch before. Ulivieri shows the clip of Kubrick and Nicholson doing the let me out Wendy scene that shows Intent, he's telling jack to do it. I think Ulivieri is pretty much correct in the assumption that the viewer of the movie is in conjunction with the idea of the camera "being like a ghost".
there's also a paradox as when Danny and his big wheel turns the corner and sees the twins at the end of the hall. the camera is following Danny obviously this implies there's more than one ghost or just a shot of Danny's perspective and scaring the hell out of us. Ulivieri, I believe, left out the last important clue. this is the last thing we see in the movie, Jack back in time breaking the fourth wall. if the viewpoint of the camera is a ghost and perhaps the audience is just an observer then synchronicity comes into play as a camera focusses on the picture with period music playing.
posted by clavdivs at 12:15 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

It feels to me like we are ghosts and he is kind of subconsciously aware of us witnessing his actions. In that scene when he rushes past the camera his glare at the camera (us) is murderous. Whatever the case, I love this.
posted by snsranch at 12:17 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

If one views Torrance as mainly a manifestation of perennial colonial imperatives, as more than a few interpreters do, I think it makes sense for him to see, to connect directly with, to appeal dircetly to us, the audience, who are largely beneficiaries of those ancient crimes. "This is happening for all of us," he might explain. And now we in the audience find we're either part of his "us" or we're... them.
posted by Western Infidels at 12:17 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

I think he (Jack Torrance) is trying to implicate us. He is trying to bring us into his confidence and, thereby, to suggest that we are the same. These are conspiratorial glances, that menace indirectly because of the company they bring us into.

I mean, what about bringing us into the circle of fear? You might feel you are being brought into confidence or you might feel that his noticing you brings you into the circle of danger. Maybe this is child-of-an-alcoholic-father talking, but we know before Wendy allows herself that she is in danger. But we are also in danger here if we’ve been noticed. You are on edge being brought into confidence because it means you’ve been noticed and can just as easily be made to suffer.
posted by amanda at 1:12 PM on June 6, 2023 [19 favorites]

On the other hand, Jack has gone mad. He is abusive. He is depressed. He is haunted and angry. But if he sees someone, something that is also there…something that no one else sees…something that “makes him” do bad things. That is the madness.
posted by amanda at 1:19 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

I think this might be the most fascinating and level-headed deep dive into The Shining minutiae I've ever come across. I was expecting something timecube-ish like the Room 237 conspiracy theories. And I feel it works on every level speculated above -- it's a quasi subliminal way to amp up the uncanniness of it all, it's an indictment/implication of the audience, it's making the audience into ghosts/part of the story, it's a conspiratorial glance, a glance that says "you've been noticed and you're next", all of that. So freaking cool!
posted by treepour at 2:24 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]

Hey, maybe someone here can help since there's a lot of fans of The Shining! - I've never seen a good explanation of why Wendy sees the skeletons. Have you seen or have any commentary on that?
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:05 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think some of them are a little iffy (freeze-framing a single moment of motion is kind of cheaty) but overall I do think there's something there. There's a lot of looking into the camera in The Shining, like the bear blowjob; you don't have to ~dong~ every frame Jack's looking into the camera in the maze when he's literally chasing into the camera with an axe saying I'm gonna getcha!
posted by fleacircus at 3:05 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

I mean, we have a body of Nicholson work to compare it to, which would easily determine if it's accidental or intentional...I'm on Team Intentional. Which means...subconsciously, Jack Torrance is looking at ME. I'm the/an evil spirit. Wow.
posted by Chuffy at 3:08 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

If one views Torrance as mainly a manifestation of perennial colonial imperatives, as more than a few interpreters do...

Can anyone point me to a really good presentation of this analysis? I'm interested in this interpretation, but the only explanations I've done across are pretty stretched and unconvincing.
posted by meese at 3:22 PM on June 6, 2023

I believe the "the Shining is about colonialism / abuse of Native Americans by white settlers" interpretation was popularized by Bill Blakemore's article, "Family Of Man."
posted by Western Infidels at 3:42 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Here's a slightly different take on this. Maybe it's intended to suggest that Jack is not mad. He may be self-absorbed, sadistic, weak-willed, and all that, but he is not delusional. He sees the ghosts because they're there, and he sees us because we're there--the Overlook Hotel is a place where worlds collide. Perhaps Jack does what he does because that's what's expected of him by the ghosts, but also by us.
posted by epimorph at 3:45 PM on June 6, 2023 [15 favorites]

There's also a lot of stuff going on with mirrors in The Shining, as plenty of people have observed. Danny talks to his imaginary friend Tony while looking into a mirror, Wendy understands the meaning of REDRUM by looking through a mirror, and almost every time Jack actually interacts with a ghost, a mirror is nearby. Most notably in Room 237, where he sees in the mirror that he is clutching a bloated corpse.
posted by cubeb at 4:09 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

Kubrick wasn’t particularly brainy. He put on screen what he wanted us to understand. The Shining is full of creepy stuff you’re hard-pressed to figure out easily. This one is another example.

Kubrick used every movie department to hide creepiness. Acting, sets, lighting, cinematography, editing. Colour me happy it is now catalogued, but neither surprised nor inquisitive as to its meaning.
posted by papineau at 4:26 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Surprised to see no one has mentioned the documentary Room 237 which takes several peoples' interpretations of the film, from the more plausible to the downright wacky. The genius of the documentary (and the movie) is that it displays the extent to which it screws with you.

The most plausible material in Room 237 is how every attempt to map the interior of the Overlook Hotel fails because the internal layout of the hotel as depicted in the film is spatially impossible. It's not something that you can catch after watching a film for 5 or 10 minutes. It's something that pervades the whole film, but most people will only register it unconsciously. The impossible spatial layout gives the viewer a completely uncanny feeling, but without knowing why. I think Jack's micro-glances to the camera are part of the same tactic of unsettling the viewer by introducing uncanny elements into the film, but refusing to acknowledge them & making the viewer doubt his or her own sense of reality.
posted by jonp72 at 4:35 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]

The real horror is that Shelley Duvall doesn’t get credit for being the best part of that movie. Forget Kubrick and Nicholson; she holds it together.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:53 PM on June 6, 2023 [28 favorites]

It also somehow makes you, the viewer, complicit in his behavior,

I've always felt that that was a major theme of the movie that is rarely addressed in analysis. We constantly overlook (I literally typed that without thinking) these dangerous men like Jack and Grady. We don't want to believe in the monsters lurking behind the faces of people our (white, patriarchal) society tells us we're supposed to trust. Wendy, the doctor, the hotel manager, all pretend not to see the ticking time bomb. We, the audience, are just as complicit as they are.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:00 PM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]

Regarding the explanation, I feel it has to be connected to the one time we know he's looking directly at an in-world camera (the photograph at the end), doesn't it?
posted by juv3nal at 5:03 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

The Blakemore article linked is interesting and compelling. But this bit from the article sticks out to me: "...the little boy Danny escapes by retracing his own steps (an old Indian trick) and letting his father blunder past."

An old Indian trick? Is it really?

Anyway, this video was fun to watch. There's definitely many layers of control going on in The Shining. I will say the video's first and last examples both seemed pretty weak to me... more like Nicholson was looking past the camera. And yeah, the scenes out in the maze seem like it's natural for the actor to look at the camera at least once in a while. But overall, this video gives a lot of examples I never noticed. I enjoyed this post. Thanks!
posted by SoberHighland at 6:20 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've seen a couple people pooh-pooh this observation and write it off as accidental, but A) Kubrick does dozens, sometimes hundreds of takes and will never let this sort of thing go if he didn't intend it to be there,

This is also what came to mind for me: I took a film crit class where the teacher talked about different directors ratio of film shot:: to final screen time. I'm making these numbers up, because I can't remember the details but Hitchcock, for example, had a very low ratio. He would storyboard out his shots so tightly that shooting them was just a matter of executing the plan, so he might do 2 or 3 takes and then done.

Kubrick, notoriously, could easily do 30 takes per scene, and according to that article, 127 takes in one instance.

So with that amount of footage at his disposal, there might be very little difference between take 18 or 19, except yeah, maybe in 19 Nicholson is looking at the camera. The degree of the intentionality is unclear, but perhaps Kubrick saw these moments were effective and weaved together a tapestry of these various takes for some of the reasons people have already commented on.
posted by jeremias at 6:20 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ah, this is an excellent find.

I wonder if these glances are the reason for the dread I feel just behind the front of my thoughts when he's on the screen -- even when nothing overtly "scary" is happening. Because in real life, I hate when people who are off the rails look into my eyes to try to bring me into whatever nonsense they're on. I find myself thinking Why are you looking to me? I hope you're not sensing that I'm a person who is sometimes on the edge of a precipice, and you're inviting me to jump off and join you. So, yeah, adds a whole new layer of mindfuckery to the movie for me.

Thanks for finding and sharing this, swift.
posted by lord_wolf at 6:29 PM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]

I don't think Jack is trying to con anyone. We love it when the bad guy winks at us - this is as old as Richard III or as new as Breaking Bad or The Shield. I think the only difference is that the newer programming doesn't implicate the audience as much as older works did, and I wonder if commercial aspects enter into it. Water White and Vic Mackey never looked us in the eye, and who would want those monsters to look back at us? Jack Torrance did. But who wants to take in an entertainment and leave feeling guilty or at least somewhat complicit? Perhaps that subconscious aspect is why The Shining was not a relative box office hit for its day.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:33 PM on June 6, 2023

This is fantastic, and now I need to watch the documentary Room 237!
posted by sigridellis at 7:09 PM on June 6, 2023

HELLO I'M ON METAFILTER AND I CAN OVERTH—
[cue stabby music]
x_x
posted by not_on_display at 8:26 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

The impossible geography of The Shining, previously. The analysis is covered in Room 237, but without much detail and sort of smooshed into the other theories (I found Room 237 to be a little disappointing in terms of actually covering its various theories in any depth, it's ultimately more of a movie about the people who came up with them and a sort of obsessive film geek culture).

I'm going to go ahead and be that one person who is skeptical that this is a conscious decision on the part of either Kubrick or Nicholson. Surely someone involved in the film would have mentioned it some time in the last 43 years if that was the explicit direction Kubrick gave to his lead actor?
posted by whir at 10:48 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Love this. I'm on team "camera is a ghost and Jack is fleetingly perceiving it." There are more ghosts in the Overlook than we have time to document, but they are watching and Jack in turn is watching them.

And it is absolutely, 100% intentional. Once maybe in a film it could be that the only take happens to have a brief pause on the lens, though as others have pointed out Kubrick probably would not have allowed this. Over and over like this? Absolutely zero chance it's by accident. Only by express direction.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:03 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

An old Indian trick? Is it really?

I may be misremembering but is this from the film? Like someone mentions it to him as "an old indian trick" or he reads a book on it?
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:06 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Absolutely zero chance it's by accident. Only by express direction.

I agree. Zero chance. Explicitly directed and rehearsed for brief glances, and Nicholson does it really well, liminally tugging us into the scene. I never put this together nor noticed how it's centered on Jack.

The thing I remember standing out in this film is that, if I recall correctly, Halloran states that the past is just pictures, but Jack gets let out of the locked storeroom with no corporeal explanation... I think this was the only seemingly metaphysical intervention I could find in the plot as presented. But if Jack and the viewer trade knowing glances, who's to say what we see is at all objective.
posted by in_lieu_of_fiction at 1:24 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’m in an isolated mountain cabin, I can’t sleep, and thought I’d catch up with Metafilter for some humor. The Shining was the furthest thing from my mind. I may never sleep again now. I guess as the father in the cabin, I’m not the one who should be the most worried.

All work and no play make Abehammerb a dull boy.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:33 AM on June 7, 2023 [12 favorites]

And I remember one time, a fan asked me, “Hey, um, you know that episode where the horse has to give Ethan a pep talk after Ethan finds out his crush only asked him to the dance because her friends were having a dorkiest date contest? In all the shots of the horse, you can see a paper coffee cup on the kitchen counter, but in the shots of Ethan, the coffee cup’s missing. Was that because the show was making a statement about the fluctuant subjectivity of memory and how even two people can experience the same moment in entirely different ways?” And I didn’t have the heart to be, like, “No, man, some crew guy just left their coffee cup in the shot.” So instead, I was, like… “Yeah.”
posted by AlSweigart at 2:43 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

That is subtle! It’s not like he’s breaking the fourth wall with an axe and announcing “here”s Johnny!”
posted by Ishbadiddle at 3:16 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is an argument for seeing films in the theater where you can see such small nuances of performance.
posted by octothorpe at 4:05 AM on June 7, 2023

Room 237 is online here

If you ever wanted to overthink a can of Calumet...
posted by chavenet at 5:24 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hey, maybe someone here can help since there's a lot of fans of The Shining! - I've never seen a good explanation of why Wendy sees the skeletons. Have you seen or have any commentary on that?

Yes- I agree- is she "affected" by... whatever, at that point?
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:42 AM on June 7, 2023

The camera glances function on more than one level, but I think the main thing is it shows Jack is in touch with something outside the events happening on camera. He's taking note of a presence that the other characters don't see. His eyes keep getting drawn to that viewpoint. I think its safe to say that presence is meant to be the overlook hotel itself.

It doesn't hurt that its also a little creepy and threatening to the movie viewer. And, it lends the viewer a sense of conspiratorial alliance with Jack - which is itself a little unpleasant, as we don't really want to identify with him. We're drawn to Jack as Jack is drawn to the hotel.
posted by Ansible at 6:16 AM on June 7, 2023

Love this. I'm on team "camera is a ghost and Jack is fleetingly perceiving it."

Reminds me of Fleabag, when the priest noticed that PWB is doing something when she addresses the camera/audience.
posted by entropone at 7:09 AM on June 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

I thought some of these must be accidental, and then I remembered --

The relentless, ridiculous perfectionism of Stanley Kubrick
posted by philip-random at 7:17 AM on June 7, 2023

The most plausible material in Room 237 is how every attempt to map the interior of the Overlook Hotel fails because the internal layout of the hotel as depicted in the film is spatially impossible. It's not something that you can catch after watching a film for 5 or 10 minutes. It's something that pervades the whole film, but most people will only register it unconsciously. The impossible spatial layout gives the viewer a completely uncanny feeling, but without knowing why.

This is also true of the movie Hereditary, where the structure of the interior doesn't match the exterior shots and also doesn't line up from scene to scene.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 7:58 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

An old Indian trick? Is it really?

I may be misremembering but is this from the film? Like someone mentions it to him as "an old indian trick" or he reads a book on it?

It's not anywhere in the Postproduction Script that's online, but a shorter form "Script" (of unclarified status) has "Using an old Indian trick in an age-old game, Danny retraces his steps by backing up in his own footsteps in the snow"...
posted by progosk at 8:09 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Given Wendy's emotional state when she sees them, and given how different they look from what Jack and Danny have been seeing since earlier in the film, I always thought the lobby skeletons were the product of hysteria.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:39 AM on June 7, 2023

Hysteria?

Well. That’s just what the hotel would like you to think.
posted by amanda at 9:29 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Hysteria in this film...I dunno. Everything else is presented as really happening. I just always felt the skeletons were kind of jarring and not as eloquent as other parts of the film and wondered if some producer wanted one more ghosty bit or something. But knowing the rest of the carefully planned and executed film, I bet it has some meaning I am not grasping.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:16 AM on June 7, 2023

There's also a lot of stuff going on with mirrors in The Shining,

Kubrick in general is big on mirrors and twinning. Perhaps not coincidentally, pretty much every Kubrick movie has a scene or two in a bathroom, a room where mirrors are typically found.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:28 AM on June 7, 2023

I've always interpreted Wendy seeing the skeletons as her being worn down to Danny and Jack's level of psychic awareness.... her character arc is all about her overcoming her own passivity and denial about what's going on... first with regards to Jack's toxicity/ abuse, but also with regards to the ghosts.

Wendy seeing the skeletons is just her waking up to the reality of the Overlook. Seeing things as Danny's been seeing them the whole time. Along with the elevators and the bear man, it's the moment where it finally clicks for her that she and Danny need to leave and never come back again. That it isn't just an abusive husband, but that she needs to get out. Which she had been denying up to that point.

You could also read it as an omen- Wendy seeing what's going to happen to her and Danny if they don't escape right at that moment. Hence the taking a snowcat down a mountain side during a blizzard in the rockies- it's gotten that bad.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:24 PM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah. Wendy has been making this long-term constant effort of trying to brick off the more banal terror of an abusive alcoholic husband and the familiar, background radiation threat that his worse turns represent to Danny and to herself. She has been through the wringer already, and has chosen fight over flight so far: stay, make it work, believe it will work.

She's trying so hard to be hopeful from the start, to maintain her own better reality in the face of the things she already knows are wrong in their life, that she's the minority report: she's the one principal character in the film who is staying "sane" by building and grasping to her own confabulation vs. the consensus supernatural reality that lives quietly at the heart of the Overlook, which Halloran knows is there from long experience and which Jack in his brokenness is relieved to fall into the grasp of and which Danny is too young to do other than accept as just what is happening.

Wendy is the last to see the face of the hotel because she's the only one struggling so hard to put up a wall of hope and denial. It lasts until it doesn't; when it crumbles it crumbles fast.
posted by cortex at 12:46 PM on June 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

Perhaps not coincidentally, pretty much every Kubrick movie has a scene or two in a bathroom, a room where mirrors are typically found.

Big fan of The Beat, innit?
posted by kirkaracha at 10:27 PM on June 7, 2023

Everything else is presented as really happening.

But is it, though? I'm far from the only person not sold on that.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:56 PM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

It is for me.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:27 AM on June 9, 2023

stolen from Kottke...We have the super shiny spicy... The Chickening.

Somehow...more terrifying. Chickens, man.
posted by amanda at 8:49 AM on June 29, 2023

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