Let's Talk About 'The Shining' #Kubrick

First scene and I already don't trust her, even though she's the 'victim'

It's Saturday night, I cancelled my plans so that I could watch The Shining by myself...at night. This is crazy for many reasons, I should be around three-dimensional people or so they keep telling me, it's night time, and though I've seen the movie, oh I don't know, a BILLION times, it still scares the living christ out of me. I recently went to a Kubrick exhibit, granted it was almost exactly the same as the Kubrick exhibit I went to see with a bunch of former NYU folk at LACMA in LA, but it's still great. There's always something new to learn about Kubrick. Although The Shining is not my favorite film of his by a long shot, it does basically create the blueprint of modern horror, of haptic psychological thrillers, and mysterious happenings and endings; open-ended storylines, bizarre manifestations, and best of all...NO JUMP SCARES. 

I'm writing as I'm watching it, so let's examine a few things. The film starts off with the already terrifying looking Shelley Duvall (Wendy Torrance) shoving some unimportant exposition down our throats that give us an insight into the family. The husband Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) doesn't drink because he had a violent episode with the kid in the family Danny after a few too many adult pops. 

So immediately you're thinking, she's going to be trouble, something's up with her...and when they check into the Overlook Hotel, she's just a little too excited and too nice. So we focus our attention on her being possessed by a baby killing demon or something. Kubrick has a thing for agoraphobia. And the first scenes at the Overlook Hotel play to that brilliantly. It's a huge open space that when people talk to each other, there are echoes. This comes back into play later, but not before Kubrick turns the atmosphere on its side when it is revealed that the Torrance family will only be using this tiny room in the corner of the hotel as living quarters. 

The first serious scare that we get is when Danny is playing darts in the game room as his parents take a tour of the hotel. We hear a weird meandering noise, that's basically the only way I can explain it, it's not music, but it's so ominous it's scary on its own. He turns his head and instead of immediately pointing out his POV, Kubrick meditates on Danny's reaction which is stoic AF. That's when we see those twins for the first time. Strangely enough had that noise not been playing in the background, we might think that they are just guests leaving the Overlook just like everyone else, but they just stand there. The longer they do, the scarier they become. Now we have horror movies where apparitions jump out at people grab them, push them down stairs etc. But admit it, the scariest thing you can experience is feeling like you're being watched. 

Before I continue, I'm not going to incorporate ANYTHING about Stephen King's novel into this. I'm judging the movie and the movie only. You would think that Kubrick's brilliant blue-print and first and only horror film would change the landscape, but there's a reason why it still scares the pants off even the most hardened Clint Eastwood type grown man, because nothing has ever been more frightening. 

The scene that everyone remembers, even if they haven't seen the movie, and that has been the only take away from The Shining that filmmakers use as a horror trope today.

At this time I'd like to defer to one of the scariest moments in my opinion, one that involves one character, and it seems like that's where his biggest thrills are. It's not Jack confronting Wendy with the infamous 'Give me the bat' routine, nor Jack discovering what's in room 237, though that is pretty gross/horrifying. It's when Jack is upset because Wendy blamed him for being rough with Danny again, though it was actually one of the ghosts. A tracking cam, which is so important in this movie moves backwards as he walks towards it unbelievably pissed off, screaming to himself. That noise again permeates through the halls, and you realize at that moment it's not the ghosts of the Overlook we should be scared of, but Jack. In that, Kubrick turns the film from supernatural horror to psychological horror. 

I'm sure I'm not giving you anything you haven't already heard in the film Room 237, but I'm trying to stay away from things that are too easy like the damn hedge maze, the scooter scene down the hallway, etc. Yes those are iconic shots that Kubrick so brilliantly messes with before the payoff. If you pay attention, Danny rides around on that scooter about 5 different times before those two girls appear to him again. And Wendy and Danny take a morose stroll through the hedge maze for fun before it ever becomes a game of kill your kid with an axe. 

Perhaps a symbol of the labyrinthine craziness of Jack Torrance's mind...I don't know, ask the weirdo's from Room 237.

This movie is so terrifying because it literally messes with your head. When we first meet Dick Hallorann, there's something off about him too. Kubrick decides not to distinguish between who is the scary influence and who is the innocent. He confuses you to basically be on edge about the whole thing. It's pretty brilliant. Kubrick loves to meditate on every scene, stretching every scene makes it somehow more frightening. 

Also, to finish off because I'm rambling, and some of my favorite parts are coming up; what is it that makes this movie fucking shit balls scary? Different from all other horror films ever? It's the setting, not the characters. Not the humans, not the ghosts, not the weird hallucinations, or people's ability to 'shine'. 

Filming the 'give me the bat' scene. 

The Overlook Hotel itself symbolizes people's fear of being alone in a large ominous place, it's uncomfortable, it's disconcerting, and in the case of The Shining, it drives people completely out of their minds. I don't even find the Wendy chase sequences that frightening except for her face with the bulging eyes and her clenching a knife like she's doing shake weight exercises, nor do I find Jack Nicholson's thousand yard stare that particularly uneasy. It's the scenes that are absolutely quiet, eerie, and you know that something is just not right. The music is great tonality for that. But what are we most afraid of? I'll just speak for myself, but it's long hallways. Swear to god. The Overlook is full of them, whether they be in the the hotel itself or in the hedge maze. The unknown behind every corner is truly something that is universally terrifying, and my opinion of why Kubrick kept the film so open ended, is because it's not about what actually the fuck is going on. The sound of the typewriter, the tracking shot of the scooter, the look on Dick Hallorann's face when Danny shines to him. Those are the images, sounds, and occurrences that sink their teeth under your skin. It's a weird setting for a weird film, and it's not supposed to make sense; it's supposed to scare the living shit out of you. Mission accomplished. 

Ode to Brigitte Bardot

Goddess

So tonight I'm keeping it mellow and settled in for a Criterion film, and one which I have shamefully never seen in my life was And God Created Woman (1956) directed by Roger Vadim and his then 21 year old wife Brigitte Bardot who he basically made into the most desired woman on the face of the earth, even for those who didn't speak French. 

Brigitte's introduction to the world. Much like what would later be done in Kubrick's Lolita (1962), a childlike seductress sits outside sunning herself in next to nothing waiting for a man to fall in love with her at first sight.

Not a natural blonde, but then again nobody was, this was the era of being blonde meaning being the end all be all in sex symbols, now a days, it's being a red-head, but whatever. I would blog about Marilyn the ultimate blonde, since it is her birthday, but I've blogged about her mmmmm a million times, so I just want to give a shout out to the most statuesque French-looking french actress who later turned into a psychopath but we can negate that. On the screen she is absolutely magical. If aliens landed tomorrow and asked what the female species was, you'd have to show them a picture of early 60's or late 50's Brigitte Bardot, the only sex symbol that we think of outside the American idiom. 

French poster for the film.

The film is about a waif in a small town near the French Riviera that all men are obsessed with but none can actually have, even when they exchange marriage vows. Her devil-may-care attitude spawned the sex-kitten phenomenon of the 60's and everyone from Vadim to The Beatles were completely obsessed. The story goes that John Lennon himself was so enamored with her that he made his then wife Cynthia dye her hair blonde and do her make-up a certain way to resemble the great Brigitte. Pretty chauvinist no?

But back to the wonder that is her, it's hard not to go crazy when you marry a heel like Roger Vadim at 18 and then he runs off with Jane Fonda, and for the rest of your life, all men want from you is sex rather than conversation, so you join PETA, and blame everyone in the world except yourself for all of your crazy insecurities. 

Another picture of Bardot, just because. She's fun to look at isn't she?

The only person I can think of that in any way reminds me of Brigitte is Claudia Schiffer, she is basically her reincarnation, in body, but not spirit, and perhaps that's a good thing. We don't have to listen to her speak and meander about her politics and bizarre musings on the ways of the world, just turn on one of her films and you'll be completely mesmerized, I don't care if you're a man or a woman, you want it. She is the ultimate vamp of that era, but in a childish Lolita-esque way which makes it even more enticing, and what she created in the film that made her; And God Created Woman will always be copied by ingenues to come. She is a mystery wrapped in exoticism, wrapped in raw sexual prowess, wrapped in heaps of black eye liner. It's fantastic.

Sleeping Beauty; A Real Snoozefest

Classy whoredom.

I finally watched the Jane Campion produced Sleeping Beauty (2011) by first time director Julia Leigh and it was rather interesting if it wasn't so goddamn boring. I've been following this film for a while because it seemed bizarre, sexual, and Jane Campion had something to do with it, but it's the same old whore story, with a really sick twist. With that indie-film flare where people spend a lot of their time just walking without anything playing in the background, just to provide 'exposition' or as i like to call it 'time filler', Sleeping Beauty began to scare me after the first few scenes, kind of like the what the hell did I just get myself into scare. And yeah it turned out to be like Eyes Wide Shut (1999) on Xanax.
Lucy (Emily Browning) is a struggling student who supplements her income by being a guinea pig for a medical school and performing messy blow jobs for drunk Aussies in putrid upscale bars. One day she answers an ad in whatever Australia's version of The Pennysaver is (highly likely) for a strange kind of prostitution gig. It's of course very classy and the meticulously to match the insatiable appetite of their older and wealthy (probably) old money perverted clientele. There are weird dinner parties where all the men enjoy wine being poured to them by girls in bondage lengerie; just basically everything I once hoped and dreamed for myself, just kidding...or am I?

Lucy gets inspected for scars and moles. Yeah, I'd be annoyed too.

But what Lucy's particularly good at is sleeping. Let me explain. She drinks a special concoction that her pimp, a very classy older woman with a ridiculous Jean Paul-Gaultier in the 80's wardrobe and hairdo makes for her which I assume has a serious amount of tranquilizer in it, and that knocks her out. Then the Kubrick influence is prevalent again because we always cut to her in a room that I swear was designed after the dying room of Dr. David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969). She's lying there motionless in a dreamless sleep (hopefully) As an older naked man is able to do what ever he wants with her, except no penetration. One time an angry bastard puts his cigarette out in her ear, but you know, she's a whore so kind of goes with the territory, this happens for about 40 minutes of the film repeating itself and I'm praying I fall asleep myself and a young hot gentleman comes over and does stuff to me, instead of these old hairy somewhat aggressive and somewhat Uncle Fester meets Albert Brooks kind of men, but anyway I finally finished watching and there is a twist at the end, which almost makes this movie bearable but not really.

Cuddling but no fucking. It's a golden rule.

 It's a poor Freshman effort and you're better off skipping it. It's like an Ozon movie gone wrong. If it was directed by a Frenchie it probably would have been eons better. Now if you'll excuse me I have to watch something else that has been staring at me in my queue for ages; Whore's Glory (2012), wish me luck. 

Trailer below