Looking From the Outside In: The Overlook Hotel

Paper by Gregory DiFilippi. Viewed on DVD.

Thump…. Thump…. Thump… is the sound of a tennis ball hitting a wall. Jack amuses himself in his isolation while his son and wife enjoy a brisk game of tag throughout the foreboding hedge maze. He peers over a model of the garden maze to offer himself a glimpse into what his family is doing through his own fantasy world. This scene shows a cinematic entrance into how this confusion and loss of reality is evident throughout Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The utilization of the Steadicam (Warner Bros, “The Shining”) produces continuous shots that follow Wendy and Danny while the angular, dissonant strings are used to proclaim the isolation of the garden maze. These cinematic continuous shots rarely offer us a break from the uncertainty of what lies ahead. The confusion, fantasy, and isolation correlate directly with the style of horror “ambiguity” (Brooks, “Shining a light Inside Room 237”).

Confusion, fantasy, and isolation are prevalent throughout The Shining. The opening shot that connects into the garden maze has the cinematography and mise-en-scene to connect these ideas. It begins showing the vastness of The Overlook Hotel. The sound of a wolf and the only movement comes from smoke being churned out of a chimney. This open middle angle shot helps resemble how large and lengthy The Overlook Hotel is to just have three people inside it. The camera shot shows how the trees envelope the hotel to give off how isolated and far away they are from any other establishment. The camera shot establishes how large the hotel is with trees enveloping it, but also shows a mountain in the background that overshadows The Overlook Hotel. This allows setting the stage for the narrative to develop and create the isolation and confusion. The editing carefully presents only a single car parked out front of this massive place. The only inhabitants so it seems are Jack, Wendy, and their son Danny. This presents the truthfulness of the isolation and how it is of the utmost importance for them all to stick together. Just like a maze, they have to work together to be able to accomplish the task. This single shot alone establishes a strong explicit cinematic presence.

The Shining’s form can be argued in different ways, but confusion is something that can connect deeply to the film’s form. According to Jan Haran, Stanley Kubrick’s brother-in law and executive producer of The Shining, “[Kubrick], was always intent on pushing the form, on leaving the work open to multiple interpretations” (Brooks, “Shining a light Inside Room 237”). Essentially, a room full of audience members could each view his work in a different manner that means confusion lies even outside the film.

Foreshadowing is prevalent throughout the film, which in turn offers a sense of isolation. Before Danny and Wendy head out to play in the garden maze, Danny takes a ride around The Overlook Hotel. The mise-en-scene of him dressed in his overalls intently driving his bike with both hands on the wheel while he goes over separate pieces of carpet. He is the only alive little boy there in a hotel full of empty rooms and ghostly inhabitants. He has no friends and only has the bike he rides. The cinematography glides us, the viewer, past prime spots that later on become vital to survival. Danny passes the kitchen where soon his mom will lock Jack inside of it. It is as if the form of the movie foreshadows things backwards. The staircase comes into view shortly after where Wendy will fend off Jack’s advances to “bash her brains in”. The film’s form shows us an implicit layout of events before they even happen though, we as the viewer may entirely miss it. The same occurs with Wendy and Danny playing outside in the garden maze together. This is an explicit foreshadowing that will connect Danny to survival from his father. It is evident the scene I have chosen directly connects to the happenings and the style of the rest of the film by offering immense insight implicitly and explicitly into what happens in the rest of the film.

Jack peering over Wendy and Danny, with a high angle shot showing them frolicking through the maze, showcases the style of The Shining. Jack is separated with the high camera angle that offers up that he is up in the air and far away from having his feet planted firmly on the ground. The open shot that shows him leaning both his arms down as if he in intently focusing on his subjects and the close up of Jack’s face brings to thought he is in his own fantasy world. This then proceeds to show us Wendy and Danny, from Jacks view, finding their way through the maze. This example of Jack’s fantasy works well with the film’s form of confusion. Events are not explicitly explained and according to executive producer of The Shining, Jan Haran,

“A straightforward horror film was not what interested him [Kubrick],” Harlan insists. “He wanted more ambiguity. If he was going to make a film about ghosts, he wanted it to be ghostly from the very first to the very last.”(Brooks, “Shining a light Inside Room 237”)
Ambiguity can lead to confusion and the result of a fantasy that Jack does experience. To think he could see his wife and son in a model of a garden maze is nothing short of fantasy that can confuse the viewer. How is he able to view them? He would not be able to, but this is part of the narrative and design of the cinematography that enables the viewer to correlate that nothing makes sense with Jack. Rather than go out and play with his wife and child, he chooses to isolate himself in a room pretending to view them from up above. This isolation of Jack continues throughout.

In The Shining, as the light becomes dimmer, Jack becomes less and less attached to his family and more attached to his isolation and fantasy. When Wendy brings him his breakfast in the morning, the lighting is bright and his emotions towards Wendy are better than what they become as the movie moves forward. He states he has not written much, but still offers up sarcasm to her. This scene connects well with the rest of the movie because later on when Wendy comes into the room and gives him a kiss on the cheek, he has written a lot and his mood becomes abusive and unsympathetic. He also showcases extreme sarcasm with the use of vulgar words. The lighting used during this time is dreary and unfocused. As the snowstorm comes in, the lighting even becomes worse and so does Jack’s composure. The use of this strengthens the film’s narrative of horror. Earlier in the film, lighting is bright and abundant whereas towards the end, it becomes darker from the snowstorm. This is used to help showcase Jack entering an abyss of his emotions that carries well with the style and form of this movie.

The scene I have chosen that includes Wendy and Danny playing in the garden maze correlates well with a scene later on in the movie, which shows Wendy and Danny playing outside in the snow together. By this time Jack’s demeanor has worsened but his writing has picked up. The lighting of these two scenes is sufficiently different. The garden maze showcases lighting of a cloudy sun while the snow scene is very dark and moody. Wendy and Danny both enjoy themselves outside but Jack is very much different inside. He constantly writes. The comparisons of these two scenes collaborate well with the film’s form of isolation and loss of family. The mise-en-scenes are very different but relate well with one another by focusing on isolation. The weather becomes worse as Jack does.

The dialogue of Danny and Jack throughout the movie is almost non-existent. The dialogue between him and his mother is more abundant which leads to the theme of confusion. Why doesn’t a boy and his father interact? Danny is shown writing his bike by himself while his father is locked up away in a room trying to write. Danny suffers from extreme isolation and the film’s mise-en-scene focuses sharply on this as well as the film’s form. Danny never plays with Jack and this is evident from the scene I have chosen. His best times of outside fun are with his mother and this is prevalent throughout the film. The film’s style correlates well with the idea of Danny only playing outside with his mother. The film’s composition eliminates the projection of Danny and his mother playing inside to almost incur that the mansion is not a place to settle in. The only fun can be had outside with one another. Danny’s isolation and lack of dialogue with other male figures is an example of the film’s expression to implicitly brings on his “shining”.

Editing and set design of The Shining had an immense affect on illustrating confusion, isolation, and fantasy. The camera pans to the right while Wendy and Danny are heading into the garden maze and then pauses while focusing on The Overlook Hotel’s Maze directory. This sends the idea that something is unsettling. The editing held it position on the maze in an implicit way to show the complexity and uncertainty that relates to the film as a whole. From the beginning of the scene, with a fixed shot of The Overlook Hotel, to then cutting to Wendy pushing breakfast cart sends an abrupt form. The camera glides along with Wendy to mimic someone watching her even though they are isolated from any human contact. It then continues onto Danny riding his bike through the vast halls of the hotel. The camera again glides along close behind him to mimic him being chased by perhaps another child on a bike. The halls of The Overlook Hotel are empty and it creates a confusing viewpoint since hotels appear constantly busy. Danny riding his bike through the halls also plays with the films form and narrative by adding sense of explicit fantasy. Being able to ride a bike freely through the halls of a huge hotel would be fun, but through editing the feeling of anxiousness is created with the use of the Steadicam following him so closely behind. Every instant that the editing holds while character’s leave the frame is an inclination that they are heading off into a bad direction that would lead them to isolation from safety. The shot abruptly then cuts back to Wendy then leads up to a close shot of Jack fast asleep which then zooms out to bring in the room. The editing reveals that we have been viewing Jack through a mirror, which then Wendy sets herself beside him. By the camera zooming in and out it offers up the view of different emotions directly related to the film. When Jack is asleep, the camera zooms out to enable presence and when he awakes, the camera zooms in to focus on his facial expressions. This happens quite often throughout the film to contrast his emotions implicitly such as when Wendy checks on him later on in the movie and he becomes enraged. The camera zooms in on his face to show his anger and then zoom in on Wendy to show her confusion. The editing focus on the typewriter being stationary while Jack throws a ball around to show no progress is being made. The typewriter is isolated from Jack while he plays with the ball. The typewriter implicitly shows who the film’s form represents the separation of Jack from his family just as he is separated from his writing. Later on in the movie when he begins to write a lot, it is found out that he has just been writing pages and pages of similar sentences “All Work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. The editing highlights how any effort made by Jack is explicitly wasted whether that effort is for his family or writing. The camera cuts to Wendy and Danny playfully running off to the garden maze. The camera pans and stays wide then comes in. It then cuts to following behind them reminiscent of the scene of Danny riding his bike. The twists and turn of the maze is to offer confusion and the isolation from the outside in a sort of fantasy way. To then switch from behind Wendy and Danny tot hen behind Jack offers up implicitly how different the three characters are. Jack slams the ball down with much force and then heaves it over to the wall. During this, the camera stays fixated on him and follows him closely, which has the editing show the resemblance of him being followed. He heads over to the maze while the camera does not cut at all. The editing stays on an angular view of Jack inquisitively viewing the maze. He is the focus being in the foreground with the maze now in the background. Jack’s focus on the maze relates to the whole film as his focus is on his family, but not in the right way. When Danny becomes injured in room 237, Jack goes to investigate, but ends up making out with a ghostly corpse. The editing helps to show how Jack is only in it for himself. With a high angle shot zooming in, it is supposed to create the fantasy of Jack viewing his family in a complex isolated maze. The same maze he will chase Danny through. This scene correlates with the final scene of the film by offering how both Danny and Jack is “studying” the maze. The scene concludes editing with Wendy and Danny being filmed walking towards the camera with the camera gliding backwards to illustrate they have made it to the maze’s middle, accomplishing what they had planned to do. This connects to the final scene in which the same editing is used to follow Jack and Danny through the maze and then show Danny trick Jack and join his mother, Wendy to leaving The Overlook Hotel.

The soundtrack of The Shining during the scene I chose connects the reader to confusion, isolation, and fantasy that in turn connects the whole film. The dissonant strings or the lack there of music coupled with the actor’s movement adds the realism that they are truly alone. The strings being dissonant conjures up slowly going back and forth like one step forward and another step back. This creates uncertainty like the family as a whole. The beginning of the film they are traveling up to the hotel that is full of uncertainty. Throughout the film there appears to be a struggle for unison. Every step taken is always drawn back. Danny’s bike rolling on and off the carpet creates an alternation of back and forth. As if one of the inhabitants are following him; Stopping then going. The thump of a ball hitting the wall that Jack throws connects the sound of Danny’s bike. The dreamy music that accompanies Jack staring at the garden maze is crucial into delivering the sense of his fantasy. The sounds have a focal point on the dialogue. Every word and sound is important in The Shining. Whether it’s the loving tone from Wendy to her son or the gruesome plans Jack has for all of them, the sounds are the key to following the movie.

Stanley Kubrick presents The Overlook Hotel as something for a first glance of beauty for a family of three to a nightmare filled with confusion, isolation, and a writer’s fantasy of happiness. The garden maze scenario gives the viewer a helping of what The Shining’s style represents horror “ambiguity” (Brooks, “Shining a light Inside Room 237”) that can be traced from all of its components; to it’s narrative, mise-en-scene, form, editing, and sounds, the continuous shots envelope into how the evil does not cease to stop.

Works Cited:

Barsam, Richard Meran. Looking at Movies. 3rd ed. New York [u.a.: Norton, 2010. Print.
Brooks, Xan. “Shining a Light inside Room 237.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 18 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.
“The Shining.” The Shining. Warner Bros, 2000. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.