The Shining

I’ve put this under the category of "Entertainment", but it deserves connections with other categories. Now read on…

I mentioned "The Shining" in my post on the "Wollemi Pine" last month. BTW, I have to get back to you about the outcome posed in that post. I promise I will do so… 

Anyways-up, to quote Julian and Sandy, my husband is out this evening, so I thought that I would put the DVD of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining on the DVD player.

Gawd, it is so brilliant! Kubrick was a master. I was listening to the audio feed of an interview with Phillip Pullman at the Hay festival yesterday, and he made a point about the modern novel being aligned with Cinema. It is very true – he describes how his masterpiece: His Dark Materials reads like cinematography – close-ups, long-shots, and the like. Whereas the "voice" of the traditional fairytale is very different. And he used other examples of his writing to illustrate this. And it was true, they had none of the close-ups or voiceovers of what the hero/heroine is thinking. The difference is staggering when you hear it or see it – and I hadn’t really appreciated it before.

And what struck me, which I hadn’t thought of before, is what is exactly so powerful, and so right about Kubrick’s vision of Stephen King’s novel is that it is exactly filmed as a fairytale, and not really as a modern piece of cinema or the modern novel. There is no deep introspection as to why these people behave the way they do, they just play out their parts in front of our eyes, the way a Grimms’ fairytale conjures up the action in our imagination.  

Brilliant.

And, I must comment over the styles of the actors. Jack Nicholson gives (to my senses) a really over-the top interpretation of the role of Jack Torrance. It’s OK, and perhaps it’s what Kubrick wanted. But when I see Philip Stone in the role of Delbert Grady, and I cannot think otherwise than this, this is how it should be played. Supremely understated, yet with the underllining of faint, yet absolutely bottomless, evil. Stone is just perfect in the role.