Nicholas Assi
August 5, 2015
Modern Culture and the Arts
Professor Bomboy
Film Critique
Critique
of “The Shining”
I will be critiquing
the use of cinematography and camera shots in the film “The Shining”, produced
and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written by Diane Johnson. The film is based
on the novel “The Shining”, written by Steven King.
“The Shining” is a movie about a small family taking care
of a hotel for five months. Due to hard storms in the area, the hotel must be
abandoned over the winter, with a caretaker left to make sure basic maintenance
is done. Alone with only themselves for company for five months, the hotel is
haunted and possessed by supernatural forces and over time forces the father of
the family Jack Torrance, to slowly go insane. He eventually tries to kill his wife,
Wendy, and their son, Danny. Danny however, has a sort of supernatural power,
referred to as shining, that allows him to call for help and resist the
supernatural forces of the hotel, eventually allowing him to escape from his
insane father and rescue his mother, letting them get away.
The purpose of the film was to be a form of
entertainment. The film was meant to slowly build up a story of dread and apprehension,
creating a horror film meant to truly frighten and scare the audience. The film
does through dark, eerie music, a small amount of editing, but especially,
camera shots. Stanley Kubrick, The director of “The Shining” was famous for his
use of different camera shots, such as tracking shots and wide-angle shots, as
well as for his perfectionist style, often reshooting the same scene dozens of
times until he was satisfied. His use of various forms of camera shots really
helped capture the emotions of the characters in the film. Overall, Stanley
used many different camera shots to make his film a masterpiece and a mainstay
of the horror movie genre.
For example, the tracking shot is used many times in the
film. One example is when Jack is chasing his son Danny through a hedge maze in
the middle of the night. In the scene, it is the middle of the night, snowing
heavily, dimly lit, and cramped, with Jack following the footprints of his son,
trying to catch him and murder him with his axe. As we follow Jack through the
maze, the camera shot gives the allusion of being right behind jack, and make
it look as though there’s barely any room for him in the maze, with just enough
room for one person to shuffle through. We are filled with a horrible sense of
dread, because we want Danny, a small five year old child, to escape, and the
bleak, dark condition of his environment only adds to the desperation and
horror of the scene. Another good example of the tracking shot is when we
follow Danny earlier through the film on his tricycle. In this scene, Danny
rides his bike around the hallways of the hotel, and we are right behind him as
he goes down the hall. We can hear the wheels of his bike on the floor, only to
be followed by the sudden, startling end of the sound whenever he rides over
carpet, only to be repeated when he gets back onto hard floor. We are following
Danny, with the hope that nothing bad is about to happen to him. We are passive
observers, unable to look away, but filled with dread for Danny’s wellbeing.
Another Camera shot Stanley Kubrick uses is the point of
view shot. This is when the camera shows what the character is looking at, acting
as the eyes of the character in a sense, the character themselves. When Wendy,
Jacks wife, tells Jack there is a crazy woman who attacked Danny in room 237,
he goes into the room to investigate. As Jack goes in, the camera uses the
point of view shot. The further Jack goes into the room, the more we see. The
audience is learning at the same rate Jack is, what he is seeing for the first
time, we the audience are seeing for the first time. It gives you a hint of
Jack’s perspective of the circumstances around him. When he finally goes into
the bathroom, we see a beautiful naked woman in a bathtub. The camera then
changes, showing a close up of Jacks face. His expression goes from stunned
disbelief to a sort of primitive smile. In his descent into madness, he loses
all logic, and he doesn’t understand the strangeness or danger of his
situation, he’s just happy to look at such a pretty girl. This close up shot
helps convey the emotions of the characters, and Kubrick was famous for his
close up shots of his characters faces. This is to show their emotions, and
really shows the audience how far Jack has fallen, and the danger everyone is
in. This extreme close up shot is also used when jack eventually gives in to
his insanity and the supernatural forces of the hotel, and tries to kill his
wife, Wendy, cornering her in the bathroom. As he chops down the door with an
axe, we see Wendy in the corner, shrieking and in tears, the fear evident on
her face. We understand from this the danger she is in, that she is trapped,
and scared for her life. As Jack eventually makes a large whole in the door, he
sticks his face in to look inside, giving a large, illogical grin before
stating “Here’s Johnny”. The madness in his face shows that he is now beyond
all hope, that he has been entirely corrupted by the hotel, and is one hundred
percent committed to killing his wife. The climax of the film is finally here,
that everything the movie has been building up to is about to happen. Jack will
either murder his family, or as we hope, they will escape, and we don’t know which
scenario will play out.
Overall, I believe the film accomplished its goal of
scaring and entertaining the audience. I remember the first time I watched the
film. It wasn’t so much a sudden quick startle of fear, but a feeling of
increasing dread as I watched the film. We see more and more scenes of
supernatural forces, and Jack slowly becoming more and more deranged. I remember
thinking Danny would probably get away, because he was a small child, with
everyone in the movie talking about how special and different he is. But I was
very concerned for the wife, Wendy. The film makes her appear very weak and
submissive, and when she’s trapped in the bathroom, with Jack chopping down the
door, she’s cowering by the wall, weakly holding a knife. She’s the total opposite
of Jack, who appears strong and committed to his goal. Yet I still had enough
hope that she could escape, which eventually does happen. That sums up the
movie to me, dread and uncertainty. We don’t know what’s going to occur; we can
only see what’s happening and make guess’s off of that. To me, what makes the
film be so successful in scaring the audience is that it leaves the audience to
decide what might happen. We naturally assume the worst case scenario, letting
the worst thought become our idea of what might occur. The movie doesn’t tell
us what’s going to take place; it gives us clues and lets us form our own
ideas. That is why the film is so scary.
Works Cited
“Kubrick’s Filming
Techniques and style” StanleyKubrick.weebly.com
Web. August 10th, 2015. http://stanleykubrick.weebly.com/technique.html
“Signature shots from
the films of Stanley Kubrick: One-point Perspective” Openculture.com Web. September 8th, 2012. August 10,
2015 http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/signature_shots_from_the_films_of_stanley_kubrick.html
