Monday, August 10, 2015

Film Critique

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