The Shining and Stanley Kubrick

Last week I wrote about two films Stephen King loves adapted from his novels, now I am excited to spend a longer time on a film King absolutely detests. King feels The Shining, the movie, is not the story he wrote, and he's right because it isn't. It is a film by Stanley Kubrick masquerading as a Stephen King story. Kubrick took the book by King and used the story to portray his own message, only using parts of the book. Having read the book and seen the movie multiple times each I think I'm qualified to say both have their merits. What bothers King the most, and what bothered me the first time I watched the film is that certain things just don't add up, and many things that were detailed in the book are not explored in the movie at all. But what you have to keep in mind is, Kubrick is a genius. That's not a hyperbole, that's a fact. Kubrick's IQ is somewhere near 200. To put that into perspective, the average IQ is 100. A score of about 125 or higher means you are part of the 2.5% of people who may be a genius. 

This extreme genius is why I believe nothing in a Kubrick film should be dismissed as accident or coincidence. For Kubrick, filmmaking is like a psychological experiment. He plants things into your mind without your consent, that will haunt you later. For example, in the beginning of the film Jack Torrence, played by Jack Nicholson, is taken through the halls at the Overlook Hotel to the manager's office where he is interviewed for his job as caretaker. The window in this room shouldn't exist, can't exist. Inconsistencies like this are all over the film.

Kubrick uses the camera to create a space, then deconstruct it. The Overlook Hotel has a mind of its own and it takes liberties with the people inside it. Danny rides his tricycle through the hotel in one segment of the movie, which if you look closely doesn't make any sense with the layout we know of the hotel so far. This clip is from the movie Room 237 and explains this segment of the film very well.