The Shining

One of the funniest bits in Vivian Kubrick's making of documentary is the footage of Jack Nicholson riling himself up for the "Here's Johnny!" scene: manically jumping outside the bathroom door, swinging the axe around, chanting "fucking fuck, die, pussy, die!" Subtext becoming text in between takes...

Because what is Jack Torrence if not a pygmy of a man, a failed writer who feels ashamed to work dead-end jobs? Nervy and insecure, he bullies his wife and takes her for granted. There is an internalised rage at his own impotence that only gets worse as his failure to create, or to exert control over his environment, becomes more and more evident. While his wife manages the household and raises their son, he does nothing but gnaw at his own pathetic existence.

There are subtle overlays to this resentment. Jack is induced to reassert control over his family by a posh Englishman. Patriarchy is associated with bourgeois standards of respectability: the husband gains his authority by being employed, his wife and children in turn must be utterly obedient to what he says. Sex and drink outside the family home are further rewards of this status, although Jack has an almost childlike awe and fear of the female body.

A hidden racism is also unearthed. His son forms a connection with a black man who becomes an alternative source of comfort and protection. Such mixing must be ended, say the haughty poshos. This unacknowledged racism also comes through in the fact that the hotel is built over an Indian burial ground. A horror cliche, perhaps, but it does nod to the genocide that accompanied the creation of the United States. The final shot is of Jack becoming one of those sinister poshos in a 1920s photograph of a ball in the hotel, 10 years after the original inhabitants were forcibly (and violently) shoved off the land it was built on. Intersecting forces of class, sex and race underlie Jack's descent into madness.

I'm minded to ascribe most of these nuances to Stephen King rather than Stanley Kubrick, who I have a low opinion of after the tedium of 2001. This is a far better avenue for his fixation on swooping through beautiful sets with wide-angle lenses. The inherently alienating effect this creates is a good match for the chilling distance between Jack and his family. Makes me think David Thomson is probably right to say The Shining is Kubrick's one great film.