criterionforum.org

And it's so much more effective as a result.

mfunk9786 wrote:And it's so much more effective as a result.

Right. That's not to say that I think the single image works better than King's backstory, but I think each works in its own medium (the backstory in the novel, the single image in the film). I don't believe in relying on a source novel for information left out in the film. If a filmmaker chooses to leave something out, then we should take it that way. I have read the novel and find it to be very good, but the film is an entirely different beast, so I don't take King's chronicling of those two characters into account when I watch Kubrick's movie.

What I find interesting, however, is that so many people ask what's up with the man in the bear/dog suit, but few people ever inquire about the lady in the bathtub. She has an entire backstory in the novel as well. Are people just naturally more accustomed to seeing nekkid women in Kubrick films? :-k

I think it has to do with the fact that the scene in room 237 is prepared for by the several references to it (Danny: "Did something bad happen in room 237?"). We're expecting something evil to occur when Jack goes in there. The fact that an attractive woman steps out of the shower is an almost comical misdirection (audiences often laughed at this), but the decaying walking corpse of the old woman is the anticipated horrific pay-off. On the other hand, the bear suit comes out of nowhere and just seems like such an odd choice that I think audiences want to know why it's there. Personally, I've always loved the ambiguity of that image which is far stronger than the cheerful man with the crack in his skull.

I've not read the King novel, but I don't think I'd want to know too much about these apparitions. I like that they are simply unexplained.

Their ambiguity does make them very chilling in the film. Although, Kubrick did make significant changes. I won't spoil anything for you, but both episodes are very different in the book.

I watched The Shining this week and I noticed that the word "shone" occurs in the soundtrack many, many times during the scenes where Jack Torrence arrives at the hotel lobby, is interviewed, etc. The sound of the word is breathy, spooky, sinister. I never noticed this before, possibly due to weak audio/speakers but it is clear. I recall mentioning on this site the Egyptian Eye of Horus that is superimposed on Cruise's back in Eye's Wide Shut. I have read about Kubrick conspiracy theories but the more I see his films on better equipment, the more I see, hear and grok his wry messages. I reckon that he truly KNEW a lot of uncommon stuff. His researches into the cosmos, Napoleon, politics must have led him to disconcerting truths. That he placed his knowledge into his films should not come as a shock - but your own suspicions should...

Person wrote:I watched The Shining this week and I noticed that the word "shone" occurs in the soundtrack many, many times during the scenes where Jack Torrence arrives at the hotel lobby, is interviewed, etc. The sound of the word is breathy, spooky, sinister. I never noticed this before, possibly due to weak audio/speakers but it is clear. I recall mentioning on this site the Egyptian Eye of Horus that is superimposed on Cruise's back in Eye's Wide Shut. I have read about Kubrick conspiracy theories but the more I see his films on better equipment, the more I see, hear and grok his wry messages. I reckon that he truly KNEW a lot of uncommon stuff. His researches into the cosmos, Napoleon, politics must have led him to disconcerting truths. That he placed his knowledge into his films should not come as a shock - but your own suspicions should...

The fact that you're willing to declare this on such scanty evidence is more a sign that you're actively looking for this to be true than a sign that there is truth to it. This kind of conspiratorial thinking is addictive not only because it offers a (usually reductive) totalizing claim to knowledge, but because it offers you status: you get to be among an elect, an elite, apart from the herd with the real truth that is unavailable to everyone else. It's a chance to be in your own mystery cult, like the Eleusinian Mysteries or something. This is why conspiratorial thinking never draws on available knowledge, but on 'esoteric knowledge' that's always being hidden underneath things, in symbols, codes, and other obsessive patterns. The irony is that conspiratorial thinking does not bring you any genuine knowledge of the outside world: it's solipsistic in nature. You just get drawn deeper into your own blinders and biases until the real world falls away and you're left with a gigantic tangled structure of your own devising that points at nothing but yourself.

Kubrick did not have access to secret sources of information about the world that are not available to anyone else. And neither do you.

Brilliant post, Sausage.

Mr Sausage wrote:

Person wrote:I watched The Shining this week and I noticed that the word "shone" occurs in the soundtrack many, many times during the scenes where Jack Torrence arrives at the hotel lobby, is interviewed, etc. The sound of the word is breathy, spooky, sinister. I never noticed this before, possibly due to weak audio/speakers but it is clear. I recall mentioning on this site the Egyptian Eye of Horus that is superimposed on Cruise's back in Eye's Wide Shut. I have read about Kubrick conspiracy theories but the more I see his films on better equipment, the more I see, hear and grok his wry messages. I reckon that he truly KNEW a lot of uncommon stuff. His researches into the cosmos, Napoleon, politics must have led him to disconcerting truths. That he placed his knowledge into his films should not come as a shock - but your own suspicions should...

The fact that you're willing to declare this on such scanty evidence is more a sign that you're actively looking for this to be true than a sign that there is truth to it. This kind of conspiratorial thinking is addictive not only because it offers a (usually reductive) totalizing claim to knowledge, but because it offers you status: you get to be among an elect, an elite, apart from the herd with the real truth that is unavailable to everyone else. It's a chance to be in your own mystery cult, like the Eleusinian Mysteries or something. This is why conspiratorial thinking never draws on available knowledge, but on 'esoteric knowledge' that's always being hidden underneath things, in symbols, codes, and other obsessive patterns. The irony is that conspiratorial thinking does not bring you any genuine knowledge of the outside world: it's solipsistic in nature. You just get drawn deeper into your own blinders and biases until the real world falls away and you're left with a gigantic tangled structure of your own devising that points at nothing but yourself.

Kubrick did not have access to secret sources of information about the world that are not available to anyone else. And neither do you.

Well, as far as film directors go, he was one of the most dedicated of researchers, to that only the ignorant would disagree. I doubt that he was a Freemason, but he would have failed as a keen researcher not to at least stumble opon Napoleon's recorded thoughts on Freemasonic goals. From 2001 onwards, his films overflow with arcane, religious, mathematical, scientific symbols that distinguish him as a sharp, playful, instictive intellect seldom found in the entertainment industry. He spent much of his life invested in intellectual research, not productive film making. But it seems to me that he was not a kook, a conspiracy nut. He just desired the truth, even if it was, as the average person would deem, disconcerting. Eyes Wide Shut is a film in point. It abounds with material that has recently been put forward as ritualistic practices among the aristocractic elite.

But these are just my thoughts, speculations. They may be shared by others but I agree that it is sounds silly. Films are for fun! But Kubrick seemed to have a higher respect for his work and I share much of his perspectives of the world. If he gave us keys to rooms of knowledge in his films then that means that each viewing is better than that last, so we may just get even more bang for our buck the next time we spin a disc! If not, no damage has been done. But I feel that his films are ciphers to arcane wisdom.

So says a moderator of an internet message board, the persons most likely to be part of the international cabal of secret knowledge. Shone on, harvest loon!

domino harvey wrote:So says a moderator of an internet message board, the persons most likely to be part of the international cabal of secret knowledge. Shone on, harvest loon!

Ha ha! I doubt that Mr S is a lackey of the money-makers. He just keeps crazies like me in check on his patch. Rightly so. But just watch that first 30 minutes of The Shining. It's crazy how often the word "shone" is dubbed into the soundtrack. Even more so that I - or no one else - noticed it. Was it subliminal? If so why? Kubrick changed much of King's novel, but it has always seemed to me that he was trying to tell another story than the one King told. The mystery of time is a key theme in Kubrick's work and in this film, it takes centre stage. Time stands still, melds into the past, freezes. Eyes Wide Shut has similar moments of temporal tests for the audience. But there are images/symbols for the keen-eye that make up the formula for his life's work. But I wonder if he had more to say/show us as it isn't clear what he was trying to say.

The moderating team is sorry to announce that domino harvey has just now been banned for reasons totally unrelated to his pointing out the vast network of masonic codes littered throughout this forum.

I've never noticed "shone" being integrated in the soundtrack - but if it is, what precisely is the significance of this? How does it relate to the Egyptian Eye of Horus?

In any case, Kubrick certainly was interested in all sorts of arcane matters, and it reflects very much on his late career films. Whether one buys into the whole Illuminati conspiracy-theory deal or not (generally speaking - I don't), it seems to me silly to deny that, for one, Eyes Wide Shut is full of occult and masonic symbolism.

Just to be clear, are you talking about the word "shone", or other words that happen to end in "-tion"?

If so, may I refer you to the famous anecdote about the earnest French critic who decrypted the "message" hidden in a car numberplate in Family Plot, only for Hitchcock to reply that it was the producer's car, which just happened to be the most convenient one to hand.

Mind you, maybe the producer wanted him to find it...?

Similarly, in the Dream Within a Dream documenatary, Peter Weir mentions a French critic seeing Picnic at Hanging Rock for the first time and praising him for having one of the girls make a religious gesture during the final slow-motion pan. Weir says she was just shooing a fly away.

My fellow Britons may well have come across this repulsive Christmas ad - which someone has improved dramatically by replacing the original soundtrack with the opening music from The Shining.

And any bets on what's in the box at the end? In the second version, my money's on a puppy's freshly severed head.

MichaelB wrote:And any bets on what's in the box at the end? In the second version, my money's on a puppy's freshly severed head.

Charlie Brooker would agree with you!

Actually, I was quoting one of the comments. Though no doubt he was channelling Brooker.

Brooker has been really pushing this as a Twitter 'meme' (I think that's how the people who use Twitter put it!) - beginning with the simple criticism at the dishonesty at the heart of an advert which suggests that children would only be waiting for Christmas in order to give presents rather than receive them, things built until he was calling out John Lewis to say what is in the box, talking about the backstory of how the kid has obviously kept the head in the box in his cupboard for months and that is why he is just counting down the hours until he is able to get rid of it, and then becoming annoyed at people being moved by such an advert. (Apparently this is all going to become his latest Guardian article as well)

This then turned into a discussion of favourite sad films, from which we learnt that Mr Brooker "roared with laughter" through Dancer In The Dark (Did poor Bjork suffer in vein?), cried at My Name Is Joe and Waltz With Bashir and has not as yet been able to face up to watching Grave of the Fireflies.

All in all quite a revelatory weekend!

colinr0380 wrote: This then turned into a discussion of favourite sad films, from which we learnt that Mr Brooker "roared with laughter" through Dancer In The Dark (Did poor Bjork suffer in vein?)

To be fair the ending is practically shot as a farce, but with more crying.

I've just tried syncing up the John Lewis ad to Penderecki's 'The Awakening of Jacob', and it's much scarier.

MichaelB wrote:I've just tried syncing up the John Lewis ad to Penderecki's 'The Awakening of Jacob', and it's much scarier.

Boy, you weren't kidding.

Mr Sausage wrote:

MichaelB wrote:I've just tried syncing up the John Lewis ad to Penderecki's 'The Awakening of Jacob', and it's much scarier.

Boy, you weren't kidding.

The proof.

Hard to believe that I didn't have to alter the visuals at all, aside from a slow fade at the end to prevent cutting off the music too abruptly.

How odd. Do you suppose the director and cinematographer were aware of how awful the concept for the ad was and set about making small homages to The Shining to pass the time? Maybe I just perceive similarities to that film everywhere since I've watched it so many times.

In the same vein of inappropriateness, here's the classic attempt at making a trailer which reinterprets the Kubrick film as a Miramax-y family drama.

I'm new to this forum though I've been spying on you guys for awhile.

I saw this video recently on the set design and it's analysis in The Shining. Hope you enjoy.

Part 1 - Part 2