I. Introduction
Anyone who has seen "The Shining" knows that this movie does not feel as scary as some other movies after watching it for the first time. I also agree, so for a long time, I defined "The Shining" as a "creepy horror movie", that is: a kind of unsettling but very unsettling (unsettling) horror genre.
Until one day I rewatched "The Shining" on my phone before going to bed, and fell asleep watching it. I woke up in the middle of the night after an unknown period of time, and "The Shining" was not finished, so I heard the sound of the movie half-awake. At that moment, I suddenly felt as if I had never seen the movie, because for the first time, whether it was the voice of the movie or the soundtrack, it caused my visceral fear (and I'm pretty sure it wasn't even playing at the time). several name fragments). I was so frightened that I quickly turned off the sound, and then fell asleep peacefully again after a while.
When I woke up the next day I was reminded of this episode from last night, and it made me wonder why this movie is experienced differently in different contexts. In the process it reminded me of this famous scene:
When I watched it before, I thought that Kubrick's scheduling (or Nicholson's performance) was a big failure, because although this expression can be understood as horror, it seems too happy, and the performance is not in place. But with the episode above, I suddenly realized that the expression itself may mean a kind of double-meaning story similar to Vertigo. So I re-watched The Shining again, and verified my guess: The Shining is a movie with "volatility".
(Stop here. I don’t know how Vertigo is a double-meaning story. Recommend this film review: To be honest, “Vertigo” cannot be explained without feminism and Freud . Simple. To sum up, "Vertigo" uses a set of visual language to tell two different types of stories based on the principle of the change of dominant viewpoint: one is a detective suspense film on the surface, and the other is how the women in the inner layer A tragic story of dying to satisfy the male gaze.)
2. The "volatility" of "The Shining"
Back to the text. If the essence of the "Vertigo"-style polysemous story is reflected in the simultaneous advancement of the two layers of stories, then the essence of the "Shining"-style polysemous story is reflected in its "volatility", that is, when the audience is watching the movie The level of sanity/lucidity of the brain directly affects the experience of watching The Shining.
Specifically, when you watch "The Shining, " the more your mind "believes that the movie's story isn't true" (or the mind that is "uninfected by the horror" ) prevails, the more likely you are to feel that "The Shining" is "an anti-horror routine comedy". This kind of comedy is embodied in two forms, one is the comedy effect caused by the vilification/irony of the negative character, such as the ice sculpture Jack emoticon posted on it; the other is the black humor when the positive character is killed, such as the male protagonist slashing with an axe The heroine's exaggerated performance at the wooden door (will analyze this in detail later).
Conversely, when you watch The Shining, the more your sense organs or subconscious prevail (that is, your mind is not strong enough or clear), the more likely you are to think that The Shining is a "thriller horror movie" (as in The experience I mentioned in the article when I was half asleep).
In addition to the above two, there is a third possibility: when you watch "The Shining", your subconscious and rational mind are about 55 to 50, then you are more likely to think that "The Shining" is a "horror movie".
I call this kind of "volatility" that wanders between comedy films, thriller horror films, and scary horror films as "the triplet of funny-creepy-horror" , which conceptually corresponds to the "triplet" of particles. Wave-Particle Duality".
In order to facilitate understanding of all this, I made a simple diagram, which is roughly like this:
Therefore, depending on the state of the audience's mind when watching, "The Shining" can be an infinite number of different movies in terms of look and feel.
However, although I have written a lot about the "three signs" of "The Shining", this film review does not intend to discuss the origin of this "three signs" from a scientific point of view, but focuses on one issue: "The Shining" How is it considered a comedy?
The comedy of The Shining
The comedy of The Shining in general has to be attributed to Nicholson and Shelly (and perhaps Little Boy and Dick) . Their acting and styling (looks, make-up, etc.) allow them to create movie characters with two qualities at the same time: the joy of a comedy character, and the horror of a horror character. This is the key to the establishment of the "three signs" of "The Shining".
Specifically, the comedy of the film mainly comes from two points:
1. Subtle lines before entering the hotel
Before the protagonist's family officially settled in the Lookout Hotel, "The Shining" had dozens of minutes of dialogue. Many of the dialogue scenes may not react at first glance, but when you replay it, you will feel a subtle sense of joy. :
Scene 1: The hero enters the interview room, the heroine and her son may stay in the hotel and chat, the heroine is looking forward to entering the hotel life, saying: "It'll be lots of fun... we're all gonna have a real good time”.
Scene 2: The male protagonist in the interview room chats with the boss, the boss asks the male protagonist if his wife and children can stand the boring life in the hotel, the male protagonist replies: "They'll love it"
Scene 3: The doctor treated the little boy, and then said firmly to the heroine: "I don't think you have anything to worry about. I'm quite sure there's nothing physically wrong with Danny", and the heroine replied happily : "Yeah? Yeah, he seems... absolutely fine now."
Scene 4: The hero and heroine visit the hotel lobby for the first time. Female lead: "Oh it's beautiful! My God! This place is fantastic, isn't it, hon?" Male lead replied: "It sure is".
Scene 5: After visiting the hotel room for the first time, the hero and heroine were asked what they thought of the room. Male lead: "Well, it's very homey". Female lead: "Yeah".
Scene 6: The hero and heroine visited the dance hall for the first time, and the heroine exclaimed: "Boy, I bet you we could really have a good party in this room, huh, hon?"
Scene 7: The hero and heroine visit the entire hotel for the first time, the boss: The guests and some of the staff left yesterday, but the last day is always very hectic. Everybody wants to be on their way as soon as possible. By 5:00 Tonight, you'll never know anybody was ever here. - Mistress: Just like a ghost ship, huh? - Boss: Yes.
2. The "failure" of nervousness
Kant once explained comedy in "Critique of Judgment": "(In comedy) laughter is a feeling that suddenly changes from tense anticipation to nothingness". This statement may not cover all comedies, but it defines the origin of a large part of the comedy of "The Shining" very accurately: some viewers are nervous and anticipating that the next scene will be scary, but it is not. Horror is a rather exaggerated scene, so I laughed.
Specifically, thanks to the precise image elements of the film (performance, art design, soundtrack, etc.), if the sensibility and subconsciousness in the audience's mind do not prevail (that is, the state of mind is in the "intelligent mind" in the diagram above between" and "five to five"), then all the horror clips are either hilarious (like the Ice Jack emoji) or suspenseful/disturbed (like the little boy seeing the twins)—while Not a horror thriller. It goes without saying that it is funny, and the suspense/uneasiness is essentially as said before, but it is to make the audience nervous and look forward to the upcoming horror scenes, and these upcoming horror scenes are not really scary and funny, which leads to The nervousness of the audience "fails", resulting in a laugh.
Take the famous scene All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. At first, the female lead went to the male lead's typing desk to read his manuscript, and found that all the paper was written "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". At this time, the audience's emotions were mobilized and tense with the music. Then there is the viewpoint shot of a male protagonist who slipped out from the wall, and then he said, "What are you looking at?" The female protagonist yelled in fright. At this time, the entire suspenseful and tense atmosphere has been adjusted to the peak, so what the audience is looking forward to next is definitely a very frightening dialogue or interaction between the male and female protagonists.
For many audiences, the following dialogue is indeed true, but for audiences whose minds and rationality are absolutely superior, the horror they expect is not at all. On the contrary, the exaggerated performance and tone of the male and female protagonists are almost comical, which makes people laugh. , especially when the male protagonist imitates the female protagonist's voice and says "aS sOoN aS pOsSiBlE?" Therefore, this famous scene is a typical laugh caused by the failure of tension.
Another typical relevant famous scene is the part where the male protagonist cuts the door with an axe. At first, the little boy walked to the door with the lipstick and kept shouting Redrum, then after writing RedRum on the door of the room, the voice became louder and louder until the heroine was woken up. The heroine took the little boy's knife in horror, looked in the mirror, and saw Murder. With the contrast of the soundtrack, the audience's emotions began to be pushed up. Then there is a cross montage: on one side, the female protagonist takes her son into the toilet and pushes him out of the window and tries to escape from the window by herself, and on the other side, the male protagonist is splitting the bedroom door with an axe (Note: not the toilet door, the toilet The door section is the famous scene of Here's Johnny). These two lines cross, until the male protagonist splits the bedroom door to the toilet door where the female protagonist is hiding, and the entire tense atmosphere of the film is rendered to a climax. Then, the audience must be looking forward to the scene that makes them very scared.
However, as in the whole episode of All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, the scene that follows is hilarious to the sane audience. Whether it's the male protagonist's threat outside the door, the female protagonist's reaction when the male protagonist splits the toilet door, or the male protagonist's Here's johnny, their performances are full of comedic exaggeration. So the tension was blown, and the audience laughed again.
These are two of the more typical examples, there are many others, and these examples are not even about the failure of "nervous" emotions, but the clips that are supposed to be scary are full of humor. For example:
——The male master bathroom walks to the naked beauty and hugs her and then the beauty turns into a mummified corpse.
——The black man traveled all the way to save the heroine, just when the audience felt that he would make a difference according to the inertial logic, he was directly hacked to death by the male protagonist (during and after the hacking, the little boy exaggeratedly opened his mouth and the male protagonist was inserted. The evil charm smiles two somewhat happy expressions).
——The two parts of the chat between the male protagonist and the bartender in the dance hall. The ugliness of the male protagonist when he said obscene words is really full of black humor to some viewers.
- The little boy's alter ego - Tony - all sorts of hilarious voices in nature.
——The part of the male protagonist and the waiter chatting in the toilet. Whether it's Jack's frantic testing of the waiter's identity or the waiter telling how he killed his own family (with "corrected them/her" in extremely dark humor), it's full of dark humor.
- Paintings of two nude women in the black room.
——The part where the male protagonist fell on the table and had nightmares and then talked with the female protagonist about the content of the dream.
——The heroine went upstairs and saw the man in the bear suit giving a mouth to a man.
——The heroine's exaggerated and funny expressions full of black humor when she saw all kinds of dead bodies and even blood gushing out of the hall of the dead in the lobby.
——The ice sculpture emoticon package of the male protagonist (it is worth mentioning that this is the scene where the male protagonist suddenly cuts into this picture after he falls in the maze, which adds to the sense of humor)
--etc.
It is worth mentioning that the "nervous emotion" created by the movie sometimes does not fail directly afterwards, but as an accumulation of tension, which then explodes in the later climax. For example, the little boy saw blood gushing out, the little boy saw two little girls with the same appearance twice, and so on, which made the audience feel suspenseful and nervous. These suspenseful tensions hang on until the film's climactic set is "failed".
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