Many people who watched the film accused it of being a "rubbish" ', the audience was bewildered.
Indeed, watching this film requires a lot of homework. Unlike "The Da Vinci Code", the latter has complete logical reasoning from beginning to end. Even if the audience knows nothing about religious background, they can still think from this complete set of reasoning. Mostly. And "The Shining" is a horror film with a very obvious suspense design, but a very hidden answer. It is precisely because of its hidden answer and implied meaning that it is innocently dubbed "garbage".
One of the most frequently used words in this film is "The Shining", and it can be said that the storyline of the entire film revolves around this word. So, what exactly is "The Shining"?
The word "Shining" is translated from the original "shining". Many critics say that it is the sixth sense in this film. I don't fully agree with this. After reviewing the film no less than ten times, I gave the term "Shining" a definition that I think is more accurate - remote sensing capability. As we know, the sixth sense is usually used to sense what may happen in the future, or an ability to help people make the right choice in a critical situation, more intuitive. The ability of remote sensing can not only travel through the future, but also recreate what has already happened. It is by no means equal to pure intuition. It is produced by the mutual stimulation of subjective ideas and objective environment. To a certain extent, it is equivalent to the advance reaction of the subconscious.
After having a general understanding of the meaning of Shining, let us review the details of this film from the beginning. It is worth mentioning that the film has used flowing shooting angles many times, and the effect of light and shadow is very good.
The film begins with the protagonist Jack coming to the overview hotel to interview for the position of administrator. The person in charge told him of a tragic incident that happened here in 1970: Charles Grady, the former administrator, hacked his wife and daughter to death one day in the winter and shot himself.
The camera cuts, Jack's wife Wendy and son Danny appear. From the beginning, Danny knew in advance that Dad's interview would be a success, and this was the first time Danny's Shining was activated.
When the person in charge led Jack's family to visit the hotel, Danny's Shining was activated for the second time. At the door of the playroom he saw the twin sisters who had appeared in his dream before. With doubt and a hint of fear, Danny mentioned room 237 in front of Dick, a black chef who also had The Shining.
Next, the director showed the development of the plot to the audience in the form of a diary.
1. A month later
Jack woke up in the morning and told Wendy that he knew this place very well. In the afternoon, Wendy and Danny entered the hedge maze to play, while Jack was outside, but saw Wendy and Danny from the maze model on the table.
2. The Tuesday
weather forecast tells that Denver is about to face a blizzard. Wendy went to tell Jack the news, intending to remind everyone to prepare early, but Jack said she interrupted her writing and got angry. He also set the so-called "new rules" that he should not enter and disturb him in the future.
3. Things on Thursday
were very simple and profound. Except for Wendy and Danny playing in the snow, the camera was positioned on Jack's face for a long time. His eyes looked dull and strange, and there was a mysterious smile on his face.
4. Saturday
Wendy's attempts to communicate with the outside world by radio were successful. To prevent accidents, she kept the radio on. And Danny saw the twin sisters for the third time, and what was more, he saw the blood splattered when the sisters died. The third time Danny's Shining is activated, it tells Danny that nothing he sees is true.
5. Monday
Danny and Wendy were watching TV, Danny offered to go to the room to get his fire truck. Wendy told him not to wake Daddy. And when Danny entered the room lightly, he found that Jack was not resting, but was sitting on the edge of the bed. Jack picked Danny up and said something to him. Jack repeatedly stressed how much he loved Danny. This is probably the only slightly heartwarming scene in the entire film, even though Jack's speech and facial expressions are increasingly creepy and terrifying.
6.Wednesday
Danny was playing in the hotel corridor. Suddenly a ball rolled in front of him. He raised his head and saw that the door of room 237, which he had been deeply afraid of, was opened by someone who didn't know who opened the door. Driven by curiosity, he still walked in.
Wendy, who was examining the boiler at this time, suddenly heard Jack screaming frantically. She ran over and woke Jack, who was struggling in the nightmare. Jack told her, "I just had the most terrifying dream I've ever had. I dreamed that I killed you and Danny, and, not only did I kill you, but I cut you into pieces..." Came in without saying a word. Confused, Wendy approached him only to find Danny's neck with a large bruise on his neck. Wendy thought of the incident when Jack dislocated Danny's arm because of drunkenness a few years ago, and couldn't help but get angry and scolded Jack.
Troubled and irritated, Jack walked into the hotel and into the ballroom. At this time, he desperately needed alcohol to numb himself, "No matter what the cost, even if it costs my damn soul", and when he looked up, he saw the bartender Lloyd standing in front of him, after a few glasses of wine, Jack The anger and grievance that had accumulated in the body finally broke out. He blamed Wendy and Danny for the impact on his life and future, and it got out of hand.
At this moment, Wendy panicked and ran to tell him that there was a crazy woman in room 237, and she was the murderer who strangled Danny. Jack walked into room 237 and saw a naked woman coming out of the bathtub and kissing him, Jack started kissing her, only to find in the mirror that the woman in his arms turned out to be a terrible carrion. He ran out in despair, but hid everything from Wendy.
At the same time, Dick, a black chef who also has Shining, has a premonition that something bad will happen to the hotel, so he begins to try to get in touch with the Jack family through various means.
Wendy asked Jack to take her and Danny down the mountain, and Jack became furious. He walked away, and once again came to the bar in the ballroom to get drunk.
There was a big party going on in the ballroom at this time. Jack was carrying a wine glass when he was knocked over by a waiter and was splashed with eggnog. The waiter wiped Jack carefully in the bathroom and inadvertently revealed to Jack that his name was Delbert Grady. As soon as Jack realized something, he questioned whether the waiter in front of him was the previous administrator who killed his wife and daughter. The waiter denied it at first, but after Jack's repeated insistence, he finally admitted it. And, he told Jack that Danny was trying to use his Shining to lead strangers to the hotel, of course, this stranger was Dick, the black chef who had been trying to contact them without success and decided to go up the mountain to check it out himself.
At this point Danny suddenly called out the word "redrum" weirdly. Jack cuts off the radio and sabotages the snowmobile for the descent.
7, 8:00am
Wendy couldn't stand the mental torment and decided to have a final showdown with Jack on whether to go down the mountain. Armed with a baseball bat, she cautiously walked into the hall of Jack's daily work, but found all Jack's works from this period of time - a large stack of paper, repeating the sentence in different formats: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. (Literally: endless work makes Jack boring). At the same time, Danny in another room saw the bright red "redrum" on the bathroom door again. Wendy was startled and scared, and Jack suddenly appeared from behind her like a ghost. Jack began to press Wendy step by step, asking her why she never thought about her future and her career. During the argument, Wendy knocked Jack unconscious with a bat and locked him in the storage room.
8. 4:00pm
Wendy finds the radio and the snowmobile are damaged. While trying to figure out how to get out of the car, Danny suddenly yelled "redrum" again, Wendy woke up from the dream, and found that Jack ran out of the storage room at some point, and was frantically slamming on the bedroom door. Frightened, Wendy pushed Danny out of the bathroom window in a hurry, but she couldn't get through. Jack finally smashed the bathroom door open, and Wendy cut Jack's hand with a knife in desperation. At this point Dick had come to the mountain, Jack turned his attention to attacking Dick, Wendy finally survived and came out of the bedroom and started looking for Danny. At this time, Wendy saw all kinds of visions: a man dressed as a white KJ in a bear costume with a bare buttocks; the overwhelming skeleton head in the ballroom, and the waiter who was bleeding and drinking blood and wine. Wendy ran out of the hotel desperately. In front of the snowmobile that Dick drove, she saw Danny, who had been in a circle with Jack, ran out of the hedge maze, and the mother and son climbed on the snowmobile desperately. Escaped the land of right and wrong before Jack found them. And Jack froze to death in the maze that night.
Even after you watch this film many times, I believe you still have questions. As I said, the essential element of a good horror film is a successful suspense setting. Maybe you will say, but in this film, there are many questions that cannot be solved? Shhh! Don't say that, or I'm sure Kubrick, the sly old fox, is secretly laughing at us in heaven! I dare not say that I have understood every detail 100%, but at least the key part, I think I can answer your questions. In fact, it is not difficult to understand the film, as long as you master the three key links:
First, understand the historical background of the United States from the westward pioneering movement to the Indian massacre. I did a general search, and the events that started and ended in these two major events were roughly from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of the 19th century. Through these two major sports, the United States has thrown off the hat of being poor and white, and has since stepped onto the ranks of the world's powers.
At the beginning of the film, the person in charge of the hotel mentioned that the foundation of the hotel was the cemetery of the Indians, and it was even attacked during the construction. In the 19th century, the Western Frontier Movement and the genocide policy were carried out. By the beginning of the 20th century, when the hotel was completed, both of these movements had basically ended. It is conceivable how many Indians were buried under the splendor. Tired of bones!
Some film critics believe that Jack was cursed by dead Indians and killed his own relatives to take revenge on white Americans. Of course, there is some truth to this statement, but my point is that Jack is actually a Western The epitome of the westward colonizer in the pioneering movement, and his wife and son can be seen as a portrayal of the indigenous Indians who were slaughtered in those days. why? There is one of the most obvious hints in the film: at the beginning of the film, when Jack drove his wife and children to the hotel, he talked about a group of "Donners, the colonial organization of the caravan era", who were buried in the white snow of this mountain range. At the beginning, I was also confused. I didn't understand what this "caravan era" meant. But in the end, when Jack went to the bar to get drunk for the first time, he once said two words to the bartender Lloyd, one was: "The white man's mission is..." and the other was: "I was prepared in the van. After suffering for 5 months, I'm back..." Many people may not have paid attention to these two sentences, especially the latter one. At first, I was puzzled over and over again and didn't understand why the word "truck" was suddenly mentioned. And still on it for 5 months? Later I tried to find the answer from the word "truck". I checked the English-Chinese dictionary, and one of the trucks is an open-top truck. At this point, I suddenly realized that this coincides with the "caravan era" mentioned in the title, but the translator does not connect the context, and the front and back translations are not the same. Symmetry caused a misunderstanding. Understand this point, and then check the Internet, it is easy to find that the so-called "caravan era" is actually the name of the pioneering movement in the western United States. Because most of the pioneers who moved westward in that era liked to use open trucks as means of transportation, so There is this.
At that time, I believe it is not difficult for the audience to understand why I said that Jack represented the colonists who went west. However, he himself was originally just a writer, a writer with a rather unsatisfactory career, why did he suddenly turn into a microcosm of the colonizer? That's the second point I want to make.
Second, who in the movie has The Shining?
Of course, a lot of people must think I'm an idiot with this question, and of course, it's very clear in the film that Jack's son Danny and the black chef Dick both have The Shining. That's certainly not bad. But what I want to say is that there are two characters with Shining that are relatively hidden in the film.
First of all, if the audience has carefully watched the film at least three times, or carefully scrutinized the details of the film I reviewed above, it is not difficult to find the following suspense: Why can Jack feel their mother and son from the model on the table? Where is the maze? Why did Jack dream that he killed his wife and children the day before the accident, and then he actually started chasing them the next day? Why can Jack see the bartender when he goes to the ballroom to get drunk and Wendy can't? Why did Jack see the naked woman who was actually a carrion when he approached room 237? And why did Jack meet Grady the second time he went to the ballroom? right! Jack has the shinning too! And his Shining is the most frequently and intensely used in this film. As mentioned earlier, Shining is a product of interactive stimulation between subjective consciousness and objective environment. As the name suggests, the strength of Shining's ability is proportional to the degree of influence of the two. Now, based on this understanding, let's analyze the whole process of Jack from check-in to madness, it is very logical:
Jack was a teacher with a low income at first, life forced him to change career as a writer, and the financial situation made him unable to make ends meet. Forced to be employed as a hotel administrator. He is eager to find inspiration in the quiet life of isolation for 5 months and write a good work. And in life, it seems that Jack can't be a good father no matter how hard he tries, just like he complained to the bartender Lloyd: "As long as I'm alive, that bitch...she won't let me forget what happened What happened." Obviously, Wendy's wife, Wendy, has always kept in mind because of the harm he inadvertently hurt his son Danny a few years ago, and often used it to undermine his sense of responsibility and self-confidence as a father. On the surface, in order to maintain the harmony of the family and the trust of his son, Jack tried his best to stop drinking. He hasn't touched a drop of alcohol for 5 months, but in fact, Wendy's continuous exposing of his scars has deeply hurt his self-esteem. Coupled with the disappointment in his career, his psychology has actually been extremely fragile. It is worth mentioning that he emphasized that he had not touched alcohol for "5 months", and also said that "5 months of suffering in the truck", you can feel that Jack has been gradually Under the pre-acceptance of the two objective prompts of "Dorner Organization" and "The foundation of the hotel is the cemetery of the Indians", it gradually sublimated.
As a man, in the case of unsatisfactory career and family, what is most needed is the comfort from relatives. But it's clear that Wendy isn't a good wife for this. She didn't know how to protect Jack's shaky self-esteem, but instead attacked him intentionally or unintentionally. After seeing the scar on Danny's neck, her first reaction was to scold Jack loudly regardless of the truth. At the same time, she didn't understand how much pressure her husband was under, and how she should help him to relieve it. After the accident, she repeatedly asked Jack to take their mother and son down the mountain, just as Jack said: "Have you considered even a minute? Have you considered my responsibility to the employer? Considered my future?" Of course, as a mother, Her behavior was understandable, but as a wife, her behavior undoubtedly served as a catalyst for Jack's psychological breakdown.
Jack walked into the ballroom for the first time, under the premise that Wendy couldn't tell the difference between misunderstandings. At this time, he was extremely angry and painful in his heart, he could not get the understanding of his family, and his future was hopeless. In addition to the two tips he had accepted before, he saw Lloyd. At this time, he desperately hopes to use alcohol to anesthetize himself, hoping that someone will share his helplessness. But there was still a shred of reason in his heart at the time, so Lloyd just gave him two glasses of wine as he wished in his heart, and didn't mention anything else to him. Jack still yearns for the support of his family, and has an illusion in his heart. The beautiful woman he saw in Room 237 turned into a carrion was actually a process of dashing hope. Of course, another factor is that his subconscious has accepted the psychological suggestion that the former administrator mentioned to him before to kill his wife and daughter.
And when he walked into the ballroom for the second time, he slammed the door after a big fight with Wendy about going down the mountain. At this time, he was completely desperate for his wife's understanding and comfort. There was nothing but anger in his heart, so this time he saw Delbert Grady. This shows that his feelings for his wife and children at this time can no longer be compared with the long-standing dissatisfaction in his heart. Grady told him that his wife and children had to "correct them" for trying to escape the hotel. Obviously, at this time, for Jack, the more his wife and children have to escape the hotel, the more they want to ruin his future, the more they want to challenge his dignity as a husband and father, so they must be stopped in time like Grady.
As Wendy found in Jack's manuscript: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. The excessive pressure kept Jack on the verge of collapse. However it was too late. Jack's subconscious has been transformed into a "Western colonizer" who wants to maintain his dignity and win his future and honor. His wife and son have become obstacles in his eyes, and his mind has been completely split.
In addition, Jack has also continuously shown his Shining in other places in the film. From the beginning, he felt that this place was "deja vu". At this time, his Shining was still vague, not particularly strong, because he had not yet He was greatly stimulated, and then he saw the bartender, Delbert Grady, naked girls... As he was stimulated more and more, his Shining became stronger and stronger.
Another hidden figure with The Shining in the film is Jack's wife Wendy. In fact, Wendy's Shining is very weak, and it is only at the last moment, stimulated by her husband's madness, that she can see those weird sights.
Third, Kubrick's wordplay
Kubrick is indeed cunning enough. He played wordplay in several places in the film to make the plot more mysterious and complicated:
Charles Grady & Delbert Grady
don't know if the audience has noticed , the former manager mentioned by the hotel manager was named Charles Grady, and the one who appeared in front of Jack was named Delbert Grady. This detail tells us that Delbert Grady, Lloyd, or a large group of people in the ballroom, they are not ghosts. , but Jack appeared subconsciously under countless psychological hints; ghosts can't get their names wrong, and only the products of the subconscious have such uncertainty. So when Jack saw the bartender for the first time, he immediately called his name Lloyd.
2. Redrum
The word appears a total of three times in the film, all in Danny's mouth or in his head. I guess the vast majority of viewers don't notice the word, or if they do, they don't understand it? Because there is no subtitle translation for this word, it can only be interpreted by the audience based on their own understanding of the film. Judging by the number and occasions in which the word appears, it must have a special meaning. What exactly is it?
At first, I tried to use the word splitting method. There are two splitting methods, which can be split into red+rum or re+drum. Rum means booze or weird, but that doesn't make sense literally, and the latter can be interpreted as "repeated thumping", but the pronunciation doesn't match the film. It wasn't until the fourth time I watched this film that I suddenly realized that I had fallen into Kubrick's text trap.
I don't know if the audience paid attention, but what appeared in Danny's mind, and the "redrum" he wrote on the bathroom door, the four letters of "drum" at the back were reversed. What does this remind us? right! Reverse the word "redrum"! what is it? —murder! murder! The meaning is quite clear. The two letters "re" are not written backwards. It can be understood that these two letters need to be emphasized, so that they are connected to "re-murder"! Murder again! Danny's Shining wasn't actually particularly strong, because he wasn't much stimulated before the accident, it was just his long-term habit of talking to Tony that he spontaneously used his Shining to sense some impending danger.
The era of caravans & wagons - the interpretation of trucks
This has been discussed in detail before, so I won't repeat them.
After understanding the three points I said above, do you think this film is no longer so difficult to understand? Of course, some small doubts can also be explained accordingly:
The scar on Danny's neck can be attributed to the joint action of their family of three Shining: Jack had a hint of "the former administrator tragedy" in his mind, and Danny had been subjected to "Room 237" before. Something bad happened" and Wendy sees the scar on Danny's neck based on Jack's injury to Danny a few years earlier.
Jack was locked in the storage room by Wendy, how did he get out? the shinning! Just like the dialogue between the black chef and Danny at the beginning of the film: "There are many people who have Shining, but they don't know, let alone how powerful it is!" How powerful is Shining? Again, it depends on the degree of stimulation of the subjective consciousness and the objective environment.
But it is worth mentioning that many film critics think that the interpretation of Room 237. The number 237 represents the 237-day massacre of Indians by the United States. This claim is unfounded. According to historical records, the US genocide policy lasted for about a century before and after, and in just 237 days, it was absolutely impossible to reduce the Indian population of more than 30 million to less than 800,000.
Since the film came out, it has been regarded as the most horror film in the world. The screenwriter's conception is so ingenious that it has reached an unprecedented level, at least it is no exaggeration to say that no other film of its kind has surpassed its achievements in this regard so far. At the same time, the filming method of this film is also very brilliant. The film uses many follow-up shots, as well as the child's perspective, especially when Danny rides his bike through room 237, the looking up shot is very good, making the fear nervous The atmosphere brought to a climax. In addition, the flowing effect of light and shadow in the surrounding environment itself also gives the audience an eerie and bleak atmosphere.
Some people say that watching this film is actually watching the destruction of a man. Some people say that it is a disguised history of Indian blood and tears. As the saying goes, the benevolent sees benevolence, and the wise sees wisdom. For a good film, its meaning will never stay at a superficial level. Even if you watch it 10,000 times, you can still have a new feeling. Why is it necessary to weaken its original appeal?
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