Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is regarded as a modern classic with special praise given to its masterful editing and cinematography. Indeed, when watching the film, it appears as though narrative consistency is set aside to give predominance to the visual aspect of the picture. However, this apparent incoherence is arguably what makes this film’s narrative worth analysing.
In its most basic definition, narrative is “a chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in time and space” (Brodwell, p.73) so it relies substantially on causality, time and space. In The Shining, there are peculiar choices regarding the use of causality and space, namely the point of view that Kubrick chose to approach to connect events, the dream-like sequences that blur the line between real events and imagined ones and its unconventional use of space in the Overlook Hotel.
However, the story of the movie is, at first sight, quite simple: Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, goes with his family to a remote hotel built over a Native American burial ground to work as its caretaker during the winter and work on his writing, along with his wife and son, who is able to communicate telepathically and has premonitions about the hotel’s gruesome past. After the hotel is hit by a snow storm, Jack seems to be affected by some kind of cabin fever (although the exact cause is somewhat ambiguous) that causes him to lose his sanity and attempt to murder his family. The story then ends with his wife and son escaping the hotel. At first glance, it seems to be a conventional horror narrative. What makes it unique are the choices Kubrick made regarding its presentation and the intended effect, what can be understood as the plot (Brodwell, p.75).
In the beginning of the plot, we can already draw some assumptions regarding the path the story will take: in the interview scene, we learn that the hotel has a dark history regarding the previous caretaker, who murdered his wife and daughters and then killed himself. This event is only mentioned, but throughout the film there are many references to it, namely through Danny’s visions. After the initial scene, we learn that Jack has a history of alcoholism and abuse towards his son. We can assume early on that the off-screen story of the previous caretaker is foreshadowing a possible future event later on in the narrative. In addition, the dream-like scenes and flashbacks contribute to an unsettling feeling regarding Jack’s mental state and the supernatural nature of the hotel.
As previously stated, events in a narrative are linked by causality. What makes the approach to causality quite unique in The Shining is the ambiguous relationship between cause and effect and the viewer’s inability to look for the causal motivation (Bordwell, p.78). What caused Jack to go insane and try to murder his family? Was it cabin fever, writer’s block or a supernatural force from the hotel itself that drove him mad? Are the causes interior or exterior? In other words, is Jack himself the cause, given his history with alcohol and abuse, or are the driving forces of the hotel the main cause of his insanity? This psychological uncertainty is arguably what makes the film a mastery of horror fiction. We can argue that the depth of story information is deeply and unconventionally subjective, depending on how we choose to approach the story. We can either approach this film as a story of abuse, with real life problems (namely alcoholism, isolation, domestic abuse and even the harms of patriarchal families) or in a more obvious way: as a story of supernatural forces linked to Native American mythology brought about by a gloomy hotel that cause its main character to go insane.
The passage of time throughout the film is employed through the usage of nondiegetic elements: after the arrival at the hotel (the exposition), the story jumps to a month later, and then the days of the week are presented, suggesting to the viewer that the climax will occur sometime towards the end of the week. The duration of the story is longer than the plot’s, with the former lasting since the murder occurred at the hands of the first caretaker and the latter spanning over a few weeks. In this case, screen duration is conventionally shorter (146 minutes) than story duration (Brodwell, p. 80). It seems to be a conventional treatment of time passage and chronology of events, until the viewer reaches the ending and learns that Jack himself is somehow connected to the hotel’s past. We question if the dream-like sequences were dreams or flashbacks and the viewer are uncertain where to put those scenes in time.
Kubrick’s approach to space is not only crafted to achieve cinematographic purposes but also contributes to the flow of the narrative. The Overlook hotel is a dominating entity in the film, with its unsettling corridors and nonsensical dimensions. Its physicality contributes to the feeling of isolation and confinement that ultimately lead to the climax. It is an omniscient presence with an influence on the characters, particularly on Jack and Danny, making the viewer doubt the identity of the real agent in the story – is it the hotel or is it Jack?
Reference
Bordwell, D. & Thompson, K. (2015) Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill