- The ending of Stanley Kubrick’s film Shine has been widely discussed and theorized, and Jack’s final shot at the Overlook Hotel in 1921 has sparked new theories.
- The film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel differs from the source material: Kubrick makes changes that change the main themes of the story.
- Kubrick’s ambiguous ending suggests that Jack is trapped in the Overlook Hotel, perhaps as the reincarnation of a former guest or employee.
Stanley Kubrick1980 film Shine Fans and critics alike consider it one of the greatest horror films of all time. Known for his ambiguity, Shine has one of the most discussed and theorized endings in cinematic history. Based on the book of the same name Stephen King, Shine follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a writer who is hired as a winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in snowy Colorado. Jack, who is struggling with writer’s block, thinks this is a great opportunity to free himself from distractions and finish writing his book. Jack brings his wife Wendy with him (Shelley Duvall) and their 5-year-old son Danny (Danny Lloyd), and the three quickly discover that the Overlook Hotel has a disturbing history that threatens Jack’s sanity and threatens the lives of Wendy and Danny.
King famously disdained Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel, which deviates from the source material in many ways. When Kubrick signed on to direct the film, he asked for several changes to be made to King’s original story, many of which completely changed the novel’s major themes. Jack’s famous final shot at the Overlook Hotel in 1921 plays an important role in Kubrick’s vision to adapt King’s novel, spawning theories that continue to this day.
Shine
- Date of issue
- May 23, 1980
- Director
- Stanley Kubrick
- Throw
- Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson, Philip Stone
- Rating
- R
What is “The Shining” about?
When the Torrance family arrives at the Overlook Hotel, Shine turns into one continuous spiral of madness, but the film’s finale arguably begins when Jack re-enters the golden room, where an elaborate party is in full swing. Jack sits back down at the bar and strikes up a conversation with the bartender, Lloyd (Joe Terkel), who tells him that his money is of no use here, cryptically explaining that these are “orders from home.”
As Jack holds his drink, the waiter accidentally bumps into him, causing the drink to spill on his jacket. Apologizing profusely, the waiter (“Jiv’s old man”) offers to clean his jacket. He tells Jack his name is Delbert Grady (Philip Stone), in which Jack recognizes Charles Grady, the name of the old caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. When Jack tells Grady that he chopped his wife and daughters “into little pieces” before shooting himself in the head, Grady looks at him strangely and says that he doesn’t remember anything like that. He tells Jack that he is wrong. He was never a caretaker here - Jack is a caretaker. He cryptically tells him, “I’m sorry I don’t agree with you, sir. But You are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker. I need to know, sir. I’ve always been here.”
What does “Shine” mean?
Grady warns Jack that his son Danny has a special gift - “The Shining”, which in the Stephen King universe is a form of psychic ability that allows people to communicate with others using the mind, and gives people the ability to see what is happening. in the past or will happen in the future. Danny uses his gift to contact Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), a chef at the Overlook Hotel who also possesses The Shining. Grady’s message to Jack is clear: Danny and Wendy need to be “fixed,” just as he fixed his wife and daughters.
The next day, Wendy leaves Danny (who “Tony” says has checked out) in their room while she goes to confront Jack. Clutching the bat in trepidation, Wendy carefully walks towards Jack’s usual desk and discovers that he is not there. Instead, she finds Jack’s manuscript that he was working on, which, to her horror, consists of hundreds of pages in which only one sentence is repeated over and over again: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Jack sneaks up behind her and asks if she likes his book. They then participate in what No the most productive conversation in which Jack, of course, tells Wendy that he’s going to “blow her damn brains out.” She knocks him down with a bat and locks him in the kitchen pantry. Later, there is a knock on the storage room door and Jack hears Grady’s voice on the other side. Grady tells him that he and “the others” have begun to think that he doesn’t have the courage to do what he needs to do and deal with Danny and Wendy in the cruelest possible way. There is an audible click of the lock, and we can assume that Grady opened it.
What happens at the end of The Shining?
Wendy is sleeping upstairs, not yet suspecting that Jack has escaped from prison. Danny/Tony repeatedly shouts his alarm mantra for the evening - “REDRAM” - waking up a terrified Wendy, who sees through the mirror that he has written “REDRAM” on the door, which means “MURDER” backwards. Right on cue, Jack begins to break down the door with an ax while Wendy and Danny try to escape through the window. Only Danny can fit, so Wendy sends him away and tells him to run. Jack begins to fight his way through the bathroom door (“There’s Johnny!”) when Wendy manages to cut his hand with a knife.
Meanwhile, Hallorann, who had been communicating with Danny through Shine, arrives at the Overlook Hotel. As Jack hobbles through the hotel, clutching an axe, Hollarann calls out to see if anyone is home. Unfortunately, it’s too late for Hollarann as Jack comes up behind him and stabs him right through. Wendy runs through the hotel looking for Danny and sees through an open door how someone dressed in a bear costume is giving a blowjob to a hotel guest. Horrified, she turns and runs downstairs to find Hallorann dead and covered in blood in the lobby. Suddenly she sees the hotel guests around her in the form of decaying skeletons. A wave of crimson blood begins to break out and pour through the red doors.
Danny runs as fast as he can through the maze of the snowy garden outside the hotel, with Jack chasing after him. Danny manages to escape and find Wendy, and the two of them leave the hotel on a snowcat while Jack continues to stumble through the winding maze, wailing and screaming hysterically to keep Wendy from leaving him. The camera quickly cuts to the next scene. Morning has come and Jack is dead, frozen in the maze, locked forever in the Overlook Hotel. Last frame Shine it’s a real thrill when the camera zooms in on a photograph hanging in the Overlook Hotel. The photo is of the 4th of July 1921 ball and who do we see in the center? Jack Torrance.
Why is Jack in this photo at the end of The Shining?
Shine full of ambiguity from beginning to end. Was Lloyd really there? Who was the woman in room 237? What did she do to Danny? Why does Grady tell Jack that he is the caretaker? But the biggest mystery is the last photograph of Jack at the Overlook Hotel in 1921. One of the most popular theories is that the Overlook absorbed Jack’s soul after his death, taking him away just as it did the guests whose souls were trapped. In a hotel. Surprisingly, in a film where so much is left up to interpretation, Kubrick actually explained this ambiguous ending.
In an interview with a French film critic Michel CimanKubrick stated that the photograph of the ballroom suggested Jack’s reincarnation. We can then assume that Jack was originally a guest or perhaps an employee of the Overlook Hotel, which explains how bartender Lloyd greeted him as an old friend and why Delbert Grady claimed that Jack “was always the caretaker.” It also explains that Charles Grady, the old caretaker who infamously murdered his wife and little girls, was the reincarnation of Delbert Grady, or “Jeevesey”. It seems that Jack has been and will always be locked in the Overlook Hotel.
Shine is available to stream on Max in the US.
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Source: Collider
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