Last night Bret Easton Ellis was sounding off on Twitter about Stanley. It's weird. It's like someone is talking who really does and does not get him at the same time.
For your convenience:
The Shining seems to me to be about "imagination" and what's "happening" in Jack's head is so intensely angry that it infects his family.
The Shining is so emotionally complicated (the frustrated artist, the bad marriage, the crazy dad) that it's more fascinating than scary.
The Shining taps into Kubrick's misogyny (see Full Metal Jacket): the three males have intuitive imaginative powers that the woman doesn't.
Danny saves himself by retracing his steps in the maze, knowing this will confuse his father: a man who has also "gone back" to the past...
REDRUM is backwards. Jack moves back into the past. Danny moves backwards in the maze. The only thing moving forward--always--is the camera.
Stephen King's "The Shining" has as much to do with Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" as the "Less Than Zero" movie had to do with the novel.
The novel "The Shining" has Wendy and Hallorann hanging out together (in the summer!) comforting Danny about the loss of Batshit Dad. Happy?
The original ending of Kubrick's "The Shining" is Danny traumatized in a hospital room still tormented by the ghosts of his Batshit Dad...
Stephen King has very powerful female characters but in Stanley Kubrick's universe they're either passive, whores, nonexistent, murderers...
The first conversation Danny and Jack have as they head to The Overlook is about the past: The Donner Party...
Like Wendy in "The Shining" Nicole Kidman in "Eyes Wide Shut" is never part of her husband's "dream" movie that plays out in front of us...
Kubrick misogyny: Lolita (duh), Dr. Strangelove (whores), 01 (women: a little girl and stewardess), A Clockwork Orange (bitchy yoga woman)
female places Alex in prison, Barry Lyndon (Lady Lyndon still writing checks at end), The Shining (been there), Full Metal Jacket (sniper).
Eyes Wide Shut: every female wants to have sex with Tom Cruise but they're either crazy, have AIDS, or martyred whores. Kidman's last word?
Jack triumphs at the end of "The Shining"--the movie ends on his close-up, grinning, still alive within the movie. Not on Wendy or Danny.
Kubrick re-imagined the books he adapted. Example: Barry Lyndon becomes a cad because his girlfriend is a whore. This is NOT in Thackeray.
Kubrick re-imagined the books he adapted. Example: Alex in the novel "A Clockwork Orange" is NOT the triumphant victim he is in the film...
Tom Cruise's delusion that he's in control in "Eyes Wide Shut" by always showing his I.D., stressing that he's a doctor, is very touching...
Think of how much more disturbing HAL would have been if voiced by a female in "01"...And commenting on the way the movie regulates women?
I love the opening section of part 2 of "Full Metal Jacket" with "These Boots Are Made For Walking" while whore flashes her ass. Remarkable.
The dream of "Eyes Wide Shut" is everywhere: the bird motif, the rainbow refs, the same Christmas tree everywhere, the blue light shining...
Eyes Wide Shut: the bird motifs (Nick Nightingale, Wren Street, the masks at the orgy)...
Eyes Wide Shut: the rainbow references: the two girls at the Christmas party who tell Cruise they'll take him to "the end of the rainbow"...
Eyes Wide Shut: rainbow references: the name of the shop where he rents the costume; the Rainbow bakery box he brings to the prostitute...
Why so many rainbow references in "Eyes Wide Shut"? It's Kubrick's "The Wizard of Oz"..."Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly..."
Eyes Wide Shut: doesn't the red carpet at the orgy nicely illuminate the red felt of Sydney Pollack's pool table. And those Christmas trees?
The "dream" of "Eyes Wide Shut" begins when Kidman tells Cruise of her desires and ends with him finding the mask...
Bret Easton Ellis calling someone else a misogynist. I know, right?
Posted: 02 Aug 2011
