SHINING, THE - DVD review

When critics appraise director Stanley Kubrick's extended output, they most often count "The Shining" as the odd duck, the one that never made it, the one that didn't live up to the great man's reputation. In fact, the film has been something of an embarrassment for Kubrick aficionados. Even his final effort, "Eyes Wide Shut," got better notices than "The Shining."

Yet "The Shining" remains one of Kubrick's most popular pictures, the movie most non-Kubrick fans enjoy the most. Is this to suggest the director was purposely aiming his film at a lowbrow audience? I hope not. I'm a Kubrick fan, I appreciate his other work, and I love this film, too. Well, admittedly, I'm pretty lowbrow. Taken for what it is, an extremely well-made horror flick with a typically ambiguous Kubrick theme about the lingering effects of evil, "The Shining" stands head and shoulders over most of its competition. Now digitally restored and all the better to appreciate, this new version of the 1980 film makes its second DVD appearance within a year. It is part of a remastered series from Warner Bros. that includes "Lolita," "2001," "A Clockwork Orange," "Barry Lyndon," "Full Metal Jacket," and "Eyes Wide Shut," all offered individually or as part of a boxed set of nine discs that also contains Columbia TriStar's "Dr. Strangelove" and an excellent documentary on Kubrick, "A Life in Pictures."

Based on the novel by Stephen King, "The Shining" tells the story of a former alcoholic (Jack Nicholson) who takes his wife (Shelley Duvall) and five-year-old son (Danny Lloyd) to spend a winter as caretakers of an old, rambling, isolated hotel in the mountains. The conflict? The hotel is haunted by the ghosts of past atrocities, including the ax murder by a previous caretaker of his entire family. And the young son happens to be psychic, which adds to the dilemma; he is said to have "the shining," the ability to read the future and talk to spirits. Before you can say "Boo," the child is seeing all kinds of weird stuff, like the bloodied corpses of twin girls who were murdered at the hotel. Combine these spooky goings-on with the boy's well-founded fear of his father, who hurt him earlier in an alcoholic rage, and we know the poor kid is not exactly in for a pleasant winter vacation. As we suspect, it doesn't take long before old Jack starts to crack under the strain of solitude, "cabin fever" it's sometimes called, seeing ghosts, turning into an ax-wielding monster, and tearing after his wife and son.

Whatever its critics have said, I believe the film succeeds on almost every level. The first hour is appropriate introduction and exposition. It builds a mood of quiet tension. We can readily see there is something just a little wrong with the father, but we can't yet pin it down. By the second hour, all hell breaks loose, and in the last few minutes it's sheer terror. It's one of the few horror films that can still give me chills the fifth and sixth times around and make my hair stand on end.

Over the years I've heard "The Shining" faulted on three major counts: It goes on too long, the director is too constrained, and Nicholson is out of control. Let's take these items one at a time. First, is it really too long? Well, there is hardly a scene that could be deleted. Maybe the interview toward the beginning between the boy and the social-worker psychologist could have been dropped or shortened. Anything else? Nothing I can think of. Kubrick is a filmmaker who tells his stories largely through imagery, so naturally there are going to be long, lingering mood shots. It's a beautiful motion picture to look at, whether it's for the glorious outdoor scenery or the equally impressive indoors of the grand hotel. It may be the most good-looking horror movie ever made, and I love those long tracking shots through the hallways. The hotel itself is made to become a dynamic persona in the drama. Besides, Kubrick did later cut the film for television, and it only made it worse.

Second, is the director really too distant, too aloof from his characters? Again, I think not. Like E.A. Poe, Kubrick uses his characters to carry out his story line; they exist as vehicles to create an effect rather than as three-dimensional human beings in and of themselves. Not that we don't feel for the wife and child and their predicament; indeed, we come to care about them very much by the end of the film. It's just that their personalities are not as important as what they're experiencing.

Finally, is Nicholson truly unrestrained? Much has been said of the apparent conflict between the ever-cool, ever-calculating director and the volatile actor, most criticism suggesting that Nicholson had more input than he should have had and was allowed to go over the top. The DVD's accompanying documentary, however, made during the film's shooting, refutes the argument. One sequence shows Kubrick telling Nicholson they will have to re-shoot a scene (Kubrick was notoriously exacting and would re-shoot scenes more times than most directors would have the patience or budget for) because Nicholson isn't acting "mean" enough! I'm convinced that most of what Nicholson did in the film was written, suggested, or encouraged by the director. The upshot, in any case, is a tour-de-force acting job. "Heeere's Johnny!" As much as for any of his many fine film roles, it may be for this performance that Nicholson is best remembered.

Video:
Although I liked the film the first time around on DVD, I had wished the picture quality was better. On the first disc, the image was only so-so at best, sometimes less. The transfer was clearly not made from as pristine a print as we could have hoped for, because age spots and grain were quite noticeable, especially in the beginning of each reel. With this new digitally restored and remastered edition, the video quality is greatly improved. It still isn't perfect, but the focus is sharpened, some of the more ragged edges are smoothed out, and much of the grain and most of the age spots are eliminated. Some flickering lines and some grittiness remain (especially in the opening sequence), but, overall, this is a substantial improvement over the film's first transfer to disc. The film is presented in a standard-screen, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, said to be the full-frame photography from which the theatrical widescreen version was later matted. Warner Bros. state on the box that the film is "in the full aspect ratio of the original camera negative, as Stanley Kubrick intended." The image is high, wide, and deep, quite a bit more so than I had remembered from its initial widescreen theatrical release.

Audio:
The other major improvement is in the sound. The first DVD rendering of the audio provided only a monaural soundtrack. Now, we get a remixed Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 track, rendering all the better the atmospheric music Kubrick chose to accompany the story--Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta," for instance, and selections from Wendy Carlos, Gyorgy Ligeti, and Krzysztof Penderecki. Since most of the excerpts Kubrick used were taken from commercially available stereo recordings (the Bartok is a von Karajan DG performance, for example), the remix is really from two-channel sources opened up to five. The results are far from spectacular, and they are still accompanied by some tape hiss and noise, but they are a decided improvement on the previous mono.

Extras:
The primary bonus item remains the behind-the-scenes documentary, "The Making of the Shining," about thirty-five minutes long. It was shot by the director's daughter, Vivian Kubrick, much like a home movie during the feature film's production and includes interviews with cast and crew, and a good deal of inside information. Warner provide the same, generous forty scene selections and trailer as before, but now they include French in addition to English as a language choice and subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. Of course, if you buy the gift box, you also get the Kubrick documentary disc, "A Life in Pictures," almost two-and-a-half hours long and telling us practically everything we ever wanted to know about the director, his movies, his motivations, and his themes. It's narrated by Tom Cruise and features interviews and commentary with Woody Allen, Arthur C. Clarke, Keir Dullea, Shelley Duvall, Nicole Kidman, Malcolm McDowell, Paul Mazursky, Jack Nickolson, Sydney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, Richard Schickel, Steven Spielberg, Peter Ustinov, and many more. Extensive film clips from Kubrick's films and from private sources take us behind the movies and into the soul of the man who made such unique films. Much of the documentary goes over material we already know, but much of it is new and fascinating, too. No Kubrick fan should be without it.

Parting Thoughts:
Supposedly, Stephen King hated Kubrick's interpretation of his book so much that in 1997 he wrote his own screenplay for a television miniseries. The result was a long, tedious, non-frightening experience that only proved how taut and well constructed Kubrick's treatment was. "The Shining" is a damn fine scary film, made all the better in its new DVD restoration. And remember, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play....."