A family travels to paradise. Paradise, in the ancient world, was a garden,
a huge, never ending garden that had everything the family needed. They would never have lack.
In every garden there is a temptation, a manifestation of
evil that tempts them to harm and destruction.
For the man, the temptation was his entitlement, his sense that the
world revolved around him and that anything that deviated from his orbit was in
opposition to him. For the woman, the
temptation was her fear—partly her fear of the man, but also her fear of her
inadequacy to be a good mother, to care for her child.
For the child, the temptation was Room 237. The Hotel Overlook was the tempter, the
snake, causing them all to give into their temptations, to destroy each
other.
The Shining is a film that encourages thinking, and, as we
see in the documentary Room 237, overthinking.
There is so much detail, so much complexity in a relatively simple story
that we want to assume that it is more than it is. And the movie is slow enough, constantly
taking us through labyrinthine halls and mazes that never end, giving us ample
room for our interpretations to hang themselves.
It is this that makes the Shining a work of art. And it is The Shining’s weakness. Is it
possible for a work of art to be full of so much detail that no real
interpretation is likely? Is the real maze not in front of the Overlook
Hotel, but in our minds, and Kubrick has given us just enough to allow our own
subconscious to be the true director?
How many interpretations are possible?
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