Theory The Shining - the movie [Spoilers!]

[Tenshinohana 264]

So, if you opened this topic, it probably means that you have watched The Shining. There are speculations about the plot and what really happens in the movie.

 

Well, I just watched the movie, and had an epiphany about the movie plot, and now I'm gonna tell you my theory!

 

So... In the movie, mr. Halloran tells Danny about shining, that there are many people who have "The Shine". An ability to see memories and the future, and even read someone's mind. And, since the name of the movie is "The Shining", I think this is pretty much the key to the plot. 

 

So, the basic idea is that every character of the main three have "the shining". But the only Danny is the one who's got to terms with it (with the help of Tony, his  imaginary friend, who is actually a subconcious "the shining" side of Danny). Jack has the next most amount of shining, and then Wendy.

 

Now you might wonder "But what do you think of Jack in the 1921 photo?" Tsk tsk, I'm not done yet. Don't get ahead of yoursel-... Oops, I already did. Or did I? Nope. This actually is a part of analyzing Jack's abilities.

 

Jack is actually a reincarnation of a Jack-like-person, who lived in 1921, and died after that. Since Jack (the character, of course) is about ~40 years-old in the movie, and since the movie takes place near 1980, we see that there's almost a 60 year gap. So there's a possibility that Jack's a reincarnation.

 

In the movie, Jack relives some of his memories from the 1920's. Lloyd the bartender and Delbert Grady are people he actually knew back then, when he was someone important during those times. 

 

(A mere caretaker wouldn't probably be on the 4th of July -photo in a fancy hotel, since he takes care of the Overlook during the winter. He might be an ex-caretaker, tho. Or, since he's in the front of the picture, he might be someone more important - after all, Delbert Grady is a butler who says "nobody is more important than you", and Lloyd gives "all drinks on the house", since he was told to do so. Why would a mere caretaker get such treatment? But you can also argue that they say what Jack wants them to say, since they are Jack's mental safety net in the movie.)

 

"Oh, but didn't Jack say that Delbert Grady was the caretaker who murdered his wife and two daughters?"

 

This is actually Jack's memories overlapping each other (according to my theory, anyway). He remembers the name Grady, but he thinks that Delbert did the things a person called Charles Grady did. There are two options for this:

 

1) Delbert was actually a butler, that Jack remembers from his previous life. He could be Charles Grady's father, who actually "corrected" his family, and that led later on to Charles Grady's "correcting" - as in chopping his family to pieces. Delbert Grady's "print" (Mr. Halloran talked about everything leaving a 'print') could've led to Jack remembering Delbert Grady instead of seeing Charles.

 

2) Delbert is an image of Charles, that Jack has fitted into his own memories.

 

I personally think the first one's more accurate and suitable. But either way, Delbert Grady is the same to Jack as Tony is to Danny - the subconscious "shine" part of him (he tells about the cook, for example). Jack isn't aware of the shine or that he lived in the 1920's, so he thinks he's going crazy, and just goes with it (that's why he lies to Wendy and continues to go to the Golden Ballroom to talk). Danny knows, that "they're just pictures" like mr. Halloran told him, but Jack didn't know the difference, since he didn't know about the shine.

 

Since (according to my theory) Jack is a reincarnation, he's more sensitive for the things from his past, and that's why he doesn't see the things that Danny sees. Jack's too blinded by his memories to notice the murder prints.

 

Well, Wendy had a small part of the shine too - that might be the reason why Danny has so much of it. In the end of the movie, after her panicking, she actually starts to see others from the hotel, too.

 

"But what about the room 237? What does that have to do with anything?"

 

Oh, this is an interesting one. We never actually see what Danny sees - we only know that the woman strangled him. But Jack sees a beautiful woman, who turns into a molded, ugly woman. This is actually one of the parts that helped me to come up with my theory. You see, the first woman was someone from Jack's previous life - perhaps someone he fancied. Maybe he knew her, maybe he didn't, but definitely liked her. After the moment of lust, the true "print" of her showed - the way she died when she was old. The same person, but the first one was an image from Jack's memories. And this is the moment he starts to think he's going mad, and lies to Wendy. And the madness (and Delbert's constant suggestions to "correct" the family) drives Jack to mix the reality and the shine, so he tries to kill his family.

 

So, this is my theory of the end. I'd like to hear your theories about what happened in the movie, and if you want to ask me about my theory, I can surely answer you.

 

I just find this movie alluring because of the ending~

[Freewave 1,145]

Well that's one of the theories that have been around awhile. Again the movie and tv version (closest to the book) are very different. Regarding the movie

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(film)#Plot_differences

 

"Early in the film, Stuart Ullman tells Jack of a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, who, in 1970, succumbed to cabin fever, murdered his family and then killed himself. Later, Jack meets a ghostly butler named Grady. Jack says he knows about the murders, claiming to recognize Grady from pictures; however, the butler introduces himself as Delbert Grady.

Gordon Dahlquist of The Kubrick FAQ argues that the name change "deliberately mirrors Jack Torrance being both the husband of Wendy/father of Danny and the mysterious man in the July Fourth photo. It is to say he is two people: the man with choice in a perilous situation and the man who has 'always' been at the Overlook. It's a mistake to see the final photo as evidence that the events of the film are predetermined: Jack has any number of moments where he can act other than the way he does, and that his (poor) choices are fueled by weakness and fear perhaps merely speaks all the more to the questions about the personal and the political that The Shining brings up. In the same way Charles had a chance – once more, perhaps – to not take on Delbert's legacy, so Jack may have had a chance to escape his role as 'caretaker' to the interests of the powerful. It's the tragic course of this story that he chooses not to."^[70] Dahlquist's argument is that Delbert Grady, the 1920s butler, and Charles Grady, the 1970s caretaker, rather than being either two different people or the same are two 'manifestations' of a similar entity; a part permanently at the hotel (Delbert) and the part which is given the choice of whether to join the legacy of the hotel's murderous past (Charles), just as the man in the photo is not exactly Jack Torrance, but nor is he someone entirely different. Jack in the photo has 'always' been at the Overlook, Jack the caretaker chooses to become part of the hotel. The film's assistant editor Gordon Stainforth has commented on this issue, attempting to steer a course between the continuity-error explanation on one side and the hidden-meaning explanation on the other; "I don't think we'll ever quite unravel this. Was his full name Charles Delbert Grady? Perhaps Charles was a sort of nickname? Perhaps Ullman got the name wrong? But I also think that Stanley did NOT want the whole story to fit together too neatly,

 

At the end of the film, the camera zooms slowly towards a wall in the Overlook and a 1921 photograph, revealed to include Jack Torrance seen at the middle of a 1921 party. In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick overtly declared that Jack was a reincarnation of an earlier official at the hotel.^[71] Still, this has not stopped interpreters from developing alternative readings, such as that Jack has been "absorbed" into the Overlook Hotel. Film critic Jonathan Romney, while acknowledging the absorption theory, wrote "As the ghostly butler Grady (Philip Stone) tells him during their chilling confrontation in the men's toilet, 'You're the caretaker, sir. You've always been the caretaker.' Perhaps in some earlier incarnation Jack really was around in 1921, and it's his present-day self that is the shadow, the phantom photographic copy. But if his picture has been there all along, why has no one noticed it? After all, it's right at the center of the central picture on the wall, and the Torrances have had a painfully drawn-out winter of mind-numbing leisure in which to inspect every corner of the place. Is it just that, like Poe's purloined letter, the thing in plain sight is the last thing you see? When you do see it, the effect is so unsettling because you realise the unthinkable was there under your nose – overlooked – the whole time.""

 

Again the thing with the movie is it allows itself up for interpretation and multiple meanings. The hotel could be haunted and attempting to take over Jack's psyche, he also could be suffereing from cabin fever and writer's block. He could be absorbed into the hotel at the end (by giving in and trying to kill his family) signified by the photo or he could be reincarnated and just reliving his past. There's no real nice nicely wrapped answer. That's part of why it works so well even if there is no redemption for Jack like in the book.