Kubrick was notorious for being obsessed with small details in his films.
He would often walk around the set for hours holding a viewfinder and was famously awful to the people he worked with. But his results were timeless classics like horror film The Shining.
The Shining is one of the best examples of Kubrick’s obsessive genius. In the first 20 minutes of the film Kubrick foreshadows the death of the cook Halloran by placing a Gollywog doll on the floor of the hotel next to Jack’s feet.
Over an hour later in the film, Halloran is laid out in the exact same location and position:
Kubrick also uses colour to convey what the characters are feeling. Jack Nicholson wears green in every single scene in first part of the film:
But after he has the dream that he cuts Wendy and Danny into little pieces, he then starts to wear the infamous red jacket that he wears for the rest of the film:
My favourite uses are the key used in Room 237 vs the key used for Wendy’s room. And also in the infamous elevator scene (notice the colour of the chairs):
Kubrick is notorious for using these small details to convey meanings (like the intentional continuity errors in A Clockwork Orange). What could this use of green and red mean in The Shining?
One theory is that green shows the force of nature, and it’s the cold of the winter snow that takes this positive force away – turning the scenes to white and red.
It is the snow that plays a key role in the film – it’s because of the snow that the Overlook Hotel is so isolated and it’s only after the snow falls that the film starts to take an ugly turn. What is it that gets Jack in the end as well?
This isn’t something isolated to The Shining. Kubrick uses subtle details to covey meanings in some of his most seminal films. Hollywood will never create another filmmaker like Kubrick.
Kubrick famously went over budget and filmed for three or four times as long as other filmmakers. There are so many cost pressures on filmmakers in Hollywood, that if a filmmaker like Kubrick tried to do something like The Shining today, it’s most likely to be vetoed by an executive in a suit whose experience in filmmaking is limited to green-lighting Baywatch 2.
The Hollywood system is repressing creatives and audiences are paying the price by being marketed some of the most generic film content of all time. It’s one of the reasons why TV has had such a revival – because TV content is new, bold and original – the way Hollywood used to be.
Our latest film The Devil and Daniel Radcliffe is being made outside of the Hollywood system and talks about the decline of the Hollywood system and the rise of the indie system.
Article written by Paul Willis.
Writer. Director. Producer @ DigitalorDead
