This is my second review of Louis C.K. doing his movie review. He is just sooooo good at describing what we all experience in this movie!! And this description is, by far, the best recount of the famous Kubrick/ King differences about the making of this movie.
the fact that is sounds like he is watching the clips and talking by the amount of DETAIL he has retained but in fact is simply recalling the details from memory is insane.
the sequence from Florida apartment ---> overlook hotel is maybe the most enjoyable moment for me each time I watch, the sudden cut to inside the plane is *great*
Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch share, if nothing else, this approach to creating a "feeling" with film. It doesn't all have to add up to something rational, but the feeling is very real, and it sits with you much longer than a properly structured story seems to. I really enjoy King's novel The Shining, but the movie is very special to me too, for much different reasons. Stanley Kubrick is dearly missed.
I read that Stanley said, "If you can think it, you can film it" and immediately thought of David Lynch and how he films these sustained abstract thoughts and feelings. It must take a special kind of awareness to replicate the unconscious, emotional subtext of life so well.
I'm not a huge fan of Lynch, but I really liked Mulholland Drive for that very reason. It wasn't a horror movie, or a mystery movie or a suspense movie. It just felt like fear and anxiety. He and Kubrick both understood the primacy of the visual image in film, and that the image matters more in the work they've made than narrative structures inherited from literature.
"The uncomfortable distance that 70's couples had where they are a little bit of strangers with each other and the men that were a little dangerous." Wow. The Shining really is an embodiment of dating in the 70's.
he barely touches on it but the interplay of Shelley and Jack really hits home for people of a certain era who knew parents/aunts and uncles or other couples in their life who had exactly this kind of fractured and terrifying dynamic. The man always on a hair trigger, the woman annoying and clueless. the movie brings it alive and part of the disorientation is just hoping he'll shut her up...
no he doesnt, he no clue about the film and whats its really about, everything he says here pointless mindless nonsense. he hasnt even thought the film through at all,
@@johnwatts8346 You've really raised a compelling counter-argument, and shown me the error of my thinking. I take it all back and now feel the way you do about it. #kudos
@@delibato well i hope so. as he said nothing of substance about the film. he has no idea what the 'sentiment'' of the film even is, and neither do you.
@@d.jparer5184 I really don't care where you end up, or if you're lost or found 🤷🏾♂️ Everybody else arrived at the destination. You got lost all on your own bud...
This film is so timeless because it’s about the human condition. I’ve watched it since I was young and I always have a different takeaway. Recently I watched it and felt the film was all about resentment between a husband and wife and how that feeling can destroy everything. The Shining is one of the few films that is truly timeless artwork. Next year I’ll watch it and it will make me think of something g else or feel something else.
I agree, there's so many layers to interpret this movie. One of my favorites is that there are 2 Jacks. One is the writer, green jacket, that's writing about a writer that's staying in a hotel, with his family. The story he's writing is about a writer staying in a hotel, that goes crazy and tries to kill his family, red jacket Jack. It's an abstract idea for sure. Jack gets interrupted by Wendy, and snaps at her. It's a fantasy, he takes the paper out of the typewriter, and for the first time is a different person, gets mad, is going mad. As soon as Wendy walks away, Jack starts typing, because he didn't actually yank the paper out, rip it up, etc. It's a scene from the book he's writing. King was staying in a hotel, had writer's block. A bad dream inspired him to write about an author staying in a hotel. That's not very removed from Kubrick's trick. Kubrick just doesn't spell it out for us. We witness Jack's story as if it's really happening. Jack, wearing the red jacket, has a nightmare, goes to the bar and talks to "ghosts", sees a woman in room 237, snaps at Wendy again, etc. For about a 20 second scene, the camera creeps up on Jack while he's tying, in a green jacket. Next time we see Jack, it's a red jacket. Kubrick is showing us that the real Jack Torrence is writing about a man (himself) staying at that hotel, but going crazy, like the previous caretaker.
Another layer: the photo at the end of the movie. I think it symbolizes the vicious cycles of these behaviors. It’s a symbol of the fact that we are trapped into our destructive habits and addictions. Until a person breaks away from them we will be imprisoned to a vicious cycle that will repeat itself over and over. Thoughts?
I was 11 years old my friends Dad took us to see it in the theatre . It was prob the first R rated movie I had ever seen. First time I ever saw a naked lady and she was rotting and cackling . The entire movie terrified me as a kid and it still does . The way it is shot the use of the music it’s a true masterpiece .
Kubrick knew that compromising would delude his vision and he didn't play that game. That is just one of the reasons he is among greatest film makers of all time.
Yes. It is absolutely possible to like King's work and also like Kubrick's The Shining. Don't know why some ppl insist that we take sides on everything.
Well, in this case it's because Stephen King hasn't stopped talking about how much he hates the Kubrick Shining for the last 40 years. When the creator of something weighs in like that (which doesn't happen too often), it's naturally going to create a "take-sides" rift in the audience.
He is so passionate about this. He sounds almost frustrated talking about this movie as if to say, "Goddamnit so many people misunderstand this movie."
This is such a clever reading - I suppose one could look at the famous '63 film The Haunting that way - it really does seem to be a film told from the perspective of the house. Yes, you can hear the internal thoughts of the character played by Rosemary Harris, but in fact, perhaps it's the house that overhears her innermost thoughts.
@@johnwatts8346 Keep in mind, John, when it comes to "The Shining" virtually everything is opinion. I only take CK's opinion as refreshing and interesting.
This five minutes tore by like a cyclone. I could listen to him talk about The Shining all day, scene by scene, line by line. This five minutes sounds like the tip of the iceberg of his mind on the movie. I want to go on that expedition, baby! Take a schooner to the 'berg, set up camp, and start drilling!
As Rob Ager has pointed out, the hotel itself lies to the characters and lies to the audience. There’s architecture in the hotel that cannot possibly exist in any real way. Your brain subconsciously recognizes this and it throws you off. There’s always a feeling of unease, even when nothing particularly disturbing is happening. The Overlook is alive and is working it’s way inside of the characters, as well as the audience.
@@monkeynt5780 If you map out the hotel, there are inconsistencies that make no sense. The hotel manager's office has a window looking out to the yard that can't really be there, etc. It's hard to tell how much is intentionally meant to be confusing in a subtle way to the audience. There's also a scene where the characters walk in and out of a freezer and come out in a different section of the hallway, even though it's an exposition scene and not supposed to be exactly noticeable. After reading the definitive 900-page history of the film I'm not 100% convinced that all of this was intentional, but Kubrick was also interested in subconsciously influencing the audience, so there's probably some intentionality going on.
ager is a crank ... a full nut job that projects his own issues onto Kubrick film seriously, there is zero value in his idiocy unless one is a conspiratard
Best defense of Kubrick's The Shining and indirect repudiation of the prosaic, explain-everything TV movie version and Dr. Sleep. But I must disagree with the notion that Duvall wasn't playing a human being. She played a sensitive human being suffering abuse and gaslighting all too well.
The TV movie was awful. However, although Dr Sleep was not even close to The Shining, it was a fairly accurate -albeit safe- depiction of the novel. The fact that it paid homage to ‘The Shining film’ more than ‘The Shining book’ was appreciated
I always felt like the camera POV from the sky following the family through the mountains was the ghosts following the family to the hotel. Then, from there on out all POV shots are from the ghosts or the house. Especially when Danny is involved in scenes.
I got so obsessed with this movie about a decade ago. I watched it everyday and the behind the scenes multiple times a day. It's fucking good all around. I ended up developing an obsession with both kubrick and Jack back to tower of terror and a writen love letter to jack that I kept in my closet for years.
Five Easy Pieces is when Nicholson became the Nicholson we know and love. Even 50 years of doing it nobody wanted him for any other kind of role. Maybe About Schmidt he played a different character but from One Flew to as good as it gets he was the same.
This is a really interesting interpretation, that it's from the viewpoint of the Hotel. That ties in with the recent observation that on several occasions, Jack glances directly at the camera for a split second. Once you notice that, you can't unsee it - so the camera (and the audience) is watching him from the ghost's POV, and he knows it.
You were seeing Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston in that scene. The story is that Nicholson behaved that way once to Anjelica Huston and he felt terrible about it for years.
Kubrick made Nicholson throw the ball so many times his arm went out. And the shot used in the film is JACK NICHOLSON trying to ruin the chandelier so he could "take 5". But of course the ball somehow finds its way. and Kubrick got his take.
I really never thought of it that way, that the movie gives us the audience the perspective of the hotel itself, which just wants to drive these people crazy with fear and consume their souls. And that Kubrick isn't trying to make a statement or attach any deep meaning to anything. He's just showing us what happened in order to scare the shit out of us.
I love this move. I have a friend who had never seen it. He asked what it was about. I told him that it was, "A freaky movie that will totally fuck with your head." He watched it and agreed.
I went in expecting to see a filmed version of the book. When I realized Kubrick was avoiding a simple, chapter-by-chapter filming of the book - I began to get scared because the security blanket of the book I'd read was gone. I didn't know what was going to happen. THAT made it nerve racking. You know how - SPOILER ALERT! - Hitchcock kills off the only person in "Psycho" he's developed as a character? "The Shining" was like that - for over two hours. 😳
@@juniorjames7076 Good comparison. Both of them wanted to make successful films, but not by making deliberate crowd-pleasing entertainment. I forget which film, but Cassevetes was outraged when the audience broke out in applause at the premiere of one of his film. He felt the applause meant the audience was walking away pleased - rather than moved. So, he redid the ending. Not to be a jerk, but to make sure audiences didn't walk aware merely entertained. Best wishes from Vermont 🍁
There are so many angles to this movie and this is one, but it's not the only angle. But it's a good angle, Louis. Also, how can Louis CK always sound so coherent in his actual reasoning while at the same time sound like he's constantly high?
It's an interesting point... it is not necessary for every piece of art to speak directly to an audience as though it's all here on a convey for us to consume. Sometimes arts should feel like you shouldn't be looking at it or listening to it. The sense of alienation offers catharsis as well.
I kinda feel for King, cause he wrote the story. It was an artistic expression about a dark time in his life. In that vein, Kubrick never did that, starting with a completely blank page. Everything he made was based off a book, or a novella, or writing with three other people. I think since he never had to pull it all out of himself, he could take someones idea and deconstruct it however he wanted, without any regard for the source material.
I think this is kind of like the movie equivalent to All Along The Watchtower. Bob Dylan wrote the song but Jimi Hendrix added so much that he turned it into a masterpiece.
@@vi0letcr1me I think your example makes my point. Hendrix didn't change the worlds of the song, and thereby, didn't change the essence of the song. Kubrick did. King's Shining is about someone going so far that they should be too far gone, but, somehow finding the strength to claw themselves back to redemption. Like King did in his own life. Kubrick changed the song. And look, I get it, if it meant so much to King, he shouldn't have sold the rights of his book to be made into a movie. I was simply pointing out how it feels, to me, to be in poor taste from an artist to artist point of view.
@@crumbb_m I do accept you point that if someone else takes a work of art that you did and makes some fundamental changes to if then that can be difficult for the artist who created the original piece, but I think that can sometimes end up being good and sometimes end up being bad. To use more musical examples there must be lots of cases where someone makes a cover song or samples a good song and then does it so badly they kind of ruin it. I can see why artists wouldn't like that happening to their work but it goes the other way too sometimes where one artist will find a piece of art someone else created that is either bad or average but for some reason it will inspire them and they can then use it to make something really great and even better than the original which can sometimes only happen by making fundamental changes. So I do understand why Stephen King might have disliked the movie Kubrick made but I personally love it. I haven't read the book or seen Kings movie but I know a bit about what the differences are supposed to be mainly that he envisioned something a lot warmer and more human which is fine but I think Kubrick's version of The Shining is a masterpiece, so I am glad he decided to make it the way he did. I agree with what I think Louis CK is saying about it and I just find it so much more interesting what Kubrick did. I don't think he really cares about the people and their feeling, it is almost like he as a director had the mentality of a serial killer that is so cold it just sees the people as objects to be played with and disposed of which for a horror movie is great because what is more terrifying than that? I personally see it more as a study on evil itself and how people can be hurt and corrupted by dark demonic forces. I actually think that might be the main message of all of his movies. I don't know exactly why but he is my favourite director by far. He just doesn't seem to care at all about tradition and instead makes these visually stunning deep and complex cryptic puzzles that you can watch a thousand times and still always find more inside them. The guy was a true master.
@@vi0letcr1me Imagine, though, that Kanye West does a cover of All Along the Watchtower, with an improvised rap verse by lil' Pump (or whoever)... Yeah... sometimes "doing your own thing and making a masterpiece" is subjective... I think if Kubrick wanted to make his own movie he should have just done that from the start... I don't recall anyone pointing a gun to his head and screaming "YOU ARE CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED TO MAKE A FILM ADAPTATION OF THIS MOVIE!!!"
Never thought I'd hear a breakdown of The Shining from Louis C.K., but here we are. A very interesting take, and maybe one that's more accurate than that of even the most prodigious (self proclaimed) internet cinema scholars who spend thousands of hours overanalyzing The Shining only to come up with takes that wildly miss the mark.
I feel like the reason they didn't give them more substance is that both Jack and Wendy were meant to be symbolic caricatures of their unique pathological dispositions. Which is what the hotel amplifies and uses to tear them apart. Both Jack and Wendy were pretty deranged individuals. Jack was traumatized by the effects his own anger and addictive weakness had upon his loved ones' perception of him and Wendy was an emotionally neurotic mess of a human being because she was too weak and naive to know how to protect herself and Danny from Jack. The movie was designed to seat the audience within the epicenter of the feeling of that psychological dynamic and ride along as it degenerated to its ultimate horrific conclusion.
I love when Louis talks about how Kubrick movies aren't really about people, and aren't even really from the perspective of a person. I never thought about how The Shining was from the perspective of the hotel/ shining itself.
The character Jack Torrance was a self-insert for Stephen King. Kubrick thought the character was full of shit who doesn't take responsibility for anything. King was mad that Kubrick saw through the character and wasn't having any of that.
Scatman was down for the culture, and he needed visceral reminders when he was away from the Mountain Lodge people. That HiFi stereo system and Antelope head on the wall reinforce that idea.
Novelists can be very precious of their babies and Stephen King was predictably snooty about the film. But Kubrick truly elevated the bare bones of the original story into something that exists on an entirely different plane of thought. King's story feels so safe and predictable by comparison.
I was so excited to read the novel after watching and loving the movie for years. I was pretty disappointed. Everything Kubrick changed or didn’t include was honestly for the best.
In my view king’s novel is not safe or predictable. It has a lot of internal monologue of jack fantasizing about killing his family which is taboo painful stuff. In the last thirty pages jack stops being a human character and that scared me more than anything.
Watching a Kubrick film, is like seeing the world from god's point of view. Or something how super advanced aliens might see us, not how we want to see ourselves. And in a sense, Kubrick was an alien, he wasn't one of us. Like all great directors, he was eccentric and abstracted from life, He was out there, looking in. Like Hitchcock, Lynch, Herzog, or great artists like Warhol, Picasso, Pollack - he's just at once removed from how the average human being processed reality.
I love the way Louis talks about this movie, its exactly how i feel about it. It’s also what King didn’t get about it and made him hate it. I love that fact. I love how crazy it made him.
HA! I have watched hundreds of hours of analysis concerning The Shining, learned scholars have loosed much balloon juice regarding this enigmatic film. Louis CK nailed it better than them all.
Great point of view. Exactly mine as well. This is not a regular movie in history of Cinema. First we must admit that we have a cult. Then all that story it was made and constructed to transmit every minute and in crescendo more and more suspense. Well this is fascinating i can keep writting and so on and on. Second MasterPiece kind of manifest of horror psichological drama at the same terms that 2 0 0 1
The rooms are actually weard because he made an assistant/decorator or someone from the crew to go around all over and take pictures of hotel/motel rooms. Then he picked the ones he liked and tought would work in the movie and re-created them. So it's for a reason like many things in the movie, to create like subconcious confusion of why would one hotel have all rooms looking differend...? Every room just isn't so in your nose colorfull that you stop to think about it, atleast immidiatelly. Creates that off-balance. I'm pretty sure the room with a naked black lady (I think there were 2 rooms like that actually if I'm not totally off 🤔) is one of those hotel rooms (like I'm sure they didn't build a set just for the scene where the black dude get's the call to his home so it would have been filmed in the hotel)(It even looks like a hotel room from where the bed is etc.). So it most likely is a recreation from say some Compton etc. type of areas Real hotel-room from that era 😅 He said along the lines of why would he use his time to design hotel rooms/have someone to do it when that has already been done by professionals and he can just quickly choose from those 😂 Since he knew he wanted multiple differend kinds and it won't leave such a feeling of a set for them being.. actual back then excisting hotel rooms somewhere (maybe today it might for differend kinda decorating styles).
Don't feel bad. Louis has that classic white liberal thing of automatically assuming that a fellow white person's depiction of a black person's taste or whatever must be based in automatically nothing but racial presumption in itself.
I don’t know why everyone thinks Wendy’s annoying; she doesn’t seem like she’d say no to much and for a writer Jack didn’t seem to use his imagination all winter…how many rooms did that hotel have, like, over 200.
I saw Stephen kings “version” in the theater. DESPISED IT. Hated every single moment, my girlfriend at the time slept through the whole thing. I was SHOCKED to see people say they liked it or it was a good sequel. The only half decent moments are the shots they just took from the first movie to remake, and the rest is literally cheap jump scare bullshit. It’s so badly written like there’s this coven of witches or whatever and it all feels so stupid. The fact Stephen King genuinely thought “now THATS what the shining was meant to be on the big screen, not that shit Kubrick did” proves Louis point. It totally invalidates his opinion on the shining, bc he’s right people don’t really say it but the things that really make the shining classic and an all time great, is the performances and decisions Kubrick made. Like 90% of movies are based off some random book most of them don’t result in the author thinking “no it should look this way” bc they’re AUTHORS. They know the real directors are a totally different thing, at least most of them do lmaoo
stephen kings version wasnt shown in a theater it was broadcasted on television in 1997, stephen didnt direct it he wrote the screenplay for his tv adaption. It really sounds like you dont know what you’re talking about or are genuinely confused about what you saw. Did you see doctor sleep and not remember the title of it? based on your descriptions of stuff it sounds like you watched doctor sleep and didnt know that not only was stephen not really involved in it (it was mike flanagan) it was based a book that was a stephens sequel to the shining, and mike for some reason had to insert kubrick related garbage into it I dont know where you’re getting this coven of witches shit from either because thats not what the antagonists in that movie (and book) were at all
I’ve read the book but never seen the film. The novel is creepy in how much King’s subconscious was speaking through it. I’m hesitant to see the movie after having so much respect for the former. Am I wrong?
The two are very different beasts. Like Louis CK suggests, Kubrick just took it over and made it completely his own thing. The book's got lots of more character development and you can see the slow crawl of rage gradually taking charge of Jack Torrance, and you can't do justice to that in the scope of a movie, so Kubrick just made the absolute most of visual dread, and really making the hotel itself the main character.
You learn like nothing about the Shine in the Shinning. I'm surprised more people don't ask why it's called the Shinning lol. The whole reason Dick, the chef to the overlook is so prominent in the book is because he shares the Shine with Danny.
The book was dumb. Standard "house is alive and trying to get them" horror. Kubrik turned it into this confusing masterpiece which will be debated for ages.
Louis nailed it. Kubrick didn't really care about his characters or the basic plot. He was more interested in exploring his ideas through the stories he was adapting. Stephen King wrote a story about overcoming his demons, and in some ways shifting the responsibility for some his shitty behavior. Kubrick was more interested in exploring one man's history of violence and the implications that had on human history. The main theme of Kubrick's The Shining is history repeating itself. Jack was an abusive father and husband, and the horror of the film is in the knowledge that he is going to repeat the crimes of Grady. In reality, Jack and Grady are interchangeable in a long line of violent and abusive men.
Kubrick focused entirely on the effect on the audience, moreso than the narrative or logic. He deliberately cast everyone and paced everything to make the audience feel unsettled and unsafe, and unsure about what was going to happen. There's no hero, there's no one to identify with or grab onto. EVERYTHING is there to make you uncomfortable, even Shelley Duvall. It looks like a horror movie about ghosts but it's actually more similar to a deliberately made 2-hour trauma and torture session for the viewer with no other goal.
Louis is right that Kubrick’s films are not ‘about’ the characters. They are all about the human condition. The characters are flat and generic because he doesn’t want you identifying with, or rooting for the characters. He wants the immersive cinema experience to wash over you.
Louis CK is a comedy legend and a legend at film analysis.
He's also a jerkin' off legend too
he sucks in every way possible.
This is my second review of Louis C.K. doing his movie review. He is just sooooo good at describing what we all experience in this movie!! And this description is, by far, the best recount of the famous Kubrick/ King differences about the making of this movie.
@@tomallen5837 he’s also so good at jerkin it in front of unwilling folks.
So is your Moooom 💥
I could listen to louis ck talk about movies forever
the fact that is sounds like he is watching the clips and talking by the amount of DETAIL he has retained but in fact is simply recalling the details from memory is insane.
the sequence from Florida apartment ---> overlook hotel is maybe the most enjoyable moment for me each time I watch, the sudden cut to inside the plane is *great*
Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch share, if nothing else, this approach to creating a "feeling" with film. It doesn't all have to add up to something rational, but the feeling is very real, and it sits with you much longer than a properly structured story seems to.
I really enjoy King's novel The Shining, but the movie is very special to me too, for much different reasons.
Stanley Kubrick is dearly missed.
I read that Stanley said, "If you can think it, you can film it" and immediately thought of David Lynch and how he films these sustained abstract thoughts and feelings. It must take a special kind of awareness to replicate the unconscious, emotional subtext of life so well.
Kubrick did say that he adored Eraserhead
The rewatch ability on their films is unparalleled.
I always drew parallels between them also. Their movies are like dreams.
I'm not a huge fan of Lynch, but I really liked Mulholland Drive for that very reason. It wasn't a horror movie, or a mystery movie or a suspense movie. It just felt like fear and anxiety. He and Kubrick both understood the primacy of the visual image in film, and that the image matters more in the work they've made than narrative structures inherited from literature.
The one of the greatest most intricate films of all time, endlessly watchable
I have to try again. Out of Kubrick's work. Lolita and Clockwork Orange are the ones that made me love him.
holy hell this is great louie did such a good job. i have to watch the movie again now.
"The uncomfortable distance that 70's couples had where they are a little bit of strangers with each other and the men that were a little dangerous."
Wow. The Shining really is an embodiment of dating in the 70's.
Who was dating in the film?
I always found the dialogue between the family very plastic and like a bad commercial. If it was intentional that’s great but I can’t tell.
He nails the sentiment of that film, perfectly.
he barely touches on it but the interplay of Shelley and Jack really hits home for people of a certain era who knew parents/aunts and uncles or other couples in their life who had exactly this kind of fractured and terrifying dynamic. The man always on a hair trigger, the woman annoying and clueless. the movie brings it alive and part of the disorientation is just hoping he'll shut her up...
no he doesnt, he no clue about the film and whats its really about, everything he says here pointless mindless nonsense. he hasnt even thought the film through at all,
@@johnwatts8346 You've really raised a compelling counter-argument, and shown me the error of my thinking. I take it all back and now feel the way you do about it. #kudos
@@delibato well i hope so. as he said nothing of substance about the film. he has no idea what the 'sentiment'' of the film even is, and neither do you.
@@johnwatts8346 repeting a sentence is a great way to prove a point
Its borderline addicting listening to Patrice O'Neal, Louis C.K and Shane Gillis talk about movies
You lost me at Shane, you should have said nick mullen.
@@d.jparer5184 I really don't care where you end up, or if you're lost or found 🤷🏾♂️ Everybody else arrived at the destination. You got lost all on your own bud...
or pearl harborman@@d.jparer5184
@d.jparer5184 liking Nick Mullen and not liking Shane Gillis is like liking water but not ice. Same thing but different states
@@spencerm5612 Nicholas James Mullen
I wish Louis CK had a podcast about movies.
Same
About anything really.
Dad’s in the 70s could be scary as fuck. Louis nails that context.
Now dads are weak and divorced and depressed.
This film is so timeless because it’s about the human condition. I’ve watched it since I was young and I always have a different takeaway. Recently I watched it and felt the film was all about resentment between a husband and wife and how that feeling can destroy everything.
The Shining is one of the few films that is truly timeless artwork. Next year I’ll watch it and it will make me think of something g else or feel something else.
I agree, there's so many layers to interpret this movie. One of my favorites is that there are 2 Jacks. One is the writer, green jacket, that's writing about a writer that's staying in a hotel, with his family. The story he's writing is about a writer staying in a hotel, that goes crazy and tries to kill his family, red jacket Jack.
It's an abstract idea for sure. Jack gets interrupted by Wendy, and snaps at her. It's a fantasy, he takes the paper out of the typewriter, and for the first time is a different person, gets mad, is going mad.
As soon as Wendy walks away, Jack starts typing, because he didn't actually yank the paper out, rip it up, etc. It's a scene from the book he's writing.
King was staying in a hotel, had writer's block. A bad dream inspired him to write about an author staying in a hotel. That's not very removed from Kubrick's trick. Kubrick just doesn't spell it out for us. We witness Jack's story as if it's really happening.
Jack, wearing the red jacket, has a nightmare, goes to the bar and talks to "ghosts", sees a woman in room 237, snaps at Wendy again, etc. For about a 20 second scene, the camera creeps up on Jack while he's tying, in a green jacket. Next time we see Jack, it's a red jacket. Kubrick is showing us that the real Jack Torrence is writing about a man (himself) staying at that hotel, but going crazy, like the previous caretaker.
I feel like it’s about how alcoholism destroys your family
@@hippiecheezburger5457 Kubrick knew that was part of the story. The maze of abuse, Danny and Wendy could escape, not Jack.
Another layer: the photo at the end of the movie. I think it symbolizes the vicious cycles of these behaviors. It’s a symbol of the fact that we are trapped into our destructive habits and addictions. Until a person breaks away from them we will be imprisoned to a vicious cycle that will repeat itself over and over. Thoughts?
That's a very Kingian trope though, no?@@shmoore154
I was 11 years old my friends Dad took us to see it in the theatre . It was prob the first R rated movie I had ever seen. First time I ever saw a naked lady and she was rotting and cackling . The entire movie terrified me as a kid and it still does . The way it is shot the use of the music it’s a true masterpiece .
Kubrick knew that compromising would delude his vision and he didn't play that game. That is just one of the reasons he is among greatest film makers of all time.
Kubtrik is one of many examples of how being kind of an Ahole is integral the the creation of genius.
Delude or dilute?
@@palmereldritch_6669 Kubrick was never an ass to anyone.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Shelly Duvall might beg to differ.
@@palmereldritch_6669 Shelley Duvall never said Kubrick misbehaved. She said he pushed for what he wanted on film. That's a director doing his job.
Yes. It is absolutely possible to like King's work and also like Kubrick's The Shining. Don't know why some ppl insist that we take sides on everything.
Well, in this case it's because Stephen King hasn't stopped talking about how much he hates the Kubrick Shining for the last 40 years. When the creator of something weighs in like that (which doesn't happen too often), it's naturally going to create a "take-sides" rift in the audience.
I like the book although all the melodramatic character backstory in it is simple arbitrary make-believe.
He is so passionate about this. He sounds almost frustrated talking about this movie as if to say, "Goddamnit so many people misunderstand this movie."
Whoever edited this knew what they were doing. Great visuals to go along with Louie's analysis
This is such a clever reading - I suppose one could look at the famous '63 film The Haunting that way - it really does seem to be a film told from the perspective of the house. Yes, you can hear the internal thoughts of the character played by Rosemary Harris, but in fact, perhaps it's the house that overhears her innermost thoughts.
Never thought of that film in that way, but it definitely makes sense in regard to the style! Wonder if House (1977) might work the same…
Julie Harris. Loved the movie! Especially the knocking scene.
no is isnt, everything ck says here is mindless nonsense, ck has no clue and he hasnt even attempted to think the film through at all.
@@johnwatts8346 Keep in mind, John, when it comes to "The Shining" virtually everything is opinion. I only take CK's opinion as refreshing and interesting.
@@orpheus9037 his opinion is mindless and not remotely interesting. he hasnt actually thought the film through.
I love The Shining and I love Louie C.K. I used to get so excited when there were new episodes of his show on FX.
This five minutes tore by like a cyclone. I could listen to him talk about The Shining all day, scene by scene, line by line. This five minutes sounds like the tip of the iceberg of his mind on the movie. I want to go on that expedition, baby! Take a schooner to the 'berg, set up camp, and start drilling!
As Rob Ager has pointed out, the hotel itself lies to the characters and lies to the audience. There’s architecture in the hotel that cannot possibly exist in any real way. Your brain subconsciously recognizes this and it throws you off. There’s always a feeling of unease, even when nothing particularly disturbing is happening. The Overlook is alive and is working it’s way inside of the characters, as well as the audience.
What architecture? Out of curiosity
@@monkeynt5780 If you map out the hotel, there are inconsistencies that make no sense. The hotel manager's office has a window looking out to the yard that can't really be there, etc. It's hard to tell how much is intentionally meant to be confusing in a subtle way to the audience. There's also a scene where the characters walk in and out of a freezer and come out in a different section of the hallway, even though it's an exposition scene and not supposed to be exactly noticeable.
After reading the definitive 900-page history of the film I'm not 100% convinced that all of this was intentional, but Kubrick was also interested in subconsciously influencing the audience, so there's probably some intentionality going on.
@@monkeynt5780 th-cam.com/video/0sUIxXCCFWw/w-d-xo.html
ager is a crank ...
a full nut job that projects his own issues onto Kubrick film
seriously, there is zero value in his idiocy unless one is a conspiratard
Interesting to use the uncanny valley principle with the actual settings of the scenes.
The Shining is a masterpiece
Not really. It’s kind of a dumb story. Stephen King and Kubrick are both overrated.
Kubrick atleast tried hard, maybe a little too hard on poor Shelley, he got some underrated ones too like dr strangelove I love that movie
Like in most cases, I prefer the book. Kubrick made a lot of changes with the characters, King obviously took exception to that
Great movie but Kubrick’s treatment towards Shelly was appalling and I feel bad because it basically ruined her life and career from there on out
Not even close.
The shining is my favorite film ever
Best defense of Kubrick's The Shining and indirect repudiation of the prosaic, explain-everything TV movie version and Dr. Sleep. But I must disagree with the notion that Duvall wasn't playing a human being. She played a sensitive human being suffering abuse and gaslighting all too well.
To be fair Louis CK doesn't have a great track record of knowing when a woman is being abused so I'll give him a pass
Yeah, I think he's learned it wasn't good. Time to move on now. "check in".....he's got it from here on out.
No she didn't. She was the abuser.
@@Hoopermazingis this Jack Torrance's burner account
The TV movie was awful. However, although Dr Sleep was not even close to The Shining, it was a fairly accurate -albeit safe- depiction of the novel. The fact that it paid homage to ‘The Shining film’ more than ‘The Shining book’ was appreciated
LCK gets it. The Shining wasn't about any of the characters, It was the house.
I always felt like the camera POV from the sky following the family through the mountains was the ghosts following the family to the hotel. Then, from there on out all POV shots are from the ghosts or the house. Especially when Danny is involved in scenes.
The Shining answers the question 'What would a movie look like if you allowed the tension to build and build, right to the end, with no relief?'
I got so obsessed with this movie about a decade ago. I watched it everyday and the behind the scenes multiple times a day. It's fucking good all around. I ended up developing an obsession with both kubrick and Jack back to tower of terror and a writen love letter to jack that I kept in my closet for years.
Five Easy Pieces is when Nicholson became the Nicholson we know and love. Even 50 years of doing it nobody wanted him for any other kind of role. Maybe About Schmidt he played a different character but from One Flew to as good as it gets he was the same.
I want you to hold it between your knees
5 easy pieces is one of my favorites. great movie.
I'd say Nicholson in "Easy Rider" is the Nicholson that we know and love.
This man said 'I'm making the movie from the point of view of the house.' 😂
Louis CK nails it. Kubrick movies are not about the characters. The Shining is from the house's PoV. Absolutely!
This is a really interesting interpretation, that it's from the viewpoint of the Hotel. That ties in with the recent observation that on several occasions, Jack glances directly at the camera for a split second. Once you notice that, you can't unsee it - so the camera (and the audience) is watching him from the ghost's POV, and he knows it.
First time I saw Jack and Wendy when she interrupted his writing I thought, "These people are just like my parents." My father especially.
You were seeing Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston in that scene. The story is that Nicholson behaved that way once to Anjelica Huston and he felt terrible about it for years.
3:50 the building didn't reach out to him, the kid "sent a message" to him
That was in the book, not the film.
Kubrick made Nicholson throw the ball so many times his arm went out. And the shot used in the film is JACK NICHOLSON trying to ruin the chandelier so he could "take 5". But of course the ball somehow finds its way. and Kubrick got his take.
I really never thought of it that way, that the movie gives us the audience the perspective of the hotel itself, which just wants to drive these people crazy with fear and consume their souls. And that Kubrick isn't trying to make a statement or attach any deep meaning to anything. He's just showing us what happened in order to scare the shit out of us.
The thing that makes the shining good is ALL the questions and theories. Kubrick knew what he was doing.
Art. I miss it.
It's been on vacation. I've been assured it'll be back.
Boy, Louis CK does excellent film analysis, I didn't know that about him. Brilliant guy.
I love this move. I have a friend who had never seen it. He asked what it was about.
I told him that it was, "A freaky movie that will totally fuck with your head."
He watched it and agreed.
I went in expecting to see a filmed version of the book. When I realized Kubrick was avoiding a simple, chapter-by-chapter filming of the book - I began to get scared because the security blanket of the book I'd read was gone.
I didn't know what was going to happen. THAT made it nerve racking.
You know how - SPOILER ALERT! - Hitchcock kills off the only person in "Psycho" he's developed as a character? "The Shining" was like that - for over two hours. 😳
Aw man what a great if unpleasant feeling. Wish I could've experienced it like that
Two American directors do "unsettling" very well- Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes.
@@juniorjames7076 Good comparison. Both of them wanted to make successful films, but not by making deliberate crowd-pleasing entertainment. I forget which film, but Cassevetes was outraged when the audience broke out in applause at the premiere of one of his film. He felt the applause meant the audience was walking away pleased - rather than moved. So, he redid the ending. Not to be a jerk, but to make sure audiences didn't walk aware merely entertained.
Best wishes from Vermont 🍁
There are so many angles to this movie and this is one, but it's not the only angle. But it's a good angle, Louis. Also, how can Louis CK always sound so coherent in his actual reasoning while at the same time sound like he's constantly high?
But it is an angle
@@TheeRogerWayne Obtuse. At least ...
It's an interesting point... it is not necessary for every piece of art to speak directly to an audience as though it's all here on a convey for us to consume. Sometimes arts should feel like you shouldn't be looking at it or listening to it. The sense of alienation offers catharsis as well.
Brilliant and spot-ON.
Giving credit to the source as should have been done in the description - Episode 13 of Joe and Ranaan Talk Movies
Arguably the best take on this filme ever.
My favorite Stanley, Kubrick movie is Dr. Strangelove!
It’s good, but it’s not very Kubrickian
Who knew Louis was such an incredible movie critic
He barely said anything coherent there, if you actually listen to him.
Nobody. Because he is not.
I kinda feel for King, cause he wrote the story. It was an artistic expression about a dark time in his life. In that vein, Kubrick never did that, starting with a completely blank page. Everything he made was based off a book, or a novella, or writing with three other people. I think since he never had to pull it all out of himself, he could take someones idea and deconstruct it however he wanted, without any regard for the source material.
I think this is kind of like the movie equivalent to All Along The Watchtower. Bob Dylan wrote the song but Jimi Hendrix added so much that he turned it into a masterpiece.
@@vi0letcr1me I think your example makes my point. Hendrix didn't change the worlds of the song, and thereby, didn't change the essence of the song. Kubrick did. King's Shining is about someone going so far that they should be too far gone, but, somehow finding the strength to claw themselves back to redemption. Like King did in his own life. Kubrick changed the song. And look, I get it, if it meant so much to King, he shouldn't have sold the rights of his book to be made into a movie. I was simply pointing out how it feels, to me, to be in poor taste from an artist to artist point of view.
@@crumbb_m I do accept you point that if someone else takes a work of art that you did and makes some fundamental changes to if then that can be difficult for the artist who created the original piece, but I think that can sometimes end up being good and sometimes end up being bad. To use more musical examples there must be lots of cases where someone makes a cover song or samples a good song and then does it so badly they kind of ruin it. I can see why artists wouldn't like that happening to their work but it goes the other way too sometimes where one artist will find a piece of art someone else created that is either bad or average but for some reason it will inspire them and they can then use it to make something really great and even better than the original which can sometimes only happen by making fundamental changes. So I do understand why Stephen King might have disliked the movie Kubrick made but I personally love it. I haven't read the book or seen Kings movie but I know a bit about what the differences are supposed to be mainly that he envisioned something a lot warmer and more human which is fine but I think Kubrick's version of The Shining is a masterpiece, so I am glad he decided to make it the way he did. I agree with what I think Louis CK is saying about it and I just find it so much more interesting what Kubrick did. I don't think he really cares about the people and their feeling, it is almost like he as a director had the mentality of a serial killer that is so cold it just sees the people as objects to be played with and disposed of which for a horror movie is great because what is more terrifying than that? I personally see it more as a study on evil itself and how people can be hurt and corrupted by dark demonic forces. I actually think that might be the main message of all of his movies. I don't know exactly why but he is my favourite director by far. He just doesn't seem to care at all about tradition and instead makes these visually stunning deep and complex cryptic puzzles that you can watch a thousand times and still always find more inside them. The guy was a true master.
@@vi0letcr1me Imagine, though, that Kanye West does a cover of All Along the Watchtower, with an improvised rap verse by lil' Pump (or whoever)...
Yeah... sometimes "doing your own thing and making a masterpiece" is subjective...
I think if Kubrick wanted to make his own movie he should have just done that from the start... I don't recall anyone pointing a gun to his head and screaming "YOU ARE CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED TO MAKE A FILM ADAPTATION OF THIS MOVIE!!!"
Never thought I'd hear a breakdown of The Shining from Louis C.K., but here we are. A very interesting take, and maybe one that's more accurate than that of even the most prodigious (self proclaimed) internet cinema scholars who spend thousands of hours overanalyzing The Shining only to come up with takes that wildly miss the mark.
louis isn't even smart enough to do that.
I feel like the reason they didn't give them more substance is that both Jack and Wendy were meant to be symbolic caricatures of their unique pathological dispositions. Which is what the hotel amplifies and uses to tear them apart. Both Jack and Wendy were pretty deranged individuals. Jack was traumatized by the effects his own anger and addictive weakness had upon his loved ones' perception of him and Wendy was an emotionally neurotic mess of a human being because she was too weak and naive to know how to protect herself and Danny from Jack.
The movie was designed to seat the audience within the epicenter of the feeling of that psychological dynamic and ride along as it degenerated to its ultimate horrific conclusion.
Louie loves Kubrick,, as he should,, they don't make em like they use to
I love when Louis talks about how Kubrick movies aren't really about people, and aren't even really from the perspective of a person. I never thought about how The Shining was from the perspective of the hotel/ shining itself.
Kubrick was heavily influenced by eraserhead. If you know both, the shining is a cover song. Almost a superior one but, a cover. Love both
nonsense
you speaking out your ass
How do you figure that, considering Eraserhead came out after The Shining?
@@JabbaTheAmerican I think eraserhead was mid 70, shining was 80. A bunch of articles say he had the crew watch it.
King wrote 190 books. He should be happy that Kubrick shredded only 1 of them.
When high-level comedians let the vail down and show you their genius.
The character Jack Torrance was a self-insert for Stephen King. Kubrick thought the character was full of shit who doesn't take responsibility for anything. King was mad that Kubrick saw through the character and wasn't having any of that.
Yes, and thank you. King's lucky Kubrick didn't include the hit-and-run bit or the bash-the-teenager's-head-on-the-asphalt bit.
Did Jack Torrence in the movie take responsibility?
It’s not the Overlook that calls to Scatman - it’s pretty clearly Danny
I want him just to be on movie geeks united podcast so bad.
Scatman was down for the culture, and he needed visceral reminders when he was away from the Mountain Lodge people. That HiFi stereo system and Antelope head on the wall reinforce that idea.
Novelists can be very precious of their babies and Stephen King was predictably snooty about the film. But Kubrick truly elevated the bare bones of the original story into something that exists on an entirely different plane of thought. King's story feels so safe and predictable by comparison.
king is a talentless joke and his novel asinine drivel compared to kubrick.
I was so excited to read the novel after watching and loving the movie for years. I was pretty disappointed. Everything Kubrick changed or didn’t include was honestly for the best.
In my view king’s novel is not safe or predictable. It has a lot of internal monologue of jack fantasizing about killing his family which is taboo painful stuff. In the last thirty pages jack stops being a human character and that scared me more than anything.
Watching a Kubrick film, is like seeing the world from god's point of view. Or something how super advanced aliens might see us, not how we want to see ourselves.
And in a sense, Kubrick was an alien, he wasn't one of us. Like all great directors, he was eccentric and abstracted from life, He was out there, looking in.
Like Hitchcock, Lynch, Herzog, or great artists like Warhol, Picasso, Pollack - he's just at once removed from how the average human being processed reality.
I love the way Louis talks about this movie, its exactly how i feel about it. It’s also what King didn’t get about it and made him hate it. I love that fact. I love how crazy it made him.
HA! I have watched hundreds of hours of analysis concerning The Shining, learned scholars have loosed much balloon juice regarding this enigmatic film.
Louis CK nailed it better than them all.
Great point of view. Exactly mine as well.
This is not a regular movie in history of Cinema. First we must admit that we have a cult. Then all that story it was made and constructed to transmit every minute and in crescendo more and more suspense.
Well this is fascinating i can keep writting and so on and on. Second MasterPiece kind of manifest of horror psichological drama at the same terms that 2 0 0 1
I'd like to hear more about ET's cameo at 1:59.
Wrong set
The rooms are actually weard because he made an assistant/decorator or someone from the crew to go around all over and take pictures of hotel/motel rooms. Then he picked the ones he liked and tought would work in the movie and re-created them.
So it's for a reason like many things in the movie, to create like subconcious confusion of why would one hotel have all rooms looking differend...? Every room just isn't so in your nose colorfull that you stop to think about it, atleast immidiatelly. Creates that off-balance. I'm pretty sure the room with a naked black lady (I think there were 2 rooms like that actually if I'm not totally off 🤔) is one of those hotel rooms (like I'm sure they didn't build a set just for the scene where the black dude get's the call to his home so it would have been filmed in the hotel)(It even looks like a hotel room from where the bed is etc.). So it most likely is a recreation from say some Compton etc. type of areas Real hotel-room from that era 😅
He said along the lines of why would he use his time to design hotel rooms/have someone to do it when that has already been done by professionals and he can just quickly choose from those 😂 Since he knew he wanted multiple differend kinds and it won't leave such a feeling of a set for them being.. actual back then excisting hotel rooms somewhere (maybe today it might for differend kinda decorating styles).
You're a dope
Don't feel bad. Louis has that classic white liberal thing of automatically assuming that a fellow white person's depiction of a black person's taste or whatever must be based in automatically nothing but racial presumption in itself.
I've always said the acting in The Shining is basically Kabuki theater.
Spielberg said the same thing.
@@stevennieto9898 That dude always steals my lines 🙃
Which is the acting style Cage also abides by
"WHO GIVES A SHIT WHAT STEPHEN KING THINKS ABOUT THE SHINING" 😂😂
I don’t know why everyone thinks Wendy’s annoying; she doesn’t seem like she’d say no to much and for a writer Jack didn’t seem to use his imagination all winter…how many rooms did that hotel have, like, over 200.
This is so effing weird I was just watching videos about good fellas and the shining. Maybe I have the shining…
I like CK's comedy somewhat, but I really feel like I relate to him with the Movie's he likes and how he describes his relationship with those films.
Somewhat? He is one of the best standups of all time
You read it correctly I see. He's got some funny material but the sad sack humor gets old. If that upsets you im not sorry. @@brokenwave6125
When is CK making a come back?
I think it's one of the best horror movies ever made.
I saw Stephen kings “version” in the theater. DESPISED IT. Hated every single moment, my girlfriend at the time slept through the whole thing. I was SHOCKED to see people say they liked it or it was a good sequel. The only half decent moments are the shots they just took from the first movie to remake, and the rest is literally cheap jump scare bullshit. It’s so badly written like there’s this coven of witches or whatever and it all feels so stupid. The fact Stephen King genuinely thought “now THATS what the shining was meant to be on the big screen, not that shit Kubrick did” proves Louis point. It totally invalidates his opinion on the shining, bc he’s right people don’t really say it but the things that really make the shining classic and an all time great, is the performances and decisions Kubrick made. Like 90% of movies are based off some random book most of them don’t result in the author thinking “no it should look this way” bc they’re AUTHORS. They know the real directors are a totally different thing, at least most of them do lmaoo
stephen kings version wasnt shown in a theater it was broadcasted on television in 1997, stephen didnt direct it he wrote the screenplay for his tv adaption. It really sounds like you dont know what you’re talking about or are genuinely confused about what you saw. Did you see doctor sleep and not remember the title of it? based on your descriptions of stuff it sounds like you watched doctor sleep and didnt know that not only was stephen not really involved in it (it was mike flanagan) it was based a book that was a stephens sequel to the shining, and mike for some reason had to insert kubrick related garbage into it
I dont know where you’re getting this coven of witches shit from either because thats not what the antagonists in that movie (and book) were at all
You can say the same about every horror movie villain - dressing up like Michael Myers, for example.
The Shining exemplifies the unknowable.
The Shinning is the best horror movie ever made
Louis has a clear understanding of Kubrick and why Kubrick is great.
no he doesnt.
@@johnwatts8346 i really wish stupid comedians and talk show hosts would stop talking about stanley kubrick to make themselves sound smart.
"Do me a favor Dorothy"
Kubrick's The Shining isn't a great horror movie. But it is a brilliant film.
Shelley is gorgeous.
I’ve read the book but never seen the film. The novel is creepy in how much King’s subconscious was speaking through it. I’m hesitant to see the movie after having so much respect for the former. Am I wrong?
I sure think so
The two are very different beasts. Like Louis CK suggests, Kubrick just took it over and made it completely his own thing. The book's got lots of more character development and you can see the slow crawl of rage gradually taking charge of Jack Torrance, and you can't do justice to that in the scope of a movie, so Kubrick just made the absolute most of visual dread, and really making the hotel itself the main character.
Watch the movie but not as an adaptation of the book or you will be automatically disappointed.
You learn like nothing about the Shine in the Shinning. I'm surprised more people don't ask why it's called the Shinning lol. The whole reason Dick, the chef to the overlook is so prominent in the book is because he shares the Shine with Danny.
The book was dumb. Standard "house is alive and trying to get them" horror. Kubrik turned it into this confusing masterpiece which will be debated for ages.
Im here for the comments that everyone typed and then erased. 👻
Once you learn that the movie is about child abuse, the movie makes sense as a horror movie.
Creeps know creeps
that's his opinion and i would buy him a a couple of drinks to discuss
Louis nailed it. Kubrick didn't really care about his characters or the basic plot. He was more interested in exploring his ideas through the stories he was adapting. Stephen King wrote a story about overcoming his demons, and in some ways shifting the responsibility for some his shitty behavior.
Kubrick was more interested in exploring one man's history of violence and the implications that had on human history. The main theme of Kubrick's The Shining is history repeating itself. Jack was an abusive father and husband, and the horror of the film is in the knowledge that he is going to repeat the crimes of Grady. In reality, Jack and Grady are interchangeable in a long line of violent and abusive men.
the original book is based on the life of barry wood
I love Louis talking movies. Shows how fucking smart he is.
I love his take on Gravity
he's a moron.
@@plasticweaponI’m sorry Louie beated off in front of you.
Danny contacts him in Florida. Just sayin.
Guys this is just another Shining Example..
Kubrick focused entirely on the effect on the audience, moreso than the narrative or logic. He deliberately cast everyone and paced everything to make the audience feel unsettled and unsafe, and unsure about what was going to happen. There's no hero, there's no one to identify with or grab onto. EVERYTHING is there to make you uncomfortable, even Shelley Duvall. It looks like a horror movie about ghosts but it's actually more similar to a deliberately made 2-hour trauma and torture session for the viewer with no other goal.
Kubrick's The Shining is about how the little boy was being raped and molested by his father, among other things...
Funny Kubrick was more optimistic than Steven King lol
Louis commentary is so over these guys heads
Louis is right that Kubrick’s films are not ‘about’ the characters. They are all about the human condition. The characters are flat and generic because he doesn’t want you identifying with, or rooting for the characters. He wants the immersive cinema experience to wash over you.