The Shining

The Shining

The Shining is about a white middle class dysfunctional family that suffers from natural and supernatural stresses in an isolated Rocky mountain hotel. .The father, a former teacher turned writer, is portrayed as a habitual drinker, wife- and child-abuser, with a kind of evil streak The mother is shown as a battered woman. The film suggests that due to the abuse at the hands of his father and the passivity of his mother, the child of this family developed psychological problems. He had imaginary friends and began to see frightening images.

Early in the film , a psychologist is called in to treat the troubled child :and she calmed the mother with a statement to the effect that, “ These things come and go but they are unexplainable”. This juncture of the film is a starting point for one of the central themes of the film which is : how a fragile family unit is besieged by unusual forces both natural and supernatural which breaks and possesses and unites with the morally challenged father while the mother and the child through their innocence, love, and honesty triumph over these forces.

One motif which reappears in the film is the power of nature, especially in relation to the individual. In fact, the film begins with a majestic shot of the Rocky Mountains showing its beauty and height. The beauty of nature and even friendliness of nature changes as the film develops. As the movie progresses the snow still seems white and pure, almost virgin like, but nature becomes an isolating force, not providing the family with a retreat from the pressures of modern life, but forcing the family to turn in on its dysfunctional and psychopathic self. Imprisoned by the snow and the tall mountains , the family seems weak and vulnerable.

Nature has no compassion for the plight of the family, nor is it a malicious force; it is merely a power with constructive or destructive potential. We see its constructive side when it freezes Johnny to death.

The weakness of the individual is another motif in the film. Perhaps we see this most clearly with the boy who is sensitive to and harassed by the supernatural forces in the hotel. As we know from everyday experience children seem weak because they are small and usually are very sensitive and easily hurt by the negative and destructive outbursts of adults. Our general sense of a child’s vulnerability is heightened by the way the child of The Shining is forced to grapple with such evil and terrible forces which are likely to be difficult for all of us.