TSPDT placing: #148
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson, Philip Stone, Joe Turkel
As do most, I can clearly remember the first time I saw The Shining (1980). I must have been thirteen or fourteen, and had just read Stephen King's novel. There was something cold and clinical about the film that really shook my spine; I could never quite put my finger on exactly why. Perhaps it was the drab colours, the detached camera-work, an overwhelming sense of apathy towards the characters' fate. Just recently, I took the opportunity to see The Shining at the cinema (on a double-bill with A Clockwork Orange (1971)) and my appreciation for the film hasn't faded. An unhappily-married couple (Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall) are employed to caretake the Overlook Hotel over winter. As the long, bleak months progress, the Hotel's rich and dark history begins to manifest physically, and Jack's alcoholism and unstable psychological
state begins to crumble into maniacal madness.
Jack Nicholson's grotesquely over-the-top performance is terrifying, and hilarious, and insanely watchable; Kubrick encouraged Nicholson to overplay the role to its demented maximum. Not surprisingly, his favourite actor was James Cagney, who frequently eschewed realistic method acting in favour of a broiling intensity that suggested a time-bomb on the verge of exploding. Shelley Duvall, meanwhile, does a very good imitation of a complete mental breakdown (in fact, the director himself drove her to the brink with his endless insistence on re-takes, sometimes as many as 100). The exaggerated central performances are strangely at odds with John Alcott's detached cinematography, which surveys the carnage of Jack's mental breakdown with a disquieting aloofness. However, the camera doesn't merely act as an observer; Kubrick uses it to tell the story, his peculiar use of quick zooms serving to claustrophobically constrict the viewer's field of vision and emphasise an element of interest.
Throughout the film, frequent (but irregularly-spaced) title cards signal the passage of time, as though counting down to a historical moment. Jack's plummet into insanity thus becomes set in stone, inevitable, and every preceding frame is plagued by the hand of Fate, gently nudging the man towards a predetermined end. In the film's ambiguous epilogue, Jack's image appears in a photograph dated July 4, 1921. Hence, even before we see Jack Torrance first enter the Overlook Hotel, he has already become a part of its history (just as the previous caretaker Charles Grady had formerly known the Hotel through his historical doppelganger Delbert Grady, the butler). Alternatively, these visions could be a manifestation of Jack's alcoholism – note that, in every scene featuring a ghost, there is a mirror present. It can't be mere coincidence that Jack's axe-assault on a bathroom door was clearly inspired by a sequence in Victor Sjöström's Körkarlen (1921), which concerns an alcoholic husband and father. 9/10
Currently my #2 film of 1980:
1) The Elephant Man (David Lynch)
2) The Shining (Stanley
3) ‘Breaker’ Morant (Bruce Beresford)
4) Star Wars: Episode V- The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner)
5) Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
6) Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
Jack Lemmon was no stranger to frustrating film experiences. The Out-of-Towners (1970) is among the most exasperating movies you'll ever see, for its demonstrates a perfect (comedic) incarnation of Murphy's Law, in which nothing goes right, and there's nobody you can blame for it. Missing notably differs in that Costa-Gavras singles out a target for our frustration – the country's self-serving officials and corrupt military officers– and so our annoyance swiftly turns to anger. Lemmon gives one of his finest dramatic performances as as Ed Horman, continually haunted by the incomprehensible disappearance of a son he could never understand. Sissy Spacek isn't quite as strong, but her Beth Horman – the missing man's young wife – is quiet and vulnerable, a woman of fierce convictions that she's too small to carry out. Any filmmaker should utilise a soundtrack by Greek composer Vangelis with caution, for nothing screams "1980s" quite so loudly. However, it isn't all bad news for Missing, as the electronic musical score does actually add a sad, nostalgic element of surrealism to the scenes of violence and bloodshed.
I liked how Costa-Gavras cut directly to flashbacks without exposition or explanation, leaving the viewer disorientated, and wondering if we are, indeed, watching the past or the present. This technique recreates the confusion of the characters involved, and emphasises that our narrator is not omnipotent, but merely, like Ed, trying to piece together the facts as best as he can. The scenes of military violence, with the contribution of Vangelis' soundtrack, are oddly and eerily surreal – particularly the striking image of a galloping white stallion being pursued by a volley of bullets. The visitors to Santiago (though the name Chile is never uttered) are all strangely sedate in response to the images of bloodshed, their schedules unfazed by the nearby murder of local citizens, as though their status as "Americans" somehow places them above all this. At the film's end, Ed Horman dejectedly states "I just thank God we live in a country where we can still put people like you in jail." There's a deliberate hollowness behind these words; as we've just seen, America's policies aren't quite as righteous as they'd have us believe.
Glenn Close is deliciously fiendish as Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, a woman who has all but perfected the ability to control every man around her through seduction and betrayal. Her male counterpart, Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont (John Malkovich), expends his life in similar pursuits, every woman whom he corrupts serving as a trophy to his reputation as a scamp. As a means of revenge, Merteuil asks Valmont for a favour – to deflower the young, convent-educated wife (Uma Thurman) of a former lover. Valmont initially dismisses this assignment as being too easy, instead setting his sights on Madame Marie de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), a beautiful woman known for her virtue and steadfast morals. It's all too apparent that Merteuil and Valmont are in love with each other, and, indeed, had once shared a relationship. However, their passion is doomed from the outset, for to surrender to their desires would be to allow their rival to declare victory over them; their stubborn pride ensures their inevitable downfall.
Dangerous Liaisons might have faltered had the performances been inadequate, but nearly every cast member delivers strongly, with only Keanu Reeves seeming anachronistically out-of-place in the eighteenth-century French setting. Glenn Close is superbly devilish as the manipulative and superior Merteuil, whose every spoken word is clearly distinguished from its intended meaning, veiled behind a attitude of smug satisfaction. John Malkovich was never the most handsome man in Hollywood, but he uses his words as a weapon, measuring each syllable with flawless elocution and emphasis, every remark assuredly drawing him closer to his victim's bed. Keanu Reeves, in his earliest success, seems completely out-of-his-depth in such a formal upper-class setting, though this does work positively in terms of his character, who is similarly disoriented amid all the treachery. Michelle Pfeiffer, looking very pretty, is wonderful as Valmont's prized quarry, slowing succumbing to his sleazy charms. Her beauty becomes even more heartbreaking when we realise that we, the audience, are eagerly anticipating her seduction and corruption by Valmont's hand, and immediately feel shamed by our complicity.
What others have said:
In the hustle-and-bustle of modern Rome, acclaimed film director Salvatore "Toto" Di Vita (Jacques Perrin) returns home to a sad message from his elderly mother: "Alfredo has died." During the night, the man reflects on his childhood, when, as a bright and fervent young boy (played by Salvatore Cascio), he used to frequent his small town's local cinema, where the friendly projectionist, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) taught him, however reluctantly, the tricks of the trade. Flash forward several years, and Toto is now a mature and intelligent teenager, falling for the first (and only) time into the throes of young love. Though I have not seen the shortened theatrical version, from what I've been able to gather, the story doesn't delve too deeply into the adventures of the adult Toto. In the director's cut, most of the additional running time is dedicated to his home-town return, as he is drawn almost overwhelmingly into the regretful ghosts of his past. These sequences are, of course, not without interest, but Tornatore is at his strongest in the first act, with Toto as an impressionable young boy immersed in the joy of cinema.
Philippe Noiret is wonderful as the warm and occasionally brusque film projectionist, and his interactions with Toto (especially young Salvatore Cascio) develop into a powerful father-son relationship. The director's cut intriguingly suggests that Alfred deliberately mislead Toto about Elena (Agnese Nano, later Brigitte Fossey) in order to preserve his chances of succeeding with his #1 love of all, movies. Alfred suspected that, had Toto married Elena, he would never have been able to become an accomplished film director – as a beloved father figure for the boy, he made the difficult decision that Toto could never have made. The ethical complications of Alfred's decision are problematic, but one can at least follow his logic, and his motives, however misguided, were certainly well-intended. At the film's end, as the adult Toto is doubting his love for cinema, his passion is reassured with a wonderful montage of the romantic moments that the town's prudish priest had once sliced from every film to be screened in his theatre. This is the magic of cinema. It's not just the films themselves, but also the flood of personal memories that accompanies each forbidden screen embrace.
What others have said:
In April 1959, NASA unveiled the Mercury Seven, an elite selection of fighter pilots who would become the first Americans to reach Outer space. With the Soviet Union seemingly always one step ahead in the Space Race, the US government was determined to keep up with their rival's achievements, occasionally displaying a recklessness that could easily have ended in disaster. In theory, however acute their flying skills, these astronauts were not supposed to do anything; they were expected simply to sit there, unable to observe their surroundings and incapable of controlling the movements of their space capsule – their mere presence in space was superfluous, and existed only to provide symbolic confirmation that an American had reached such a perceived milestone. For all the gruelling physical assessments in which the astronauts took part, do they really differ all that much from the test chimpanzees that preceded them? Does one possess "the right stuff" simply because they were one of the fortunate men who were chosen?
56th Academy Awards, 1984:
Also recommended:
Following the death of her husband, a grieving Amish woman, Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis), takes her young son Samuel (Lukas Haas) into the city. It is Samuel's first major venture into the lifestyle shunned by his people, and he is initially awed and excited by all the fresh sights and sounds presented to him. But it doesn't take long for the reality of modern society, corrupted and poisoned by the stench of greed and violence, to rear it's ugly head – in the bathroom of a railway station, Samuel witnesses the brutal murder of a city detective, and only he can identify the men responsible. A weary cop, Det. Capt. John Book (Harrison Ford), employs the young boy's help in solving the case, and, when Samuel positively identifies a respected narcotics detective from his own department, Book begins to understand that they've stumbled into something far deeper than anybody could ever have anticipated. Now with a price on his head, Book falls into hiding with the reluctant Amish community, and both parties come to learn a thing or two about the conflicting values of their respective worlds.
Harrison Ford has rarely given a better performance. He's not an actor whom one would typically associate with having a lot of emotional range, but John Book is an intriguingly-subtle character. Note, most particularly, the scene in which Book and Rachel dance in the barn to Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" – throughout the entire sequence, Book is continually pausing, contemplating the physical contact that is seemingly obligatory in cinematic moments such as these, and consistently deciding against it. Kelly McGillis is remarkably beautiful as the emotionally-conflicted widow, all the more because her character actively attempts to repress any lingering streaks of eroticism (and also thanks to her Amish attire, which fortunately denied her one of those horrifically-dated 1980s hairstyles – see Top Gun (1987)). A crucial benefit of the film's sobering middle act, supplemented by the soft, graceful cinematography of John Seale, is that the audience gradually loses his desensitisation towards violence on film, and so the story's brutal climax is a completely jarring shock to the nerves.
Currently my #2 film from director Peter Weir:
What others have said:
_poster.jpg)
