The Shining/Headscratchers


 * Just what was that man in the dog suit doing?
 * Exactly what you think he was doing.
 * You learn more about it in the book.
 * In the movie, however, it is never explained, and is never mentioned again, making the whole scene entirely pointless. Yes, a somewhat relavant plot point can become utterly pointless if done different in another interpretation.
 * It was a vision of something that happened in the hotel once. Perverse partyers linger beyond their welcome. What else is happening in the film?
 * It's a vision of perversity, but the back story is one of betrayal and despair.
 * It's part of a rush of WONDERFULLY surreal eldritch images that I personally consider to be the film's Crowning Moment of Awesome (or maybe more specifically the elevator part is). Would added context really make these images more powerful than they are as mind screws? Really??
 * How exactly did Jack get out of the pantry? Grady? Grady is a ghost (or a figment of Jack's imagination).
 * Grady's ghost is just one part of a sentient hotel. The door latch is also.
 * If it can open the latch why not just open all the locked doors he has to chop down with his axe?
 * Rule of Scary?
 * There's no clear answer as to just what Grady is, and if he's a ghost, there's no in-universe reason for why he can't interact with his environment.
 * The Hotel is testing Jack. He needs a bit of a hand, but it won't do bloody everything for him.
 * Actually that part bugs me too, simply because it seems to be the only moment in an otherwise intriguing Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane movie in which there is no easy answer from the "Mundane" column. The ambiguity is perhaps shattered irrevocably, and we know we're in a haunted building for real. Because if not, how could Jack have escaped?? Neither Wendy nor Danny would have ever let him out (Danny even less so, I think, if he were in "Tony" mode), and Hallorrann (sp?) had not yet arrived. As far as we know, they're alone in the hotel, and Jack doesn't break through the door, assuming he even could. Didn't Kubrick say that the aspect of the story that fascinated him so much was the multiple possible interpretations?
 * Of course it could have been Danny. In that case, Grady's voice would have been a hallucination by Jack. Abused children often still love their parents, including letting them out of a locked room.
 * He was far too terrified of him to have let him out. The only thing I can think of is that there is a third personality we haven't seen, separate from Tony, but not only is there no evidence for this, it doesn't seem to fit anyway unless Danny has some suicidal part hidden in his psyche.
 * IIRC, in the book, Danny helps Wendy to move Jack into the pantry, and Jack starts to wake up and orders Danny to let him out. Danny almost instinctively starts to do so. Considering this, it doesn't seem completely implausible that Danny might have let him out.
 * Me again, guy from above paragraph. I just thought of something else. Word has it from some reliable sources that Kubrick's original ending—which sadly I cannot yet find on Youtube; it was cut out right after the premiere—had Wendy awakening in a hospital and being told by Ullman that they Never Found the Body. I guess this could mean either that she was the insane one and it was all in her head—getting an imaginary husband from that photograph or something...?--or that Ullman, corrupt as he is, was just in a cover-up. The photo stands and ends the current cut, though it could be interpreted supernaturally as well—as Jack really having "sold his soul" to the hotel for that drink, for instance. CAN ANYBODY FIND ME A COPY OF THIS DELETED SCENE? PLEASE?
 * According to the documentary Stanley Kubrick's Boxes, Kubrick destroyed unused footage. Sorry.
 * Damn!


 * Back to