The Missing Energy

(The Absent One)

"I have done quite a lot of experimentation of making tape recordings and taking films at the same time and have accumulated some rather odd results and experiences."
-William Burroughs

As of yet, The Shining hasn't been accepted as a masterpiece, by every single person in the world. There are several supposed flaws in the film that seem quite puzzling given Kubrick's perfectionism and skill. The film has been criticized for the deliberate pacing of dialogue scenes, awkward pauses, staginess, and the sense of distance felt by the viewer. Brian Siano articulates these flaws well in an article entitled "Reappraising Kubrick's The Shining", found online at the The Kubrick Site. Siano calls The Shining "an extremely flawed piece of work" and an "interesting failure". (4) Alan Frank writes of the film: "The script abandons just about every element that makes Stephen Kings novel so effectively atmospheric... replacing it with a banal plot and dialogue to match which might just have passed muster for a run-of-the-mill supernatural second feature..." (5) Of course this critique is ridiculous, but the point is relevant that the film might have some flaws. As with much of Kubrick's work, it can be assumed that just about everything in the film was motivated though. There is usually some reason why a particular element is included even if it is just meant to puzzle or disturb the audience. The ironic fact of the matter is that all of these flaws are such that they can be attributed to the interaction of the soundtrack and the image track. Nobody is criticizing the cinematography, which is spectacular if not revolutionary. It might be accurately speculated that Kubrick, like Bresson, would agree that cinematography (literally: 'writing with film' - note that Jack is a writer) represents the true art of film, as opposed to cinema: mass market entertainment based on theater for the masses. One director who understood that the primacy of film as art consists of the dynamic between images and music (or sound effects and such), rather than dialogue and images, was Stanley Kubrick. This realization was given great expression in certain pioneering sequences of Dr. Stranglove and culminated in 2001, which is mostly dialogue free.

The soundtrack is integral in providing unity, continuity, and wholeness in a film, while functioning to guide the attention of the viewer. We hear a sound and we look for its respective on screen source. Kubrick was a pioneer of film sound in his own right. Througout Kubricks' work there is a skillful counterpuntal use of sound which amplifies the images and provides unity and continuity from shot to shot, sequence to sequence, sequence to whole. The Shining, however, is truly an interesting failure in a certain respect. Norman Kagan, the author of a book on the films of Stanley Kubrick, gives a synopsis of the film which is completely out of sequence. This isn't an unusual response to the film, however. Most likely, it's an intended consequence of the design of the film. The disunity in editing is made explicit through the inter-titles, almost as if to announce the disunity itself. This is peculiar given that video has been called the discontinuity announcer. In The Shining the sound doesn't serve it's usual function but rather magnifies the alleged flaws and disturbs the viewer. The seeming staginess of the dialogue scenes can be explained by the way the dialogue and image are always simultaneous. That is the sound doesn't precede the image like it does in a more flowing dialogue scene. Certainly Kubrick was aware of the effect that this would have. In addition much of the dialogue really is bland and redundant because of the expressiveness already there in the acting and camera work. For example, in the first dialogue scene between Jack and Ullman, do we need to hear what Jack says in order to know that he's crazy? Or can we already see that expressed in his facial gestures? There are, however, scenes in which even the music and sound effects are amazingly synchronous and well balanced with the images. The scene where Danny talks to Jack in the bedroom might be a good example of this. The scene was quite obviously edited around the music. However, on the whole the sound doesn't unify sequences and bridge scenes as it could. Parts of the film suffer greatly because of this. Consider the room 237 scenario, which has a very definite and puzzling visual rhythm, though the sound doesn't match this rhythm at all. It could have been done very differently, to say the least.

The film is full of incomplete motifs and ambiguous details, including several obscure references to 2001 such as the Tang containers, Danny's Apollo sweater, the shots of Hallorans' snow-cat (space pod) etc. It would seem that much of the detail is completely without function and ambiguous, passing unnoticed by the passive viewer. The effect is one of puzzlement. Did I miss something important? - you might ask. Dualism, duality, doubling, mirroring, whatever you make of it, it's taken to an extreme. There are two of everyone and everything. One implication seems to be that there were two Jacks - one in the 1920's and one in the present. This is a departure from the novel. As a whole The Shining promises to deliver but it doesn't. On many occasions the viewer is left distant and wondering if they missed something. The underlying question seems to be: Is everything there? Could it be that there is some missing energy which when realized and applied will complete the film. Let's pretend that there might be.