The Shining

Kubrick’s dizzyingly claustrophobic horror-film classic.

Jack Torrance takes a job as caretaker at The Overlook Hotel, which he is to look after during the winter months while it is closed. Before he leaves, the management asks whether he can handle such a long period of isolation. Jack dismisses the warning, seeing the job as a perfect opportunity to finally find the peace and quiet to write the novel he has wanted to write for so long. He sets off with his wife and their young son. But a snowstorm cuts the little family off completely from the outside world.

The story of The Shining moves somewhere on the border between dream and reality. Kubrick’s portrayal of Jack’s accelerating madness is expressed through magnificent cinematography: the camera glides smoothly through the hotel’s endless, identical corridors, its vast kitchen and lavish ballrooms, making the people seem small amid their overwhelming surroundings. Jack Nicholson gives one of his greatest performances as Jack Torrance, who desperately tries to fight the nature around him, but gradually loses control of his own.