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THE SHINING
The re-mastered edition of THE SHINING is available individually on DVD at $24.98, or as part of the re-mastered version of The Stanley Kubrick Collection for $199.98. |
This DVD review
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DVD
reviews are Copyright © 2001 THE CINEMA LASER and may not be copied
or reprinted without the written consent of the publisher. |
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I
haven't seen THE SHINING since it was issued on Laserdisc about
a decade ago, so I had forgotten what a creepy and visually stunning horror
movie this truly is. THE SHINING is a genuine standout in all of
horror cinema because of the way that legendary director Stanley Kubrick
brings his unique vision of terror to the screen. Of course, the film
is an entirely different animal from the Stephen King novel upon which
it is based, but Kubrick’s adaptation of THE SHINING has certainly
left is own indelible mark on the realm of horror. For this reason, it’s
not worth reentering the decades old debate about the superiority of the
novel over the film version of THE SHINING.
Kubrick
and his co-writer Diane Johnson maintain the framework and incidents from
King's novel, but they do take license with the story to transform it
into cinema. Jack Nicholson stars as Jack Torrance, a former teacher who
takes the job of winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, which becomes
isolated from the rest of the world every winter, once the severe snows
of the Colorado Rockies make the only road impassible. Jack doesn't mind
the months of isolation, since he will have his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall)
and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) for company, plus the job also allows Jack
plenty of free time to work on his burgeoning writing career.
Unfortunately,
the Overlook has a rather unsavory history, in which a former caretaker
went mad during the long winter's isolation, murdering his wife and family
with an axe before killing himself. The dark atmosphere that hangs over
the hotel first begins to affect young Danny, who is gifted with psychic
abilities that are referred to as "shining" by the Overlook's
head chef, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), who has similar abilities
and connects with the boy on a psychic level. While Danny is the first
to see the horrifying manifestation's of the Overlook's dark past, it
is Jack who is most deeply effected by the hotel- slowly being driven
to madness by the ghosts of the past, who want another bloody massacre.
The cast of THE SHINING also includes Barry Nelson, Philip Stone,
Joe Turkel and Anne Jackson.
Owing
to the wishes of the late Stanley Kubrick, Warner Home Video has issued
an improved presentation THE SHINING on DVD in the director's intended
aspect ratio of 1.37:1. Looking at the film's current framing, I can say
that Kubrick was no fool- he knew that the film would be matted to 1.85:1
in theatrical venues and left enough headroom in shots to accommodate
this factor. However, this additional headroom, would have allowed to
film to also be presented in 16:9 enhanced wide screen (1.78:1), without
compromising the content or the film's artistic integrity. Since Warner
has acceded to the director's wishes for DVD presentation, I will not
debate the point any further. In its current framing, the new digital
transfer of THE SHINING is nothing short of stunning. I have never
seen this level of clarity and detail in any previous home incarnation
of THE SHINING. In fact, I would venture to say that previous editions
look like absolute rubbish by comparison. Obviously, there was some digital
tweaking of the image to remove blemishes from the film elements, since
this twenty plus year old movie now looks perfectly pristine. The new
transfer also greatly reduces appreciable film grain, giving THE SHINING
a much cleaner and much smoother look than it had in the past. Much of
THE SHINING utilizes a subdued palette, but the colors appear stronger
than they did in the previous incarnations and reproduce with greater
stability. Certainly, the film stocks and production design choices that
were implemented in 1980 effect how the colors appear on the DVD- those
hotel carpets look pretty ghastly. Flesh tones generally look accurate,
but the film's variable lighting situations do have a noticeable effect.
Blacks are very solid and there is good level of shadow detail to be found
in the image. The climatic scene in the hedge maze greatly benefits from
the improved detail, depth and reduction in appreciable film grain. Clean
dual layer authoring keeps digital compression artifacts from becoming
noticeable.
For
this release THE SHINING has been given a new Dolby Digital 5.1
channel remix, although the original monaural mix has been omitted from
the DVD. The 5.1 channel mix isn't overdone and seems to be maintaining
a reverence for the intentions of the film's monaural soundtrack. Music
gets the biggest boost from the remix, which utilizes the original stereo
musical recordings. Additionally, the music extends into the rear channels,
which serves to enhance the track's musical presence. The surround encoding
and the increased fidelity of the music envelops the viewer, thus giving
the new track added creepiness, which builds even more tension than the
monaural track did. Sound effects are directional, but do not sound particularly
forced, which they sometimes do in certain remixes that go out of their
way to advantage of all the discrete channels. There are a few jarring
sound effects that jump out at the viewer from the rear speakers, but
the surround channels are not used to excess. Dialogue is fully intelligible
and the actor's voices are a bit more full bodied than they were in the
on the Laserdisc edition of the film. The bass channel is pretty decent,
but age and the fidelity of the original recordings does limit it effectiveness.
A French 5.1 channel soundtrack is also encoded onto the DVD, as are English,
French and Spanish subtitles.
Music
underscores the basic interactive menus, which provide access to the standard
scene selection and set up features, plus a very cool supplement. The
Making of The Shining runs 34 minutes and is a great film on its
own; documenting what occurred on the set of what has since become a classic
horror movie. The strength of this documentary rests in the fact that
director Vivian Kubrick had unrestricted access to the set and to the
actors, making this a fluff free look at the creative process, which includes
at least one heated clash between the director and actress Shelley Duvall.
This is definitely not the stuff that one finds in today's fluffy PR featurettes
that are filled with happy Hollywood people working in total harmony-
without an iota of temperament. Vivian Kubrick also contributes an audio
commentary for the documentary, which is very informative and fairly amusing.
A theatrical trailer closes out the DVD's extra features.
The
digitally re-mastered version of THE SHINING looks and sounds great,
although I feel that a 16:9 enhanced version would be completely viable
and more than welcome by DVD collectors. However, a wide screen version
may never come to DVD, so there is no point in denying yourself this incredible
horror film.
