The Bucket List--The Shining

Just returned home from The Shining (1980), and it is nice to finally check mark it as a theater experience. Long time coming. The score, including the opening, is overpowering in the theater. You can totally see how films of today look to mimic what this film did. Honestly I didn't see subliminal messages or come across anything that might produce food for thought that hadn't been theorized or film school studied to death. I did take it all in, the Overlook and the maze, found myself trying to capture all I could within the frame before me, and my eyes were studious to everything Kubrick lensed for our consumption. I did try to just immerse myself in the experience as others have. I think in the material, what was obvious was the domestic strife in the family, the dysfunction. I think you see contempt and aggravation from Jack, hesitant walking-on-eggshells anxious sweetness from Wendy, and oddball quiet from Danny. This was a family doomed to fail, with the Overlook speeding up things. She tries to hold it together but her hubby was dealing with struggling sobriety and a lingering undercurrent of disgust with a career in limbo. The Overlook seems to seize on his psychological/emotional issues. The way he mocks her, just being an ass, even if we're taken to a month later without dwelling on what Jack was like during this early period at the Overlook, I think you can sense he was not pleased at where life was for him. So Jack is tense and annoyed, soon full of spite, temper, and vitriol. There is no dialogue, just anxiety and distance. But Wendy tried. She tried. You all know the highlights and they are best viewed on the theater screen.