Is Alex DeLarge really cured at the end ofA Clockwork Orange?
Is the Star Child going to enlighten Earth or destroy it at the end of2001: A Space Odyssey?
But no Kubrick movie was more ambiguous thanThe Shining its 144 minutes of unanswerable questions and indecipherable riddles.
There are so many fan theories aboutThe Shiningthat theresan entire feature-length documentaryabout them.
Released in 2012,Room 237analyzes every second ofThe Shiningto uncover every hidden detail included in its runtime.
My personal interpretation of the film as a whole is that its about alcoholism.
Custom Image by Yailin Chacon
The most literal interpretation would be that the movie is, in fact, a dream.
Maybe hes still stuck in this bad dream.
Kubrick changed Room 217 from the book to Room 237, seemingly for no reason.
Perhaps coincidentally, the distance from the Earth to the Moon is around 237,000 miles.
Its quite a stretch, but this is a fascinating theory to ponder.
But its become a popular reading ofThe Shiningnonetheless.
When Danny first sees the Grady twins, theres a skiing poster that reads, Monarch.
This piece of set decoration stands out, because Ullman said there was no skiing in the area.
A theory claims that Monarch was the codename for the CIAs notorious MKUltra mind control experiments.
But Jack is told the girls were about eight and ten, so they werent twins.
This means that the girls Danny sees might not be Gradys daughters after all.
Theres a common theory thatWendy hallucinates the events ofThe Shining.
It could be a projection of Wendys fears about the job.
This would explain why Wendy is so cartoonishly mistreated throughout the film.
The deep psychological terror ofThe Shiningcould be a cinematic representation of Dannys trauma from being sexually abused.
The film reflects a childs idea of sexuality; Jack is kissed by a naked woman.
Where the Minotaur chased Theseus through a labyrinth, Jack chases Danny through a hedge maze.
He even does this look while ominously gazing over a scale model of the hedge maze.
The horror story has been read as a metaphor for Americas past coming back to haunt it.
The soundtrack includes a few unsettling post-war compositions inspired by the Holocaust.
The comparison between the Overlook and Hell is clearer in Stephen Kings original novel.
At the end of the book, the hotel explodes into a spectacular ball of fire.
So, not only doesThe Shiningimply that the Overlook is Hell; it implies that Jack is the Devil.
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