El resplandor

Típico Stanley Kubrick. No hay un momento en la película que no forme parte de un elaborado mosaico de laberinto psicológico. Todo está perfectamente cronometrado, fluido, la cámara se mueve la mayor parte del tiempo en ángulo recto y en paralelo con las paredes del hotel estarcido. No hay una sola nota en la música que no sea necesaria. Minimalismo visual y musical del grano más grueso, que realza a la perfección la sensación depresiva del entorno vacío en el que se desarrolla la historia. Vemos a Jack Nicholson no sólo como un personaje cinematográfico, sino que a través del enfoque de dirección visualmente naturalista de Kubrick, nos convertimos en él. Al igual que él, nosotros también nos vamos poniendo nerviosos, hasta temer de lo que seríamos capaces en su lugar. El resplandor casi ni siquiera cumple los requisitos para recibir la etiqueta de «terror» que corresponde a las películas de terror convencionales para el entretenimiento de género. Y aunque es una pena que su frialdad y su meticuloso cálculo no me permitan vivir la historia de los protagonistas de otra forma que no sea con la mente, le doy una calificación completa. Respeto el camino despersonalizado que ha tomado Kubrick, porque encontraré algo nuevo en esta locura cada vez que la vea. (05.06.2002)

The excellent minimalist soundtrack couldn't be better, and some scenes, especially the bathroom scene and the boy's vision of dismembered children in the hotel corridor, are truly horrifying, but I still have some reservations. Jack Nicholson, as excellent as he is, overacts disgustingly in some scenes; if that's the director's intention, I didn't quite get it. And Shelley Duvall, as she runs around the hotel with a knife in her hand, tries to play scared, but you can see in her face that she's not very good at it. But these are just tiny blemishes on the beauty of the whole. (11.11.2003)

Stanley Kubrick met with horror for the first and last time in 1980 to elevate the genre to slightly different dimensions, creating a valuable piece and one of his more digestible works. Nicholson's devilish one-man show and the musical accompaniment composed of disharmonies and squeaky sounds heavily contributed to this, maintaining an unpleasant feeling of tension throughout. However, the result somewhat pales in comparison to King's brilliant source material, possibly due to inadequate psychological groundwork. 70% (31.03.2006)

Redrum. Redrum. Redrum. The main asset of this movie is neither Nicholson, nor Kubrick’s precise directing, but the flawless atmosphere in the mountain top hotel. Kubrick’s loose adaptation of King’s novel is attractive due to it being actually only very loosely based on the motifs in one of King’s best stories and is not a mere idealess “one to one" adaptation (however much I may think that Torrance’s fall was far too sudden in comparison with the gradual descent in the book). redruM! (30.01.2007)

I may be strange, but I tried to read King's book three times, and I always put it down about 100 pages. I didn't like it. But the film immediately got to me through its suggestive atmosphere of creeping terror, in which Jack Nicholson's masterful performance plays a big part. He plays Jack Torrance like a harp, first quietly with all the dark undertones, and then suddenly he starts to yank on all the strings. Jack's transformation into a monster is gradual, and he's basically "making" this film. Kubrick admirably managed to create fear without darkness and cramped spaces. The fear of The Shining is an airy, light, spacious fear... And that's absolutely unique. The film also feels authentic because the evil seems to have no source – is it "from inside" Jack, or is it evil embodied in the genius loci? Is Jack's madness really just the work of his bruised psyche? The viewer is stuck in the same uncertainty as the main heroes of the film - it is difficult to determine the distribution of forces between reality and the supernatural. But everything only leads to one thing... REDRUM... did it also give you goose bumps? (30.01.2004)