In the shining there is the Exposition, the complication, the climax and the resolution. The exposition of the shining is when everything is established. The audience meet the characters, the location and new job. The complications begin when the father, Jack, is told about a caretaker from a few years ago. Other complications are 'Tony' and the room 237. The climax's of the film would be the chases in the maze, Jack and Wendy (the bat) on the stairs and the Jack with the axe. The resolution of the film would be when Wendy and Danny escape and Jack freezing to death.
The film is split up into the beginning, middle and end. In the beginning we meet the characters, we have the interview and we move to the hotel and have the tour. This is ellipsis and it only takes several minutes to show all this. The middle section shows the family at the hotel. Jack is getting on with his book and starting to see things strangely. Near the end of the middle section, Jack turns mad. The The ending shows Jack completely mad and trying to kill his family. The story ends with the mother and son escaping and Jack dying.
There are different devices used to tell the story.
One of them being 'ellipsis'. As I have already mentioned this is when a large period of time is shown in a matter of minutes in the film. Most films have ellipsis as they show days weeks or months in a couple of hours of film. This is done by only showing what is important.
The film is linear meaning that the beginning of the film as at the beginning and the end of the film shows the end. Although the film is linear it uses flashbacks. Danny with 'the shining' has flashbacks which shows him what has happened and what is about to happen. At parts in the film, the audience are unsure whether these are flashbacks are of the future as well as the past. In the shining there are maguffins. These are things that put in the film just to confuse the audience. Examples of this are the blood coming out of the elevator and the 'animal' and the man in the bedroom. Another device is Deus ex machina. This is when the views thing 'oh right' when everything comes together at the end. There are arguments that the shining does and doesn't have this. An example of this is that Jack has always been the caretaker; and arguments against this is that these things were only put in there to confuse the audience.
The film is another adaptation of a noval by Steven King. They chose Jack Nicholson to play Jack Torrence as people knew he was good at acting 'madness'. He had recently been in a film where his charactor had gone mad. This would attract audiences because they knew the acting would be good.
Stanley Kubrick has a definite style of film making. A feature of his style are long tracking shots. For example when the camera follows Danny on his tricycle peddling around the hotel corridors. The shots of this are filmed using a steady cam, so that the filming stays smooth. Another feature is that he allows the actors to create the characters. The actor makes the the character more realistic. Music is also important. In the shinning there always seems to be some sort of back ground music playing. This can create the suspense and fear.
In the scene of 'Here's Johnny', the film creates meaning. The clip make the english feel fear. This is created by many things. One being the music. There is always music playing, in this scene it is a low hmm, creating suspense. As well as the music other sounds create fear, such as the axe crashing in to the doors and the screaming from Wendy. The actions of Jack creates fear. He has an axe and is smashing down a door. The camera thrashes from side to side following the axe smashing into the door. The axe itself creates fear. Connotations of an axe are chopping, violence and murder.
The film also uses new advances in technology. For example steadicam. This allows a very smooth shot even when the operator is moving quickly over an uneven surface. The Shinning was one of the first films to use steady cam.
