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2001: A Space Odyssey Explained: Part 2

This is the second and final part of my analysis of 2001: A Space Odyssey. For the first part, in which I explain “The Dawn of Man” and HAL’s malfunction and demise, go here. 

It’s time to give the viewers what they want: an explanation of 2001‘s famously bewildering ending. What happens to Dave in Jupiter’s airspace? What is the “Starchild” that appears in movie’s final shot?

Before we begin, it’s worth noting that the film’s portrayal of man as an “in between” creature waiting for transcendence comes from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. His fiction, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” is about a prophet who encourages mankind to surpass himself, thereby becoming an Ubermensch (“Superman”). In fact, the famous musical motif that recurs throughout the film is Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” a classical piece named after and inspired by Nietzsche’s text. It’s no accident, then, that Kubrick uses this motif to signal major leaps forward.

But simply understanding Nietzsche’s influence doesn’t explain the specific nature of Dave’s transformation at the end of the film. Yes, the Starchild is surely Kubrick’s version of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch. But how, in Kubrick’s view, does one reach this state?

To answer, we must consider the many visual cues in 2001 linking space flight with the mechanics of film. For starters, Discovery One’s main chamber looks just like a giant film roll:

The space pods, too, display aesthetics linking them to film rolls. So does the station featured in the opening space travel sequence.

But perhaps the boldest hint that the medium of film is important to the meaning of 2001 is hidden in plain sight: the monolith itself, which, when rotated, resembles a blank movie screen.

This visual similarity between the monolith and the movie screen has been highlighted by other critics, including Gerard Loughlin and Rob Ager. They note that during the famous “Stargate” sequence of dazzling lights, the display initially has a vertical orientation but then suddenly shifts to a horizontal orientation. They interpret this as a subliminal hint that the monolith, too, should be shifted from a vertical to a horizontal orientation to reveal its symbolic significance.

In addition, visuals like the slow zoom shot below appear to emphasize the rectangular shape of the movie screen. This allows us to connect that shape to the monolith’s similar dimensions.

Lastly, the film opens with over two minutes of a solid black screen. On first watch, this opening feels unnecessary or wasteful, but it’s actually yet another subliminal linkage between the shape of the monolith and the shape of the screen. Essentially, Kubrick is forcing us to watch the monolith, rotated 90 degrees.

Importantly, though, this mental rotation isn’t always required to visually link the monolith and the movie screen. That’s because one monolith—the one orbiting Jupiter—appears in horizontal orientation already, exactly like the screen.

This particular monolith, then, is the first to appear in its symbolically “true” form—the most screen-like monolith yet. Combined with the aforementioned film-related imagery during the mission, this suggests an allegorical framework crucial to understanding 2001. Namely, that Discovery One’s journey to find the orbiting Jupiter monolith represents man’s journey toward discovering the medium of film.

This framework unlocks the answers to the movie’s final chapter.

Consider that the monolith on the Moon is associated with photography: Floyd and his group conspicuously gather to take a picture of it. Photography is one technological step away from filmmaking. And indeed, this Moon monolith serves as a checkpoint of man’s technological progress, signaling to Jupiter in apparent recognition of humanity’s readiness for a larger step. Thus, the symbolic meaning of this moment is that if man is taking photographs, he’s ready advance to film—just as, in the literal narrative, once man reaches the Moon, he’s deemed ready to trek to Jupiter.

In fact, in this scene the symbolic narrative is arguably more influential than the literal narrative. After all, the signal from the monolith only initiates once Floyd and his peers try to photograph it—not when they first dig it up.

And the receding of the literal narrative in favor of the symbolic narrative only continues, such that by the time Dave reaches Jupiter’s airspace (“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite”), the film is completely symbolic with no literal narrative at all. This presents a major viewing challenge—one of the most notoriously challenging in all of cinema. But since we’ve established the correct allegorical framework, we can explain the nature of Dave’s abstract experiences upon arriving there.

As we’ve said, Dave reaching the horizontal monolith orbiting Jupiter represents mankind reaching the cinema screen: Dave has symbolically “discovered” film. Accordingly, the subsequent images he witnesses explore the power of that discovery. Each of the abstract sequences following Dave’s arrival at Jupiter presents a different aspect of the nature and capabilities of film.

The first of those sequences is the aforementioned Stargate. The key to understanding this trippy display is that it conveys the toolkit of filmmaking: color, shape, and music. These formless elements dance around the screen with no context or purpose. They’re the medium’s sculpting clay, waiting to be harnessed by a filmmaker.

The formless elements then begin to crystallize, and Dave witnesses a series of colorful landscape images. These sceneries, several of which include bodies of water, don’t depict the gaseous Jupiter or its rocky moons. Rather, they’re images of Earth, only with neon color schema. This conveys seeing familiar things in a different light: filmmaking allows us a new perspective on the ordinary.

Recall the line from Kubrick’s next film, A Clockwork Orange (1972): “The colors of the world only seem really real when you viddy them on a screen.” Dave, witnessing the unusually colored landscape shots, is seeing things “really real” for the first time, experiencing the ability of cinema to reveal new perspectives.

And hasn’t Kubrick already made good on this filmmaking credo—hasn’t he already shown the world in a “different light?” Recall the thematic statements analyzed in Part 1 of this analysis, particularly regarding mankind’s inherent brutality and the rooting of all technology in violence. Remember, too, our analysis of HAL’s demise, which explored the nature of human deception and touched upon our species’ remarkable drive to brave the unknown. These insightful artistic depictions are excellent examples of the capabilities of film celebrated in the movie’s final chapter.

Plus, Dave’s eye also appears in the neon colors that saturate the landscapes. This indicates that not only does he see the outside world in a different light; he is altered, as well. The takeaway: film can inspire us to change.

After the landscapes, the tools of film that were introduced in the Stargate solidify even further, such that they’re now completely harnessed. A realistic looking sequence ensues inside a strange domestic layout.

It’s tempting to interpret this as a literal occurrence, given its lifelike appearance. But we’re still in the realm of the symbolic, as the scene unfolds in a dreamlike, nonlinear manner. Therefore, by continuing to adhere to our framework of interpreting Dave’s Jupiter experiences as a display of film’s power and methods, we can explain the sequence’s true meaning.

Let’s summarize what happens. Dave, progressing through the strange environment, rapidly ages in a strange way. Three consecutive times, he observes an older version of himself in a different part of the layout, and this version then becomes the focal point of the shot, with the younger self apparently vanishing. The last and oldest Dave appears on his deathbed, and he points to a monolith before transforming into the Starchild, which then surveys the Earth.

The key dynamic of this scene is watching: Dave watches himself age. He doesn’t experience the aging process so much as examine it from a distance—including viewing himself very near to death. Essentially, Kubrick is illustrating that the opportunity to watch ourselves and our species from a detached perspective (via cinema) can help us accept our inevitable aging and death.

Various details of the scene help clarify this vision. For example, Dave ages startlingly quickly, in only a few minutes, gesturing toward the incredible brevity of life. In addition, Dave accidentally shatters a glass, which is shown in closeup, perhaps emphasizing life’s fragility. Finally, Dave advances through the stages of life with no apparent companionship, suggesting a solitary journey. In summary, according to Kubrick, viewing our own lives through the revealing lens of film may teach us the ultimate truth of a brief, fragile, isolated existence.

That may sound depressing, but Kubrick doesn’t see it that way. We know this because after viewing his own aging, Dave becomes the Starchild: the next stage in human evolution. Based on our analysis of this scene and earlier ones, we can conclude that this new stage of humanity is a being with heightened awareness: able to see the world from an enlightened perspective that includes the facts of mortality, thanks to the reflections enabled by the medium of film.

But what might this enlightened perspective entail, specifically? What changes will a heightened awareness of our mortality inspire?

Well, in Part 1 we concluded that Dave’s defeat of HAL seemed to mark the end of the technological tradition that began with the bone-weapon, anticipating a leap beyond that violence to a new human condition. And indeed, Dave’s viewing of his own mortality offers a logical repudiation of violence. After all, why unleash death and destruction, when we’re all destined to die, anyway? Why not live our lives in peace? With proper awareness of the brevity and fragility of life, our drive toward violence may be extinguished.

This newfound rejection of violence and weaponry is made more explicit in both the initial script and Arthur C. Clarke’s tandem novel, which end with the Starchild detonating nuclear bombs orbiting Earth to prevent their use. As mentioned in Part 1, all nuclear references were eliminated from 2001 to avoid repeating Dr. Strangelove, but this original ending would have concretely emphasized that the Starchild is opposed to violence (and even motivated to take action to prevent it). As it is, we’re left to infer this ourselves.

Given that Kubrick had portrayed man as a fundamentally weapon-using, brutal animal in “The Dawn of Man,” the newfound pacifism of the Starchild is a momentous change—a Nietzschean progression, in fact, to a new kind of species. And imagery throughout the film underscores this, especially in “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.”

Consider the images below, which evoke insemination, conception, and the growth of a fetus. They hint that by completing the mission to Jupiter and symbolically discovering film—thereby enabling reflection that leads to the discarding of violent methods—Dave indeed initiates the “birth” of something new.

Consider also the Renaissance art that fills the strange room where Dave witnesses his aging and death—another reference to an imminent “rebirth.”

Finally, two brief scenes involve characters wishing loved ones a happy birthday, yet another presaging of an upcoming “birth” of a new category of organism.

All things considered, it’s clear that the Starchild is Kubrick’s rendition of the Nietzschean Ubermensch: a step beyond man. This “Superman” is, in a word, a filmgoer: one who observes life from the revealing, detached perspective of cinema, gaining enhanced awareness of the hard facts of mortality. Applying this newfound rationality and existential understanding, he or she forgoes humanity’s previous attachment to weapons and violence, promising a new era of peace.

I’ll go ahead and say it: I think 2001: A Space Odyssey is the greatest film ever made. What other cinematic work offers the kind of vision and scope highlighted in this analysis? For a long time I held off on writing this piece, because I worried that I wouldn’t be able to do justice to the breadth of 2001‘s artistry in a readable Internet format. And I still believe that there’s far more to discuss beyond what I’ve covered. But I hope that I’ve opened up the movie for just that kind of discussion, so that I might later come across more analysis that helps me build on my understanding of this masterpiece—and that perhaps brings me a little closer to Kubrick’s version of the Ubermensch.

 

—-Jim Andersen

For more Kubrickian movies explained, see my piece on Eyes Wide Shut.

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2001: A Space Odyssey Explained: Part 1

This is Part 1 of my two-part explanation of the meaning of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. For Part 2, go here.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) has awed viewers with its vision and craft for over fifty years. Interpreting it, though, remains a notorious challenge. Experts’ attempts to understand the sci-fi landmark’s ambiguous imagery and characters are numerous enough to populate an entire Wikipedia page. If you read the page, though, you’ll see that these interpretations tend to skew toward the arcane, kooky, and even mystic.

What’s lacking is a grounded analysis written for regular viewers. My aim, then, will be to coherently explain the meaning of 2001’s narrative. Of course, this will include a concrete, definitive interpretation of its famous ending.

My main thesis, which I’ll go on to demonstrate, is that 2001 is a statement about the awesome possibilities of the medium of film. More specifically, 2001: A Space Odyssey is an idealistic proclamation of film as an agent for transcending humanity’s violent nature, particularly through its ability to bolster reflection and awareness.

That statement leaves a lot of ground to cover. But we can start with the theme of transcendence, since it forms the structure of the film. 2001 consists of three stages of evolution: 1) apes before the discovery of weapons, 2) man, and 3) the “Starchild” image. These stages are symbolized by the opening title screen, which features a shadowy Earth—behind which rises the glowing Moon—behind which rises the shining sun.

Three destinations, each brighter than the last. This single image foreshadows the course of the film.

Even more important than the evolutionary stages, though, are the transitions between them. Such transitions, it appears, can only occur through interactions with peculiar black monoliths, which appear intermittently throughout the movie. The first such monolith appears to a tribe of apes in the desert, inspiring them to use animal bones as weapons to dominate their rivals. This, as the title card declares, is Kubrick’s rendition of “The Dawn of Man.”

It’s tempting to summarize this sequence as the discovery of “tools.” But this isn’t specific enough. After all, only one tool is used: a weapon. And the introduction of weapons specifically—as opposed to tools in general—initiates human-like changes in the apes. For example, armed with bones, the apes abandon their defensive crouches and walk upright. Plus, with plentiful meat from killed animals, the tribe now eats with newfound ferocity, reminiscent of our habits today. Finally, children now examine and play with bones, evoking modern day childhood fascination with guns and other weapons.

The central statement of this section, then, is that man is fundamentally a weapon-using animal. This is a Kubrickian statement if there ever was one. Consider the director’s earlier films like the antiwar Paths of Glory (1957) and the apocalyptic Cold War parody Dr. Strangelove (1963), which also focus on man’s relationship to war and weaponry.

And just like in those films, the use of weapons in 2001 is portrayed negatively and unsparingly. For instance, when the lead ape of the rival tribe is whacked to the ground, each ape in the first tribe comes forward to administer unnecessary additional blows—a vicious, unsettling scene.

But in 2001, unlike the other films mentioned, Kubrick doesn’t dwell on man’s violent tendencies. Instead, after the weapon-using apes’ victory, he cuts to an orbiting spaceship, and the movie’s focus shifts to the potential for a second evolutionary leap. Thus, while the story of the apes serves to illustrate humanity’s lowly, savage condition, the bulk of the film depicts how we might surpass that condition.

Importantly, there’s no title card accompanying the cut to outer space; we’re still watching “The Dawn of Man.” Kubrick apparently isn’t impressed with our societal progress. Space flight and antigravity toilets notwithstanding, we’re still fundamentally the weapon-using creatures portrayed in the first episode.

In early drafts of the script, this stasis was emphasized even further. The orbiting spacecraft were explicitly identified as nuclear weapons in a multinational nuclear stalemate. These nuclear references were later eliminated to separate the film from Dr. Strangelove, but even without them, nothing in this section of 2001 suggests that the intervening millennia have seen major changes to the human condition laid out early in the film.

However, such a change may be forthcoming. That’s because Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) is on his way to the Clavius Moon base to see a monolith recently dug up on the Moon—direct evidence of alien intelligence. And when that monolith sends a radio signal to Jupiter, humanity wastes no time (only an 18 month turnaround) preparing a mission to the faraway planet to find out what—or who—is out there.

To me, this promptness recalls the moment when the apes quickly surround and touch the monolith, which is wholly unfamiliar to them and potentially dangerous. Perhaps there is one human trait that Kubrick does admire: brave curiosity in the face of the unknown.

Can that curiosity lead us to make another leap forward and shed our species’ cruel and brutal ways? That’s the question of the next and longest episode of the film: “Mission to Jupiter.”

Drs. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) are the protagonists now. They have the momentous task of finding the receiver of the mysterious radio signal. But they run into a major problem: their HAL9000 computer, thought to be infallible, begins acting strangely and ultimately kills Frank along with three hibernating astronauts.

The conventional explanation, which I see no reason to dispute, for HAL’s errant behavior is that he has competing objectives. The scientists on Earth have tasked him with keeping secret the facts about the monolith dug up on the Moon, whereas his programming discourages him from “distort[ing] information.”

Caught between these goals, HAL teeters between revealing the secret and hiding it from the astronauts. He confides to Dave that the “rumors of something being dug up on the Moon” are “difficult to put out of my mind” but then abruptly ends the conversation by reporting a fault in one of the ship’s communication units—a report that appears to be baseless, as per the findings of an identical 9000 computer on Earth.

Adding to the evidence that HAL has misidentified the fault is his later remark to Dave that “you and Frank were planning to disconnect me.” This isn’t necessarily true: Dave and Frank were only planning to disconnect HAL if he were proven to be in error. The remark demonstrates that HAL lacks confidence or even knows his report to be incorrect.

And when threatened, HAL resorts to murder. Thus, the human technological tradition that began with an instrument of violence has culminated in an instrument that carries out its own violence—against mankind. This may have been inevitable. After all, inherent in the original DNA of man’s inventions, as we saw in “The Dawn of Man,” was brutality; therefore, it makes sense that man’s ultimate invention, a sentient AI, would assume that brutal character.

Note that HAL’s eyepiece often appears in a rectangular black frame reminiscent of the monolith. This visually links him to the episode in which apes discovered weapons. Appropriate, since he’s the end result of that discovery.

An interesting point about HAL is that his inability to keep a secret (or at least his discomfort with doing so) is contrasted with the smooth talking of Heywood Floyd during his trek to Clavius. In that section, scientists pressure Floyd to “clear up the great big mystery” of why Clavius has been out of communication. But Floyd stonewalls them, concealing the shocking finding of the monolith. Later, Floyd urges scientists at the base to uphold “absolute secrecy” and has them sign oaths to ensure their adherence to the cover story of an epidemic.

If Floyd and his fellow Clavius scientists can deceive so seamlessly, then why can’t the far more intelligent HAL? Events in the film suggest that it’s because humans, unlike HAL, are aware of their own mortality.

Consider that HAL’s facility with lying increases dramatically after he lip-reads Frank and Dave discussing his possible disconnection, a previously unthinkable development. Whereas HAL had struggled earlier to maintain composure and secrecy during his “crew psychology report” conversation with Dave, after the lip-reading scene he lies constantly with no apparent hesitation.

For example, he states that he doesn’t know how Frank went soaring into space (“I don’t have enough information”) and gives false reasoning for killing him (“This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it”). As his demise approaches, he sinks to pathetic phoniness (“I can assure you, very confidently, that it’s going to be alright again”). Thus, it seems that the materialization of the possibility of death is what affords him the one intellectual faculty he had previously lacked: the ability to lie.

Kubrick therefore provides another major statement about the nature of man: that it’s the specter of death that enables or encourages us to deceive one another. And there’s convincing logic to this. After all, mortality could be said to be the foundation for all fear, and fear may be the essential motive behind all deception. When HAL has no reason to believe that he’ll ever be shut down, he has none of the human fear that would prompt him to ever lie, so he stumbles when tasked to do so. But after learning of his possible disconnection, he becomes more deceptive (and by extension, more humanlike), finally admitting to the basis for his alteration: “I’m afraid.”

If HAL is the culmination of the technological tradition that started with the bone-weapon, and if the emergence of that tradition constituted “The Dawn of Man,” then HAL’s demise, for all intents and purposes, represents the end of man. Technology has run its course, which means that, by definition, so have we. Like the apes before they encountered the monolith, humanity is in its twilight. Kubrick provides visual cues to underscore this, as HAL’s eyepiece evokes the sun rising and setting shortly before mankind’s origination.

Plus, during HAL’s disconnection, monolith-like rectangles emerge from his hardware, recalling the evolutionary leap that founded mankind and suggesting that a similar leap could be forthcoming.

Even Dave’s incredible blast through the airlock harkens back to aspects of the apes’ leap forward. Recall how the apes gather around and touch the strange monolith, their courage outweighing their fear of the unknown. Dave’s gumption in passing through the mysterious vacuum of space without a helmet—which HAL assumes impossible—evokes that same courage. Dave has followed in the footsteps of his distant ancestors, whose boldness led them to a colossal discovery. What, then, is in store for him?

In summary, all signs, both visual and narrative, point to HAL’s death anticipating a major evolutionary leap forward comparable to the one shown in “The Dawn of Man.” And indeed, Dave’s experiences following HAL’s defeat leave him apparently transformed into a spectacular, fetus-like being. It’s clear that man has leapt forward again. But how did this transformation take place, and what is the nature of Dave’s new form?

End of Part 1

Continue to the second and final part of this analysis.

 

–Jim Andersen

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A Clockwork Orange Explained

A Clockwork Orange (1971) is disturbing, bizarre, and, like all of Stanley Kubrick’s major films, a directorial masterpiece rife for analysis. In this essay, I’ll explain how it satirizes modern society with panoramic scope, ultimately asserting that our various social structures are nothing more than hypocritical manifestations of the innate human desire to control one another, such that the tame condition of the modern man is an artificial result of the many forces of greed acting on him at all times.

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Kubrick opens with a sickening sequence introducing Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) as the leader of a gang of “droogs” wreaking havoc on future London. In addition to being the leader of the gang, Alex is especially sociopathic among them: whereas the other three complain that their thieving ambitions are too low, revealing that their motivations are mainly material, Alex dismisses such petty concerns, reminding them, “You have all you need!” Apparently, in contrast to his accomplices, Alex simply enjoys violence and rape for their own sake—a truly savage, dangerous individual.

And an episode after the gang’s vicious spree of “ultraviolence” spotlights another unsavory quality of Alex’s that will be important to the film’s thematic core. When his droogs stage a rebellion of sorts against him, Alex responds with ferocity, whacking Georgie in the codpiece and bloodying up his comrade, Dim. He plunges both into the marina and afterward gloats:

Now they knew who was master and leader. Sheep, thought I.

Thus, we see that Alex relishes commanding and ordering his peers, and he’s willing to use brutal means to retain his ability to do so.

This trait foreshadows the behavior of nearly every character he meets from that point forward in the film. For example, once the gang’s subsequent job ends in disaster and Alex is left at the mercy of the London penal system, he’s acquainted with Chief Guard Barnes (Michael Bates), the prison’s exaggeratedly despotic officer. Barnes is constantly barking purposeless orders (“Pick that up and put it down properly!”) just to lord it over the inmates, wielding his institutional authority with dimwitted pleasure. He has the implied power to beat the inmates into submission if he needs to, although he can’t seem to accomplish this with Alex, whose sly sneer stubbornly demonstrates that, predating One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘s (1975) R.P. MacMurphy, he hasn’t quite been dominated by routine and regimentation.

The next figure of authority Alex encounters is the chaplain (Godfrey Quigley), who isn’t quite as effective an authoritarian as Barnes, but nevertheless promises dire consequences for the boys if they don’t change their ways. He preaches that in the next life, souls of unrepentant sinners “scream in anguish and unendurable agony…their skin rotting and peeling…a fireball spinning in their screaming guts!” After this wild speech, which doesn’t appear to move the inmates, the chaplain leads a hymn of warning to the boys:

I was a wandering sheep / I did not love the fold / I did not love my shepherd / I would not be controlled.

So while the chaplain’s methods are plenty different from Barnes’, both characters attempt to coerce Alex into submission via the threat of physical punishment. Ironically, then, after the stage demonstration of Alex’s “cure,” the chaplain protests, “Self interest, the fear of physical pain…drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement!” It seems the chaplain has forgotten that his own sermonizing was founded on those very principles, invoking “anguish and unendurable agony” as its sole impetus for reform.

Yet another agent of coercion is the medical team headed by Dr. Brodsky (Carl Duering) and Dr. Branom (Madge Ryan). Serious scientists, they appear to despise the melodramatic, overly officious Barnes. This engenders hope that Alex’s new caretakers will be less tyrannical than the old ones. But when Alex later notes the unpleasantness of his new conditioning, Dr. Branom delivers a speech no less pious or condescending than what Barnes or the chaplain might have given:

Of course it was terrible. Violence is a very terrible thing. … You see, when we’re healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You’re becoming healthy, that’s all.

Once again, the centerpiece of the philosophy is using physical pain or discomfort to force Alex to behave. And this time, it’s not only rhetoric, as the scientists’ Ludovico Technique endows Alex with a physiological aversion to sex and violence: a permanent, inescapable threat of pain.

Notably, when Alex begs that the treatment be stopped, offering a fairly convincing credo against violence (“It’s wrong because it’s like, against society!”), Brodsky dismisses his pleading, preferring the coercive means of correction to the authentic enlightenment of his patient. And when Alex rails against the use of Beethoven in the musical score, Brodsky remarks to Branom, “Here’s the punishment element, perhaps,” apparently oblivious, like the chaplain, to the reality that his entire system of reformation is based on physical punishment. Also similarly to the chaplain, Brodsky pays empty lip service to the value of free choice, telling Alex, “The choice has been all yours!”—while ignoring Alex’s pleas to desist the treatment.

We see Chief Guard Barnes for the last time in the post-treatment demonstration. He’s moody and skeptical at first, because Minister Frederick (Anthony Sharp) denounces his favored institutional methods as ineffective “hypocrisy.” But by the end of the demonstration, he’s clapping profusely, having derived great enjoyment from Alex’s humiliation on stage. It appears, then, that Barnes actually cares little about the institutional methods that he outwardly champions; what he truly values is seeing adversaries like Alex overpowered, their spirits crushed.

And neither do Minister Sharp’s denunciations of prison ward “hypocrisy” carry any moral weight. Sharp’s quiet comments to his peers reveal that he cares only about retaining his political power.

Given the unwelcome influence of these meddlers, there’s a temptation to sympathize with Alex. Indeed, believing that Kubrick aims to lionize his vicious protagonist is the kernel from which the worst reviews of A Clockwork Orange have sprung. Take Roger Ebert’s uncharacteristically bad 2-star review for example, or Pauline Kael’s, well, characteristically bad takedown in the New Yorker.

But make no mistake: if we find ourselves too fond of Alex—a murderer and rapist—then that’s on us. Recall the earlier episode during which Alex violently retakes control over his droogs, afterward comparing them to “sheep.” Crucially, the egomania that he demonstrates in that section of the movie is merely reflected in the aforementioned characters that exert control over him in these later events: just as Alex endeavors to keep his mates in line while he’s top dog, his friends and antagonists in positions of power target him for coercion after his arrest. So there’s no particular reason to sympathize with Alex, other than that we know him well; this movie consists of variations on a theme, and Alex’s early behavior is merely one of the variations.

Another variation that comes into focus later in the film is Alex’s own family. Although his parents are portrayed as doddering buffoons, their actions after he’s released from prison are serious, even sinister. Rather than accept him back into their home after his reformation, they kick him out on to the street with no money or direction, claiming they’ve leased his bedroom to a lodger named Joe. But Joe himself implies that the real reason Alex is no longer welcome is the embarrassment he caused his parents with his crimes.

At the end of the film, Alex’s father expresses regret for denying him a home—but this is only after Alex’s reputation has been rehabilitated through positive press. Thus, Alex’s family is no source of love, but rather yet another entity attempting to force him into submission. When he defies them, they replace him with an obedient surrogate: someone who, unlike Alex, will do as they wish.

In the last third of the movie, Georgie and Dim use their newfound authority as police to nearly drown Alex with impunity (just as he plunged them into the marina), and writer Frank Alexander (Patrick Magee) drives him to suicide with the dreaded Beethoven’s 9th. These characters act primarily for revenge, and, in Alexander’s case, political benefit. Regardless of their motivations, though, it appears that they, too, are guilty of what Barnes, the chaplain, Brodsky, Frederick, Alex’s parents, and Alex himself are also guilty of: attempting to control other people for their own enjoyment and their own selfish benefit.

So what is the end result of these many power grabs? Well, Alex wakes up in a hospital after attempting suicide, and something is…not quite right with him. A psychiatrist provides some picture prompts, and although Alex proves once again able to contemplate sex and violence, his responses are odd and illogical. For example, when shown a picture of a peacock with the easy prompt, “Isn’t the plumage beautiful?” he offers: “Cabbages…knickers…uh…it’s not got…uh, a beak.”

Huh? Alex, laughing childishly after these gibberish non-sequiturs, is a far cry from the wry, conniving young malchick we met at the beginning of the film, an apparent result of the brain surgery to reverse the Ludovico Technique.

When Minister Frederick pays him a visit, the symbolic meaning of this new condition becomes clear. Alex requests that Frederick literally spoon-feed him his meal as Frederick offers him a good salary and a job of his choice in exchange for political cooperation. The imagery is clear: Alex has become infantilized at the hands of the state. No longer freethinking and enterprising, he’s happily dependent on the government to meet his every need.

Kubrick, then, has offered us a vision of the modern man: a blissfully mindless leech. More importantly, he has provided an examination of how we came to be this way: through the effects of the incessant human need to control one another. Alex’s adventures combine to leave him physically incapacitated, babbling like a small child, with the government shoveling food into his willing mouth.

So Alex may pronounce himself “cured”—but is he really? In the final scene, he imagines himself having sex, at first glance a potential triumph of individual freedom. But if we look closer we can observe that this is a relatively tame, proper sex scene, with, importantly, a small crowd of well-dressed people watching in approval. Alex’s journey, it appears, has stamped out his brutality in favor of a tamer sexuality, a libido approved by the well-to-do. A libido, in other words, more familiar to us, the inhabitants of modern society, who are also subject to the many sources of control—religion, the nuclear family, politics, law enforcement—that act on Alex and render him a listless government prop.

Is it a good thing that Alex’s horrific imagination has been watered down to fantasizing about bourgeoisie-approved, happily consensual sex? Is it a bad thing? I think we owe it to ourselves as serious viewers to conclude that Kubrick, as always, is a dispassionate observer. I indicated before, he has neither sympathy nor animus for Alex. His project, rather, is to show us that, for better or worse, the forces that shape our minds from animal clay into civilized human moldings are characterized by hypocrisy, greed, and self-interest.

 

–Jim Andersen

For more movies explained, see my piece on Eyes Wide Shut.

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Eyes Wide Shut Explained: Part 2

This is Part 2 of my analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. For Part 1, go here.

I’m aware that my analysis in Part 1 only explained the movie’s symbolism and didn’t fill any of its frustrating plot holes. This is because only through an understanding of the symbolism can we piece together the disjointed plot.

First we’ll focus on the mystery of Mandy the prostitute, a.k.a. Amanda Curran, who has three appearances: first she overdoses in Ziegler’s bathroom; later, she “redeems” Bill at the orgy; finally, she turns up dead in the morgue. Ziegler denies foul play in her death, but he’s extremely unconvincing in doing so. He merely discredits her as a “hooker” and even exclaims at one point, “her door was locked from the inside, police are happy, end of story!” It’s pretty clear to Bill—and us—that Mandy was killed.

But the big, unresolved question is: Why would Mandy’s act of redemption at the orgy lead to her having been killed? What does “redeem” even mean?

The key is that this line of questioning is misguided, because it assumes that the events of the orgy scene are their own unique events. As we’ve established, however, the orgy is Bill’s dreamlike reflection of the party at Victor Ziegler’s house. Thus, what we should be asking is: what does Mandy do at the Ziegler party that would cause her to be murdered, and how is that projected by Bill into the orgy scene?

Once we ask this, we arrive at an almost too-simple answer: Mandy is killed to protect Ziegler’s reputation following the incident in his bathroom.

This is not a farfetched speculation. Although Kubrick films the bathroom scene in a low-key, casual tone, the situation is horrific. Ziegler, a married man of tremendous wealth, has a drugged, naked prostitute lying unconscious in his own bathroom while he throws a house party.

I doubt anyone would argue that Ziegler is above ordering someone’s death, especially someone as low on the socioeconomic ladder as Mandy. Remember that later on he demonstrates ugly contempt for her: “She was a hooker. That’s what she was.”

Plus, by examining Bill’s dreamlike reimagining of Ziegler’s party—the orgy sequence—we can see that Bill feared for Mandy’s safety even before she was killed. The man in the red cloak, who, as we’ve determined, represents Ziegler, tells Bill, ominously, “Nothing can change her fate now.” This represents Bill at the end of the bathroom scene worrying that Ziegler will have Mandy killed to keep her from talking.

Thus, despite Bill’s composed demeanor in Ziegler’s bathroom, we know from the orgy scene that he was (justifiably) concerned and even pessimistic about Mandy’s safety.

It also seems, given the words of the man in the red cloak during the orgy, that after the bathroom scene Bill feared for his own safety, as well. At the end of the bathroom scene, Ziegler gently requests that Bill keep what he has seen “just between us.” But in the orgy sequence, this is translated as a fearsome threat from the red-cloaked man: “If you tell anyone about what you have seen, there will be the most dire consequences for you and your family!”

It’s interesting to note that, during Ziegler and Bill’s final conversation in Ziegler’s billiards room, they’re ostensibly discussing the events at the orgy, but most of their dialogue sounds more like they’re talking about Ziegler’s bathroom. Bill asks regarding the newspaper article, “Is this the woman at the party?”—but how does Ziegler know that Bill is talking about the orgy and not Ziegler’s own party, when it was the same woman at both events? Plus, a “party” isn’t quite what I’d call the ritual-like event at the mansion, yet Ziegler somehow doesn’t get confused.

Consider also Ziegler’s insistence: “When they took her home she was just fine.” He’s talking about the end of the orgy, but his words evoke Bill’s advice to Ziegler at his own party: “Then, I’d have someone take her home.” The conversation is written this way to indicate that, while the characters discuss the orgy as a literal event, we should really be focusing on what transpired at Ziegler’s house, viewing the orgy as its dreamlike double.

Mandy’s “redemption” at the orgy, therefore, is a representation of how Mandy justified and validated Bill’s presence at the Ziegler party by overdosing, requiring his assistance. Early in the Ziegler party Bill feels insecure and out of his league, but Mandy’s troubles allow him to prove his worth, hence the “redemption.” He projects her medical distress as a melodramatic, intentional intervention on her part. (Ziegler: “You saved my ass.” Bill: “Glad I was here.”)

This all fits neatly together, but I acknowledge that there are some things that still don’t. You may be wondering, for example, about the identity of the mysterious man on the balcony of the orgy mansion. He appears twice: firstly in the aforementioned zoom shot standing on the balcony, during which he and Bill appear to recognize one another; and secondly in a separate scene in which he silently escorts a woman to Bill’s side.

If we were to view the orgy as its own independent event, we would conclude that the man must be Ziegler, since Ziegler later claims to have been there and is the only person we know who could’ve recognized Bill. But even if we were to view the orgy this way, the man’s actions don’t fit Ziegler at all. We first see the man in the grey mask, as previously stated, nodding cordially to Bill; we next see him calmly escorting a woman over to Bill, apparently encouraging her to have sex with him. Contrastingly, Ziegler later reveals that he is furious with Bill for attending the event. The two characters are simply not compatible.

And we know by now that we shouldn’t be asking who the man in the grey mask is literally. It wouldn’t make sense anyway: how could a masked Bill recognize and single out another man in a mask, and the man recognize him in return? We should be asking whom the man represents from the Ziegler party. Ziegler is already represented by the man in the red cloak (flanked by two men in blue, symbolizing his wealth). It can’t be him.

There is, however, a character that Bill recognizes at the Ziegler party and exchanges cordial greetings with: the piano player, Nick Nightingale.

Now, Nick is technically already at the orgy, but don’t get hung up on that. It’s absolutely clear that the man on the balcony represents Nick at the Ziegler party. Consider that Bill sees the man in the grey mask elevated on the balcony, just as he sees Nick elevated onstage playing the piano. And the reciprocal nod between Bill and the man at the orgy is reminiscent of Bill’s catching up with Nick, not of any other exchange at the Ziegler party.

But now the plot hole: we also see the man in the mask escort a woman to Bill at the orgy, while Nick does no such thing at the party.

Or, to be more precise, we don’t see him do any such thing.

When Nick and Bill talk during the party, Nick makes a strange remark during their greetings. Bill says, “I see you’ve become a pianist,” and Nick replies, “Yes, well, my friends call me that.” It’s subtle, and Bill lets it pass, but it’s not clear what Nick is getting at. What do his non-friends call him?

Soon after this, an anonymous man appears and demands: “Nick, I need you a minute.” This is similar to how Bill is later summoned to Ziegler’s bathroom. But if Nick is only playing piano at the event, why would his presence be needed elsewhere? It’s never explained. Something’s off.

Fortunately, what Kubrick hides in the party sequence, he reveals in the orgy ritual. Nick is responsible for procuring the prostitutes at Ziegler’s party. This is made clear by the aforementioned scene in which the man in the grey mask leads the woman to Bill’s side. This woman, who flirtatiously suggests going “someplace quiet,” represents the two models that flirt with Bill at Ziegler’s and all but offer him sex. It’s implied in the orgy sequence, then, that it was Nick who encouraged these “models” to approach Bill at Ziegler’s party. Recall that we never see their introduction, even though we see Sandor Szavost introduce himself to Alice elsewhere in the mansion.

In addition to explaining the Nick’s suspicious comments and activity at the party, this explains another key discrepancy. If we’re assuming that the orgy ritual is only a dreamlike reimagining of earlier events, then it doesn’t make sense that Nick was forced back to Seattle only because he told Bill about the orgy. As with Mandy, we have to find the reason for his punishment within the Ziegler party, not the orgy. And this problem is solved immediately by realizing that it was Nick who hired Mandy, who in turn embarrassed Ziegler by overdosing and necessitating outside help.

Last section. I know it’s been a long read, but I saved the best for last. The only thing we haven’t covered is Alice’s representation at the orgy ritual—because, for some reason, she isn’t represented at all. Or…is she?

Taking a quick, related detour: it’s incongruous that the orgy sequence features appearances multiple appearances from Mandy, given that she only appears at the very end of the Ziegler party episode. Her early appearances at the orgy largely consist of cryptic warnings to Bill, such as, “Go while you still can,” no parallel of which is observed at the Ziegler party, since Mandy doesn’t interact with Bill during the party. If the two sequences are analogs, how to explain Mandy’s expanded role at the orgy?

Now recall that Alice’s bedroom confession causes Bill to worry whether his sexual relationship with Alice has been sustained only because of his income. This dynamic is disturbingly similar, Bill knows, to prostitution, which is why, as I detailed in Part 1 of this analysis, Bill’s subsequent encounters involve prostitution in various forms. We can fill in the last symbolic gap, therefore, by realizing that at the orgy, Mandy represents herself during the redemption scene—but Alice prior to that.

Bill has reimagined his wife as a prostitute. The fact that he projects Alice and Mandy as the same woman in the orgy shows that he perceives uncomfortable similarities between their lifestyles.

This claim works on all levels. When Bill arrives at the orgy, the red-cloaked man “pairs” him with Mandy, just as Ziegler greets Alice and Bill and sends them off with approval. Mandy’s remark, “I’m not sure what you think you’re doing,” is reminiscent of Alice’s “Do you know anyone here?” early in the party. Finally, when Bill asks Mandy at the orgy, “Who are you?” she responds mysteriously with, “You don’t want to know.” Of course he doesn’t: she’s his wife. Bill is reflecting on his own unwillingness to “unmask” the truths of his marriage.

Since this has been a long, heady analysis, I’ll leave its adjunct part up to you, as you watch Eyes Wide Shut again. We’ve talked only about Bill’s psychological experiences and how they manifest in an elaborate, dreamlike sequence. We haven’t talked about Alice’s experiences—but we could if we wanted to, because Alice also reports some dream sequences of her own. Using the manner of analysis that I’ve laid out here, try to connect Alice’s experience at the Ziegler party to her own dreams, which, although not visualized onscreen like Bill’s, are plenty weird and emotionally packed in their own right. 

Perhaps the image that best summarizes Eyes Wide Shut is Ziegler’s pool table. Since we’ve established that red is symbolically linked with sex, we can interpret this image as a commentary that Ziegler, the epitome of the invulnerable elite, uses sex as a game, like billiards, with those of lesser status as the symbolic billiard balls, all for the purpose of maintaining and abusing power. Even well-off people like Bill are mere billiard balls to true bigwigs like Ziegler. The masses act in their own sexual interests, oblivious to the control being exerted on them from the elite.

I suppose, then, that, in the end, my analysis is ultimately a conspiracy theory. Hopefully, it’s been an enjoyable and informative one. Happy re-watching!

 

–Jim Andersen

For more Kubrick masterpieces explained, check out my equally thorough piece on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Movies Explained

Eyes Wide Shut Explained: Part 1

Eyes Wide Shut is Stanley Kubrick’s last film and one of his most difficult to understand. Viewers will likely finish the film with major questions about key events. Who was the woman at the ritual? Who was the man in the grey mask? What was the meaning of the film’s unusual narrative? What was real, and what was a dream?

This piece will definitively answer all of those questions, plus several more. While most analyses of Eyes Wide Shut that I’ve seen focus on connecting the film to dubious, real-world conspiracy theories, my essay below will use actual evidence in the film to draw well supported thematic conclusions. Let the analysis begin.

The action of Eyes Wide Shut begins when Bill Harford’s (Tom Cruise) wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), makes a confession that rattles him. She shares that, in the early years of their marriage, she found herself fantasizing uncontrollably about a naval officer. Since this precipitates such discomfort in Bill, many have concluded that the subject of the movie is sexual jealousy. Jealousy, however, doesn’t quite fit Bill’s behavior. A jealous husband, upon hearing Alice’s confession, would likely have increased his oversight of her out of suspicion. Bill, on the other hand, leaves the house for long periods to go on adventures of his own.

So the first question that will help us understand Eyes Wide Shut is: why does Bill’s bedroom conversation with Alice leave him so upset, and what is the nature of his emotional state following that conversation? The answer, which I’ll go on to support with evidence, is that Bill has become afraid that Alice married him for his money and that, by extension, she doesn’t desire him sexually. 

How this insecurity could arise from Alice’s confession is fairly clear. Her brief fantasy involved a striking officer of presumably lower economic status than Bill, a doctor. Therefore, the story, intentionally or not, casts Bill as the safe, steady choice—and the officer as the desirable but unviable suitor. Although she was “willing to give up… my whole fucking future” for the man, she ultimately remained with Bill, suggesting that she merely settled for him due to his affluence.

And we know that the interplay between money and sex is Bill’s primary concern post-confession because it dominates his subsequent encounters. Bill’s conversation with Marion Nathanson, for instance, replays Alice’s story of the naval officer with Bill in the role of the desirable stranger. Soon afterward, Bill nearly has sex with a prostitute, and after that, he witnesses costume store owner Mr. Millich discover his young daughter in a sexual situation, a discovery that Millich later profits on by prostituting her.

These minor episodes, however, are only thematic openers to the famous “orgy” sequence, in which Bill manages to gain admission to an event that features masked men and women having sex in bizarre, ritualistic fashion.

The key to understanding the orgy is that it represents Bill reflecting on a previous event—the party at Victor Ziegler’s house—through a new lens that has only become available to him following Alice’s confession. As we’ve said, because of Alice’s story about the naval officer, Bill worries that she married him out of economic incentive. Because of that worry, he reflects on the earlier Ziegler party as a hub for the unsettling exchange of sex and money—a reflection brought onscreen in the dreamlike orgy sequence.

Consider that both scenes—the Ziegler party and the orgy—take place at extravagant mansions, and the prospect of sexual adventure, even outside of marriage, is prominent in both. At the Ziegler party, both Bill and Alice flirt with strangers. Ziegler himself, also married, gets in trouble after a prostitute overdoses in his bathroom, necessitating Bill’s medical intervention. Nearly every scene at Ziegler’s party highlights sex as a driving social force.

In addition, the two scenes feature a common dynamic between men and women, in which men are of higher status and women display sex appeal. At Ziegler’s, Bill banters with “a couple of models,” and Ziegler later admits that the woman in his bathroom was “a hooker.” Meanwhile, Alice’s suitor is a rich “friend of the Zieglers.”

It’s fairly obvious that the models who converse with Bill were paid by Ziegler to attend the party, given that even Bill and Alice feel out of their league at the event. Optimistically, the models may have been hired as eye candy; perhaps more realistically, they’ve been paid to be available for the male guests: they all but offer Bill sex, a rather unlikely development unless explained by professional obligation.

Is the Ziegler party, then, all that different from the orgy scene when it comes to the subject of sex? Recall that at the orgy, a red-cloaked man commands women to undress and sends them off with wealthy male guests. Metaphorically, this resembles what Ziegler has done by paying vulnerable young women to attend his party. A great YouTube video exists here detailing the interesting visual cues that link Ziegler to the “man in the red cloak” who leads the ritual at the orgy. It’s difficult to disagree, based on the evidence in the video, that Kubrick wants us to recognize that the two characters play essentially the same role at their respective events.

To understand the orgy sequence, think of it as a dream. Of course, it’s not a literal dream, since Bill does attend the event in reality, as evidenced by his costume rental and his later discussion with Ziegler, who references the orgy and claims to have been a guest. But it unfolds in the manner of a dream, with its events and characters based on real events. Eyes Wide Shut is loosely based on Arthur Schnitzler’s book, Traumnovelle, or “Dream Story,” so it makes sense that the story progresses (in parts) as a dream would.

Having definitively established this link between the movie’s two most crucial episodes, we can explore the symbolic cues they provide for the rest of the movie.

First, I’ll focus on Kubrick’s use of color in the two scenes. The Ziegler party is lit by Christmas lights, multicolored and decorative. The orgy scene, on the other hand, features darker lighting and emphasizes red and blue.

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We can infer that the multicolored lights represent the “façade” of the Ziegler party, with its formalities and splendor disguising an ugly interior. Indeed, most sets that Bill passes through during the rest of the movie feature Christmas trees with multicolored lights are present. These invoke the Ziegler party, indicating that Bill is still thinking idealistically, clinging to the façade, resisting his growing suspicion that money and sex are intertwined.

However, after Bill’s final talk with Ziegler, he returns home and turns off the Christmas tree lights, indicating that he’s given into that suspicion, acknowledging its truth. He opens the refrigerator and sits down at his table with a beer. This is truly “where the rainbow ends”—the rainbow revealed to mean the rainbow-colored lights that symbolize idealism, as first introduced at Ziegler’s party.

But what of the red and blue scheme featured in the orgy scene? That, too, recurs throughout Bill’s adventure, and those colors signify, respectively, sex and money. Red is always linked with sex, as it was in the orgy scene when the women undressed on the red carpet, and blue is always linked with money.

Consider firstly the costume store. When Bill first visits, the prominent color is red, as Mr. Millich discovers his daughter having sex with two men. But the second time Bill visits, Millich wears all blue. His daughter enters from a red-lit room with the two men seen earlier, and Millich hints that he has prostituted his daughter (“we have come to another arrangement”). Thus, Millich wears blue to represent his monetary gain, while his daughter still wears red, evoking her sexual participation.

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Secondly, consider the scene with Domino the prostitute. She wears purple, the only character in the film to do so. Purple is a mixture of red and blue; fitting, since Domino’s profession embodies the interplay between money and sex. Consider also the image below that features a red and a blue light behind her head.

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There are many other examples of red and blue being used with these connotations. To survey briefly, however, recall the Harfords’ bed (red), the lighting in the Harfords’ expensive apartment (blue), the bars of the orgy mansion doors (blue—only the rich may enter), and the toy store at the end of the movie (red—the couple agrees that the best solution is to “fuck”).

This framework enables a more telling interpretation of some scenes. Let’s return to Bill’s early cab ride, in which he pictures Alice having sex with the naval officer. The images of Alice and the officer are filtered in grey-blue. But why not red, if red is supposed to be associated with sex? It’s because Bill is only now wondering about the economic motivations of sex following Alice’s confession. Although he’s picturing his wife in a sexual act, he isn’t really thinking about sex; he’s thinking about money and its relationship to what he’s picturing.

ews alice

Now that we’ve covered colors, let’s move on to a different motif: masks. In the orgy sequence, everyone wears them. One might wonder why, if the orgy represents the “true” Ziegler party, the participants have been disguised. But this would be a misinterpretation of the relationship between the two scenes.

Think of it like this: since the the Ziegler party operates via facades and deceptions, its guests are represented in the orgy sequence as wearing literal masks. The orgy doesn’t uncover any secrets to Bill; rather, it represents Bill reflecting on the true nature of the event following Alice’s confession.

It’s significant, therefore, that Bill “loses” his mask at the orgy: following the reflection on money and sex that the orgy represents, he’s less able or willing to put on the same social façade as before. Shortly after he loses his mask, he turns off his Christmas tree lights, a similar symbolic event. This, as stated before, is “where the rainbow ends.” Not surprisingly, then, the costume store is called Rainbow Fashion.

But after returning to his apartment after his conversation with Ziegler, the mask is sitting on Bill’s pillow. Why is the mask there, and how did it get there? The answer is that the mask’s presence symbolizes Bill’s last chance to suppress what he has witnessed. The mask represents the social facade of Ziegler’s guests, a facade that Bill also formerly assumed. But Bill has now become aware of that facade after Alice’s confession: he has “lost” his mask. Kubrick signals to us by cutting to the mask that Bill has one more chance to assume the facade again. The mask isn’t literally there; it’s a symbolic visual.

Notice also that Kubrick cuts to the mask on the pillow long before Bill even enters the bedroom. Kubrick is communicating that Bill is considering this return to his blissful ignorance as soon as he enters the apartment. Bill probably thinks it over as he drinks his Budweiser. Ultimately, though, he decides against reclaiming the mask, instead breaking down in tears to Alice (“I’ll tell you everything!”). In a bizarre, Kubrickian way, it’s an uplifting ending, especially since the couple endures the ensuing difficult conversation and decides to remain together.

 

End of Part 1

Continue to Part 2, which explains the mysteries of Mandy the prostitute, the man on the balcony, and whether Alice was at the ritual.

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Movies Explained

The Shining Explained: Part 2

This is the conclusion of my analysis of Kubrick’s The Shining. Part 1 untangled the movie’s reincarnation mysteries, explained the ending photograph, and examined the symbolic meaning of “shining.” This part will explain the mysterious Room 237 scene, the man in the bear costume, and Kubrick’s use of mirrors. 

———————

Contradiction #6: Jack, after encountering the lady in Room 237, calmly tells Wendy afterward that he saw nothing. This lady may be the mother of the murdered twin girls, but for half of the scene she appears as an elderly woman.

This is the most difficult segment of the movie to comprehend, because at first it doesn’t seem like a contradiction. Jack’s words to Wendy seem like an obvious cover up of what he has just experienced in Room 237.

Actually, though, Jack is telling the truth about finding nothing in Room 237, which explains A) his calm demeanor during the subsequent exchange with Wendy and B) his adamant refusal to leave the Overlook, which would be a strange position for someone to take after being chased by a naked, rotting ghost-woman.

My central insight here has already been argued elsewhere, by Rob Ager of collativelearning.com. I intend to clarify and add to that insight, which is this: immediately following the awkward scene in which Danny attempts to retrieve his fire truck from his room and winds up having an eerie conversation with Jack on his lap, Jack molests Danny off-screen. This incident results in Danny’s neck wounds and causes him to become almost catatonic for the remainder of the movie (“Danny’s gone away Mrs. Torrance…”).

Stay with me. This is a heavy claim, and might seem like a stretch. But the evidence is extensive. First, consider the eeriness of the fire truck scene itself.

Jack’s dialogue in this scene is noticeably strange, consisting largely of cryptic phrases like, “I can’t [sleep]. I’ve got too much to do.” Danny clearly notices that something is off and appears quite scared, even requesting reassurance that “you would never hurt mommy and me, would you?” The scene abruptly ends with an out-of-place “bump” in the instrumental score.

Keeping the strangeness of this conversation in mind, consider the infamous scene near the end of the movie in which Wendy comes across a man apparently receiving fellatio from another man in a bear costume (left). This scene is often cited for its apparent randomness, as the man’s identity and behavior are never explained. But recall the scene early in the movie in which Danny talks to the psychologist.

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During that talk, the above image of Danny’s face beside the face of his pillow recurs several times. The pillow, as you can see, depicts a bear. Thus, this image reveals the purpose of man in the bear costume: to tell us that Danny (who is the bear, as the pillow implies) has been sexually forced upon Jack.

This argument opens a gaping hole in the narrative, however. Why, then, did Danny say he was attacked by a “crazy lady” in Room 237? That’s easy. It’s reasonable—expected, even—that Danny would make up a story to avoid implicating his father. The “crazy lady” story sounds very much like what a child would invent to repress a trauma.

Therefore, the scene in which Jack explores Room 237 and finds a nude woman is not a literal event, but Danny’s repressed version of the molestation as he communicates it telepathically to Dick Hallorann. (Remember that during that scene, there are intermittent shots of a trembling Danny and a horrified Hallorann.) The Room 237 scene is the fire truck scene, viewed through Hallorann’s mind as he “shines” it from Danny, who has repressed the literal events. In this repressed version, Danny has been replaced with Jack, and Jack has been replaced by the “crazy lady.”

For evidence, consider the many parallels between the Room 237 scene and the fire truck retrieval scene. Both scenes take place in rooms with the same layout. Both scenes involve an entrant progressing through the layout and seeing someone unexpected—Danny sees Jack awake, Jack sees a woman in the bathtub. Next, this unexpected person makes the same exact motion: Jack’s “come here” gesture to Danny is exactly the same as the bathtub woman’s moving away the curtain. Then, the entrant approaches the unexpected person and the two interact: Danny sits on Jack’s lap, Jack embraces the nude woman.

The fire truck scene cuts here, but we can infer from the Room 237 scene what happens next. In that scene, Jack, after embracing the young woman, sees the woman rotting in the mirror, and he recoils in horror. Symbolically, this is what happens to Danny: he readily approaches his father and then, upon being assaulted, realizes the repulsive side to the initially appealing figure.

There’s a mirror at the foot of Jack’s bed that Kubrick emphasizes with fancy camerawork in multiple scenes. Danny would have seen his own molestation in this mirror, which is why in the Room 237 scene Jack first sees the ugliness of the woman in a mirror. There’s also an editing choice toward the end of the Room 237 scene that shows the old woman rising from the bathtub, which is odd given that our first sight of the woman was as a young woman, not old. This represents Danny’s realization that the figure he approached (his father) was evil all along—that his initially favorable impression of his father was incorrect.

The old woman rising from the bathtub therefore represents Jack waking up from his nap as an ugly, evil person. The shot only comes late in the scene because Danny only realizes too late that he was fooled by his father’s reassuring demeanor.

The brief scene in which an unseen presence rolls a ball toward Danny while he plays with cars is the initiation of Danny’s telepathic communication to Hallorann. Danny is noticeably missing his fire truck in this scene, an indication that his entering Room 237 represents his entering his apartment to retrieve the toy. The scene cuts as Danny enters Room 237 because at this point Danny begins to repress the events; when we next see Room 237, Danny, in his “shining” rendition of events, has replaced himself with his father, and has altered and repressed the sequence as previously described.

So Jack indeed inflicted the bruises on Danny’s neck during the off-screen molestation. Jack denies this to Lloyd, but he does so right before exclaiming that the last time he hurt his son was “three goddamn years ago,” demonstrating that at this time he is personifying his “past” 1920s-30s incarnation, and his recounting doesn’t apply.

Danny attempts to deal with the traumatic event in various ways, firstly by creating the childlike story that his aggressor was a “crazy lady in one of the rooms” and secondly by succumbing completely to Tony. As the psychologist had deduced earlier, Tony had helped Danny to cope with prior violence from his father. Now, as the harm from his father escalates, so does Danny’s reliance on Tony.

The final question to be answered about the Room 237 scene is: why, if it’s Danny’s psychological invention, does it feature such adult content? The answer is that Hallorann also influences what we see, since he receives the vision. He sees Danny’s “crazy lady” fabrication through his own personal lens. Note the two conspicuous pictures of naked women on Hallorann’s bedroom walls immediately before he “shines” the scene from Danny. It makes sense that the molestation as visualized by Hallorann would feature nudity, rather than fatherly love, as the initial “attractor.”

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The 237 scene can be watched, therefore, as a blend between 1) the actual event of Jack molesting Danny, 2) Danny’s childish coping story, and 3) Hallorann’s adult perspective. Truly an original, complex piece of filmmaking that demands even more analysis than I have room for here.

Contradiction #7: Although Danny is white and male, he’s still the victim of violence, which doesn’t fit the Overlook’s history of violence targeted toward women and minorities.

In every scene after the departure of Stuart Ullman, who wears red, white, and blue, Jack and Danny don these patriotic colors. By contrast, Wendy wears greens and browns and at one point a dress with Native American motifs. The message: Ullman, Jack, and Danny have entered the role of the white men who drove away and killed Native Americans, while Wendy has assumed the unfortunate role of the Native Americans.

And Chef Hallorann, too, bears visual association with Native Americans. In the first storeroom scene, directly behind his head is a Calumet baking powder can, adorned by its “chief” logo. Hallorann dies on top of a Native American floor design, as previously mentioned. (And “Chef” and “Chief” are very lexically similar.)

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Since, as we observed in Part 1, the Overlook’s power structure excludes women and minorities, it makes sense that Kubrick visually links women and minority characters to Native Americans, the first “outsiders”—and the first hunted people—in US history.

But Danny, who wears red, white, and blue, is victimized along with Wendy and Hallorann. Why?

Because Jack is a foolish and ineffective perpetuator of the violent tradition. Danny should be allied with Jack, but Jack’s repeated violence and abuse against Danny halts this potential alliance. Remember that Jack endows Danny with the ability to “shine” by drunkenly dislocating his shoulder. Recall also that Danny later uses this ability to call Hallorann, which saves both Wendy and himself. It’s Jack’s own fault, then, that he fails to kill his family and satisfy the Overlook elites.

Delbert Grady foresees the problem, warning Jack: “Your son has a very great talent. I don’t think you are aware how great it is. And he is attempting to use that very talent against your will.” Grady worries specifically that Danny “is attempting to bring an outside party into this situation.”

Minorities are not to meddle in the affairs of the Overlook, Grady implies with this warning, and Danny, who, by virtue of his race and gender, should be a conspirator, is instead helping the outsiders. Grady suggests based on this that Danny and his supportive mother “need a good talking to….perhaps, a bit more.”

This evokes political attempts to curtail others’ rights and opportunities. For outsiders to gain entry into structures that have long excluded them, they need some help from the inside, from those already part of those structures. Someone highly invested in the status quo would indeed be alarmed upon seeing this take place. They would advocate dealing with it “in the harshest possible way.”

Danny, then, ruins everything from the Overlook’s perspective. He doesn’t follow in in his father’s footsteps; instead, he helps the intended victim—Wendy—escape her fate. Recall that in Jack’s final moments in the maze he acts like a drunkard. Fitting, because it’s his own drunken injuring of Danny that, in the end, fatally foils his attack (“Hair of the dog that bit me!”).

Contradiction #8: All of the “ghosts” that Jack converses with appear in front of mirrors. However, there’s no mirror in the scene where Jack speaks to Grady in the store room.

Many believe, incorrectly, that the mirrors demonstrate that Jack is talking to himself rather than Grady, Lloyd, and the woman in Room 237—that they’re the mere inventions of an insane man. This theory loses steam in several places. Firstly, Danny and Wendy also encounter ghosts, and these ghosts don’t have mirrors behind them. Secondly, Grady physically lets Jack out of the store room (where there isn’t even a mirror), definitively disproving all arch-theories of the “None of it was real” variety.

The ghosts are all too real. And as previously discussed, the tangible intervening of Delbert Grady demonstrates the tangible influence of old power structures.

What of the mirrors, then?

The mirrors are simply another reinforcement of the connection between past and present, which we’ve already seen in the inclusion of a Charles and Delbert Grady and with two separate Mr. Torrances. Put succinctly: When Jack talks to Lloyd and Grady, he is talking to people just like himself, hence the mirrors. (The Room 237 scene is not a literal occurrence, as we’ve seen, so the lady’s appearance in the mirror is not relevant here.) Grady, Jack, and Lloyd are all part of the Overlook’s “boys club,” so Jack can see a lot of himself in those two companions. This is the meaning of the mirrors in these two sets.

But there’s even more to the mirrors. Watch again the scene after Wendy accuses Jack of harming Danny’s neck—a correct accusation, as we’ve seen. Jack walks down the hallway in front of the Gold Room, passing mirrors on his right (our left). Each time he passes a mirror, he makes a gesture of frustration, accompanied by a jolt in the musical score. This is Jack feeling guilty: he can’t stand the sight of himself after what he has done.

The important question, though, is, can we, the viewers, stand our own reflections? This is the underlying premise of another famous scene, in which Danny uses Wendy’s lipstick to write on the bathroom door, “REDRUM.” When Wendy wakes up, she sees in the mirror what Danny has written, which now appears as “MURDER.” The takeaway: if we as a nation were to look honestly in the mirror, we would see murder: the murder of Native Americans, the spirit of which continues to inform the everyday reality of the United States. 

The Shining, then, is a damning criticism of the United States from Kubrick, but he does more than criticize: he offers a solution. Remember how Danny escapes Jack in the maze. He retraces his steps. This heroic act is what Kubrick wants us to do, figuratively.

To have knowledge of history, to act based on this knowledge, to “shine”—this is how we escape the maze and save our society from violence and corruption. By film’s end, Kubrick wants us to shine with Danny and Wendy, to have awareness of the sinister undercurrent of our nation’s history and to prepare to retrace our steps and correct the problem.

An honest appraisal of our history would be a major change. As Kubrick shows us, the tendency heretofore has been to simply “Overlook.”

 

—-Jim Andersen          

For more Kubrickian analyses, check out my piece on Eyes Wide Shut.