Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Great Moments In Movie Shelves #95

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I suppose it's not terribly weird that there's no library in The Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining - most hotels, even ones of its immense magnitude, don't usually bother with a library. But the absence of books in frustrated author Jack Torrance's life still seemed purposeful to me as I thought about it, and then as I started looking at pictures I realized that we actually see Shelley Duvall's Wendy framed by books a few times in the film.

Especially in the early scenes in their apartment, before they go to the Hotel. Wendy is the reader in that family - Jack's just the writer. It's her job to experience the terrible stories of terror that Jack creates. (Terrible. Terrible.) And it's her job...

... to figure out how to work the radio inside of the Hotel, thanks to its shelves of complicated looking manuals. It's Jack's job to...

... skip the reading.
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1 comment:

Rob91316 said...

Interesting observation, which, of course, ties into Jack's statement during his interview with Mr. Ullman that he's sure Wendy will love to spend the winter snowed in at a creepy hotel with a dark past because she's a "confirmed ghost story and horror movie addict."