The mistakes Stanley Kubrick purposefully left in ‘The Shining’
From Dr Strangelove to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick established himself as a giant of filmmaking throughout the 1960s, leading him to take on practically any project he so wished. While not all of his movies came to fruition – most famously, his epic Napoleon screenplay – Kubrick was still able to use his status as one of cinema’s most accomplished filmmakers to work between a range of genres and experiment with divisive and challenging thematic content.
During the ‘70s, he made the hugely controversial film A Clockwork Orange, which Kubrick himself removed from cinemas due to a spate of violent copycat crimes. Then came Barry Lyndon, an epic historical drama charting the rise and fall of the titular character. Much of his research on Napoleon influenced the film, and the three-hour movie proved to be one of his most impressive efforts.
Fans had no idea which direction Kubrick was going to go next, considering he’d already made movies that fell into the same genres: war, black comedy, sci-fi, dystopia, and historical epic. He chose horror, adapting Stephen King’s novel The Shining, following the success of Brian De Palma’s Carrie, also based on one of the author’s novels.
The movie wasn’t widely praised upon its release, with many critics finding it too drawn out and others deriding Shelly Duvall’s performance as Wendy. Yet, it is now considered a horror staple, often appearing in the top ten of lists naming the greatest horror movies of all time. It’s incredibly stylish, Wendy Carlos’ synth score is perfectly atmospheric, and the characters are all fascinating. We witness Jack Nicholson’s struggling writer, Jack, turn into a full-blown psychopath as he is drawn under the influence of the Overlook Hotel’s supernatural powers, with the actor giving a fully deranged performance that blurs the lines between being comedic and absolutely horrifying.
Yet, if you look closely, you might notice several errors within the film, something that feels unusual because of Kubrick’s obsession with perfection. Let’s not forget that the filmmaker made Duvall do 127 takes of one intense scene so that it looked exactly how he wanted it. Thus, the mistakes we see in The Shining are put there on purpose, designed to unsettle us and make the atmosphere even more uncanny and bizarre. This a film concerned with the supernatural; by subtly changing things such as the set design, we are left to feel on edge – we recognise something is not quite right, but we might not consciously know what.
One of the most noticeable mistakes is the design of the orange carpet across which Danny rides his tricycle. He drives through the Overlook corridors in scenes that have now become iconic, largely because of the recognisable print on the carpet, which fans can purchase on socks, rugs and even wallpaper. Yet, in one scene, when Danny is playing with some of his toys, using the sharp lines in the carpet pattern as a road for his toy cars, the direction of the pointed pattern changes direction as the camera changes angle.
Another mistake occurs when Dick Halloran opens the freezer with his left hand, only for another shot to show him doing so with his opposite hand. This is something that Kubrick would’ve undoubtedly noticed, but its intentional inclusion in the film makes us realise that something is off here.
Nicholson often catches the camera’s eye, too, something many people have labelled as bad acting and mistakes which Kubrick should’ve edited out or refilmed. But this is just another technique used to make the audience feel more confronted and anxious. It works well, and it doesn’t take long for Jack to bury deep under our skin with his disturbed grin and darkly humorous quips.
