Optical illusion sets in THE SHINING (film analysis) 

A little early Xmas present folks. Have a great holiday :)

We've been at this for like 10 years and you're still finding stuff. Amazing.

A thing I noticed about the dominant colors in Room 237- green, purple, and black. The colors of decay. Fitting for the old hag that seems to be in a state of decay.

I hate room 237 so much. It feels like a depersonalized fever dream. The slow creeping point of view shots and fucked up furniture and colours freak me out. The lighting feels bizarre too. The slightly ajar bathroom door. Everything about it feels wrong.

To me, Room 237’s design looks like a dream. It’s what a room would look like in your dreams. Say you were having a dream that took place in a room in your house. It looks distorted and unnatural. Even the way the camera seems to float through room 237 in an unnatural and unusual fashion, would suggest a dream-like state.

I love that there are so many sections of the hotel that don't connect aesthetically with the others. This makes them seem locked in contrasting eras, psyches, or as though they are the paranormal mirages of different spirits or events. It's like being in a place where the past bulges into the present seamlessly. You start to think that maybe it doesn't look this way simply because living people have not renovated or changed things in a long time, but more because the current reality of the hotel is simultaneous attached to every other moment it has been through. The whole structure is a celebration of disorientation, so it makes perfect sense that the decor also would not have been benign choices on Kubrick's part. Everything supports the feeling of being stuck where time is already eternal. You may not be dead yet, in the linear/timeline/reality sense, but you are, and have been, here forever. Every decade's trend is imprinted on the very walls; from Art Deco, to Victorian/english cottage, to minimalist/moderne, and on and on. The hotel is everyone, everywhere, all the time. A black hole for souls. The lobby to hell itself.

I'm glad to hear someone talk about this, and by someone, I mean Rob Ager.

The sheer brilliancy of this film is you can still, 40 years later, find something new about it.

The nightmarish, uneasy look of Room 237 is something that I’ve always been very affected by, so it’s really validating to hear someone else speak of it.

I actually love the purple/green carpet pattern, it looks like peacock feathers...but it's obviously a pattern meant for a much larger space than a hotel room--something more like a ballroom or large foyer--so that plays up the unsettling nature of it here.

What really amazes me about The Shining film is how smooth the cuts and transitions and pans and zooms are .. I have watched this film more than once and each time I was looking for cues, didn't notice much and the entire movie just kind of washed over me. There's a strong sense that something isn't right throughout but the shooting and editing of the film masterfully hides the cues in plain sight while they operate on your subconscious

This may be the most layered movie I’ve ever seen. Thank you for the breakdown and analysis time

I feel these attributes are more present when you view the film in an actual theater. Television's dont work well with this, because its easy to look away. When your vision is fixed on the picture in a dark, quiet, cold room everything pops. I remember seeing The Shinning for the first time in a theater, having seen it on television beforehand; the elements are far more creepy in theater. The music and the broad shots and swaying steady cam is just brilliant, and definitely reached in a part of my brain I had not witnessed on television. Truly a film meant for the theater. I recommend anyone that hasnt seen it that way, should do so.

The color scheme in 237 makes perfect sense to me. Peacock colors meant to represent the surface glamour/beauty of 'all the best people' but when we enter the bathroom and see the 'nature' of 'all the best people' it is ugly--represented by the hag. The geometry of the the bedspread is funny is to me, in that, the arrows go back-and-forth, representing indulgence/sex. Happy Holidays everyone.

Something vaguely unsettling I've always noticed, which may support the patterns-on-the-bedspread theory, is the fact that in at least two key scenes (Wendy's conversation with the doctor, and Danny's REDRUM chant while writing on the door), bookcases are visible in the background. In both scenes, the books are tilted dramatically to one side of the shelf, in alternating directions on each shelf, creating a zigzag pattern very similar to what we see on the bedspread in 237. Plus, in the earlier scene, those bookshelves are centered pretty prominently in the wide shot of Wendy and the doctor. I doubt it's coincidental.

Even though I've seen "The Shining" numerous times, the decor of 237 still freaks me out on some subconscious level. Seriously, even watching these clips without the film's soundtrack makes the hair on my neck stand up. Now I know why!

Apologies if it's obvious, I never noticed before, but the Hag's room is _stuffed_ with dead plants and pictures of drab, dead-looking plants too. They're all positioned in uncannily similar vases and positions like fresh bouquets. But they're all grey, brown and sickly looking. It looks super depressing for such a "bright" room. Looks like the pictures above the bed, fireplace, desk are also _all_ drab coloured flowers? Great video. I always thought this room was "off", but it was done in such a clever way. Bright colours, but all emblematic of decay. And IMO the carpet looks very phallic with the weird purple "rod" surrounded by a purple "glow" too.

Not sure if you ever mentioned it, but when the ball rolls to Danny, the carpet design is flipped. Note the pattern when the ball rolls, then the immediate shot after that. Obviously deliberate, but hard to notice at first.

I really wonder if Kubrick ever dreamed in the making of this movie that the carpet and curtains would be so meticulously scrutinized 😂

Showing people your videos can be frustrating, people often think your observations are reaching or assessing arbitrary things. I think it is simply unknown to the great majority of people that sets are made not visited, most of the time at least. The carpet was deliberately put there, the director did not scope out a real hotel and say "aw fuck look how stupid the comforter on the bed looks". Understanding that real, human, deliberating minds were behind even the most insignificant aspects of a set begins to connect so many dots.

I remember from a documentary it was said that Stanley Kubric started researching subliminal messaging and patterns of illusion for the film . I started knowing why I always felt uneasy the whole movie. He's giving subliminal daunting feelings of despair and uneasiness the whole movie. The orange carpet is from a Hotel in Yosemite National Park that he saw. I went there when I went camping one year and it makes the shining feel real lol .. makes it even more terrifying.

Sidebar: I like how Danny didn't come to a full stop until the camera caught a full view of the twins.

It's interesting how the centre of the maze mirrors the walk to the gold room, with the gaps appearing as mirrors in the hall.

Room 237 carpet be like €==3

The purple and green color combo is also comic book shorthand for villain, contrasting the standard hero colors of red and blue. (And, incidentally, the Hulk is green and purple because of that; he is supposed to be a monstrous figure who at first appears villainous.)

That's absolutely brilliant! We employed a similar tactic in a scene of a haunted house we created and built. It was an infected laboratory scene not the Shining. However we incorporated many elements here seen in your video, psychedelic gemometery, impossible spaces, endless hallways, loops plus our actors in the scene too. This made for an over whelming and unique experience. Great video, well done.

The bathroom reminds me a lot of my grandparents' updated mid-century bathroom and I always had a sense of unease in there. Of course the rest of the house was haunted too, but that's another story entirely.

The rugs are almost reminiscent of the psychedelic part of 2001 A Space Odyssey...that's what I think of...especially when riding on his tryke!

With all that Kubrick was managing, writing, directing and re-writing, how in the world he foresaw this level of detail and had it built into the movie is astounding.....

These patterns are classic Art Deco. Purple and green is a "preppy" color combination that has been around for a long time. The carpet is a classic David Hicks design - very popular of the time when this film was made and still widely used today. I love this film and most designers I know think the rooms are very stylish and are familiar with these patterns. I think like "Midnight, the stars and You" used at the end of the film and the popular textile designs are unsettling because the beauty of these things are in juxtaposition of the "space" held in the mind of a horror movie viewing.

The lighting in room 237 from the table lamps is also very, very cold. There is no warmth from them. Almost like old fluorescent tubes. I think this coldness also adds to the uneasy feeling in the room.

One of the most horrifying aspects of this film involves the seventies decor. If wasn't called the decade taste forgot for nothing.

Thank you so much, Rob. The first thing I'm going to do after finishing grad school and getting a decent job is become a supporter (along with a couple other youtubers producing content of a similarly masterful caliber. I've been dying to delve into your work on the site, but I just can't financially right now, so these uploads are so appreciated. They've kept me company through so many sleepless nights in studio for architecture school. And they've even made me consider the professional possibilities of applying my archi degree to cinematic field. Thank you again for all your hard work.

Here's a small though, when Danny is playing with his toys on the carpet and you mention it seems like you can see way more around him than should be possible. One idea is that this could be him in his "own world" as he plays which is then broken when the ball is rolled towards him. Not sure if that could be a way to look at other things in the movie where the character is in a way in an "isolated" state until brought back into the movies reality. It could possibly work for Jack when he goes into room 237 or the golden room bar.

Seeing it in HD Is even more creepy like it was shot yesterday not 40 years ago the overlook is so creepy. Stanley really did a great job.

A caveat for this theory: that sort of psychedelic pattern thing was really all the rage through the '70s and '80s in clothing, curtains, bedding, carpeting, upholstery, wallpaper, and the like - I remember it well as a feature that would survive in homes, flea markets, garage sales, and hand-me-downs well into the '90s and beyond! That said, Kubrick was clearly aware of how disorienting these patterns were, and was certainly exaggerating the effect by "overusing" it in ways that physically shouldn't be possible in 'real life', coupling it with bizarre camera angles and movements, clashing it against other patterns, coupling it with equally disorienting Native American-themed artwork, and so on. It's no coincidence that the psychedelic effect is suggestive of hallucinogenic trances, visions, and dream-journeys into spirit realms and altered states of consciousness - that sort of thing would have been something Kubrick and much of his audience would have been well aware of when this film was made! The Overlook Hotel is not precisely a real place, even within the film's "reality" - it's something else, in another realm of existence, another layer of consciousness: it's effectively on an astral plane or in a dreamtime outside of the reality of sober, conscious sanity and reason.

At 6:03 - The vertical-patterned wall paper is also very 1970s. Also popular at the time was wood-face paneling, also with vertical lines. Not disorienting, just 1970s. It might be disorienting for you, but that is how places were decorated. This is truly a style difference of several decades. (I was a kid at the time, but this is what was.) This bit wasn't designed to creep you out. The fact that it does is a special bonus so many decades later...

The colors of the hallway carpet match the colors of the bears that are associated with Danny in the film, such as the bear pillow he lays on in his room while the doctor examines him, the bear costume seen in Wendy's run through the hotel, and the various pictures of bears in Danny's room at the Overlook. These are interesting details when considered in the context of the possible abuse themes in The Shining; the colors associated with bears - the symbol of Danny's abuse - are used in the hallway that leads him to room 237, where both he and Jack psychologically and physically confront their roles as abused and abuser. *Side note: Why did Kubrick choose to get Danny's attention in this scene by rolling a ball at him? A possible allusion to and perversion of the traditional father/son game of catch, esp. since it's a baseball, a symbol of "America's favorite past time"?* I think Kubrick's omission of Danny's experience in room 237 nods to this abuse theme again; in reality, we often hear out the stories of abusers, but do not listen to victims as carefully. The victims' experiences are unwitnessed, and their testimonies are silent, just like Danny's silent walk into the Colorado Lounge after Jack's dream, and the fact that that the audience - the "witnesses" - are engrossed in Jack's visit to room 237, but never see Danny's experience there. I'm sure there's more to be explored here, so I'll think on it. Thanks for a great video!

The carpet inside Room 237 is a design that was popular in the early twenties, when French designers were breaking away from the Art Nouveau movement and beginning to develop the principles of the early Art Deco scene. Similar patterns have been common in east Asian textiles for centuries-but it seems like the specific garrish Flapper Era style used in 237 is meant to recall the film's themes of wealth and greed in relation to the Great Depression, more directly shown in the Gold Ballroom and the July 1927 photo at the very end of the movie. The floral wallpaper in the yellow hallway across from the Caretakers' Apartment (where Danny sees the Murdered Twins caked in blood) is also weirdly cluttered and dense, making the relatively wide corridor seem tight and claustrophobic.

The thing that disturbs me about the hag hotel room is the purple furniture. It's sort of a distorted flesh color. It makes the furniture look like dead bodies lying around.

The tennis ball that rolls up to Danny while he’s playing is the same tennis ball Jack throws against the wall when Danny and Wendy are in the maze outside. This visual cue links back to your theory about who Danny really encounters in Room 237 and what actually happens in there. Jack throwing the tennis ball in the lobby foreshadows the tennis ball rolling up to Danny a few scenes later.

The carpet pattern in the room with the hag reminds me of scales or maybe peacock feathers. No clue if that might mean anything.

One thing is the carpet of room 237, what also always made me uneasy is how bad the different patterns and colors of the interior match each other, like a "decorator's nightmare" so to speak. PS: Note ─at 6:00─ just at the bathroom door, there's a picture of a fox hanging on the wall. Symbolism for the cunning and sneaky nature of the encounter Jack is about to have?

Can't get enough of your excellent Shining videos. Thanks, merry christmas

The carpet in the bedroom looks kind of sexual, and the phallic (and/or vulvic?) pattern points to the bathroom. I haven't noticed that before, so I don't have any ideas what these connotations might mean. But maybe I am freuding away...

The movie was shot in the late 1970s. That was a very weird time in terms of superficial things, like clothing styles and home decor. (The 2020s are MUCH weirder where things matter, but it is not always superficially evident.)

I watched the shining again yesterday as your videos are just so darn fascinating on this movie. This viewing i had some random thoughts: 1) room 237’s layout is very cozy and *should* be inviting. And i like purple and green together. But i was almost immediately ill when the camera switches to first person on this viewing. Based on your analysis of the colors and patterns it’s all the clashing patterns and colors that make me sick (i rarely have patterns in clothing or decor in my house). And i always stare at that darn carpet pattern. also the green bathroom shade reminds me of a sickly hospital gown. 2) i can appreciate the mirroring themes now that i am seeing them thanks to your videos. 3) my mother (in her 70s) laughed at Jack Nicholson the entire runtime. As the performance was getting crazier she found him funnier and funnier. I had a blast as I dont know anyone else who would react like that. 😂 4) as i. Come from a family that historically struggles with bipolar mental illness among others, shelly duvalls character is spot on as a family member who has to cope with dysfunction and she performed so well. I feel bad for all the flack she took for her role. 4) i just realized Wendy had a bit of a character arc. She starts out very meek, but she physically harms Jack twice. When she accidentally hit him with the baseball bat, she hit him a second time on purpose and he falls down the stairs. Also she cut Jack with that knife when he actually was about to get in the room. She only put down the knife when she sees her son is okay and she immediately leaves with him. I think she’d have been willing to kill Jack to protect Danny at that point. 5) the scene with mr. halloran and danny in the kitchen with all those knives pointed at danny: there is a similar but very brief shot when halloran is showing danny and wendy around. I think i spotted it when they were about to go to the pantry. Another set of knives in the background points straight down at danny while he’s holding his mothers hand. Never seen that before.

I'm only watching this just to hear you say hag again.

While I was watching this video, Rob, I noticed the carpet in Room 237 has an interesting purple phallic shape in the pattern. All of them are pointing to the bathroom with the old hag in it.

I’m a huge the shining fan and I’ve studied this movie a lot. Of all documentaries and videos I’ve checked NONE touches the following topic: who/what is that “grey-alien-look a like face” on the yellow movie poster version?

Honestly, it's the greatest horror film of all time. The amount of symbolism, hidden meanings, etc is all so overwhelming.

A subtle, subconscious synesthetic effect may be another perceptual phenomenon worth considering, particularly in room 237. The colors green and purple historically are associated with death for a reason; they strongly indicate decomposition, especially when paired. Both colors are present during the process and in some cases manifest simultaneously. And anyone who has experienced the odor of decomposition, as I have, may strongly recall it while viewing this room, as I do. The death colors also presage the arrival of the rotting hag. I can't positively say if Kubrick intended this, but I'd bet on it.

Holy shit. I was literally watching your video on the Shining's spatial anomalies earlier today, and now you upload this. This is truly the best Christmas gift ever! Thanks so much for your amazing analysis!

I have never imagined watching someone bring my subconsciousness up to consciousness over The Shining of all things... Such an eye opener

Reads video title. clicks immediately

The geometric patterns in the carpets are called "seizure patterns ". They are common in casinos in Vegas to disorient you and keep you going in circles.

Noticed a lot of horror movies particularly in haunted places like to incorporate the optical illusion of eyes or faces watching everything. In room 237, the carpet pattern is interesting because it resembles peacock feathers. According to the Greek myth, Hera took the 1000 eyes of Argos and put them on the feathers of the peacock. I see a lot of eyes and faces in the Overlook Hotel. The green and purple color scheme was used to great effect another movie. In the Picture of Dorian Grey, the film is filmed in black and white, but when the time comes to reveal Dorian's true portrait, it goes to color in all its purple and green hideousness.

I agree that those patterns had to have been chosen for a purpose. They are so jarring in appearance it makes sense to think that's why they were chosen. Ir makes me think of Lovecraft, with his strange geometry. Another thing is that repeating patterns make it easier for the filmmakers to keep track of what goes where. IE 'this prop is two shapes from that one'. There's no way they do that overhead shot of Danny with no pot in view when it should be covering half the red shape to his left, unless it was on purpose.

Happy New Year Rob, heres to many more years of providing us great stellar content. i tip my hat off to you

40 years later we are still talking about this movie He was such a genius I feel bad about his behavior with Shelly but still he was a genius

The corridor. Orange. Honeycomb shapes. The hotel is like a beehive full of rooms, meant to be filled with people. But hives are occupied by a large community of bees. " a hive of activity" if you will. But where are the guests? It makes me feel like Kubric was drawing attention to how empty this building intended to house people is. Ideas on togetherness and isolation. Room 237. Blue, purple, green. Look like fish scales in blue hues. Hinting that the horror in this room is associated with water or more obviously, the bathroom. I felt it was more than coincidental that orange and purple are opposing colours in the spectrum and used in both scenes.

The overhead shot of the maze looks like a circuitboard.

So I'm near 6 minutes into the video and I can already see that what he is trying to portray with Danny and the furniture is man in his environment. The moving shapes show how the environment shapes and changes the man- as Danny's parents and their relationship to each other do. I am thankful you have pointed these facts out, or I might have seen it years from now. As always, your channel is full of surprises and unexpected journeys. Thank you.

I've always found it interesting that I have never heard anyone talk about the 'Twin corridor', to the left of Danny is, what looks like, a straight corridor. To Dannys right is a couple of closets that seem to be on a slanted corridor. Once you see it, you won't be able to not see it. Then the scene is ruined... You're welcome! lol. Also, the tuxedo man and bear person scene looks to be next to the living quarters, yet there is no door to the apartment anymore. It could be on a different floor, but I would imagine a hotel would be built to be in a 'uniform style'. Watch the introduction to the apartment with the manager and then that scene. Also... That room looks like a hotel suite bedroom, not an apartment bedroom. I must have watched about 90% of every video on the Shining, but have never seen these things brought up. If they have, sorry, they slipped me by.

When you couple this observation with all the mirrors it gets even more interesting.

Love these vids , they're so good i can't get enough of them.

At 2:55 - My grandmother had those bed covers on her guest bed. And the curtains were "black-out" curtains, which grant privacy from the outside, and darkness in case you wanted a day-time nap. While this might offend your 2020 sensibilities, it was perfectly fine in the 1970s. This wasn't Stanley Kubrick using special, creepy patterns. This was using standard 1970s fare. Some of the tricks he will play with the carpeting later is a whole other ballgame.

The perfect gift- another Rob Ager Shining video! happy holidays

Great vid! Rob’s film analysis skills are legendary. I am friggin glued to this channel lol

Yes... This is hypnotic !!!

Yesssssss. Merry Christmas, Rob!

@1:37 onward... It never dawned on me until I watched this video that the geometric shapes in the carpet leading towards the bathroom are phallic in nature. if you look at them you will see a cylindrical or phallic shaped object with a bulbous end that protrudes into a womb-like circular receptacle, all the while pointing and leading the way into the bathroom which, as we know awaits a very attractive nude woman who attempts to seduce Jack. The phallus is also purple in color which also suggests sexuality. Interestingly there is also a picture of a Fox next to the doorway leading into the bathroom located right above the radiator you’ve mentioned. As we know, there are almost NO extraneous elements in Stanley Kubrick films. This leads me to wonder if the fox is yet again more symbolism of a sexual nature? It’s silky and beautiful; a feminine psychological attraction in what is certainly a drab and dull, scary environment... and again drawing its viewer (Jack) towards the bathroom. 🤷🏻‍♂️🤔

Another great video! One thing I noticed is on the top-down shot at 9:09 you can see they actually are walking towards an opening at the end of that middle section. You can see the light and shadows coming from the opening. The light is not coming from the other end though, so that is indeed a dead end. Still, a mind trip with how much the maze varies from the model, map and location outside the Hotel.

7:27 I can see a sliver of the red elevator door in the top right corner. the shot may be intended to give a wider sense of the carpet than from another view, but it is the same set.

Hey Rob. Love your stuff. Thanks for making everything!

I just wanted to say I absolutely adore you and your channel. Your videos are clever and insightful and I appreciate all the time and effort you put in to them. Have a happy and healthy new year ;-)

Thanks man, love your videos. 1. Decor in the 70s could be really bizarre and trippy at times, I can believe that Kubrick selected the carpets and such, but not as much thought went into them other than they looked surreal for the situation. 2. If you look at the top down of the maze, you can see the sun shine in from the right section of the center park, showing there is an entrance there.

im an honest fan of your shining videos, glad you keep making them

"GOOD-BYE, MR. ULMAN." Thanks so much for your great research! Like you, I've seen this film literally hundreds of times and always find something new. And so maybe I have something you haven't considered yet, and I'd sincerely appreciate your scholarly opinion. In the "CLOSING DAY" sequence, when Jack and Ullman are chatting in the lobby, a pair of young ladies ENTER the hotel, with luggage, and appear to be checking IN, not OUT. "Good-bye, Mr. Ulman," they say. And he replies, "Goodbye, Girls." Moments later, he is showing Jack and Wendy the Colorado Lounge, and another pair of young women are carrying their luggage UP stairs, into the hotel (though saying nothing). Then finally, in the most eerie exchange, Ulman is showing Jack and Wendy to their quarters, and a pair of young ladies (who appear to be twins) walk by (from out of the hallway area where Danny later sees murdered twins). They are carrying luggage and say "Good-bye, Mr. Ulman," and he says, "Good-bye girls!" very cheerfully, and Jack turns his head to leer at them. So three pairs of young women with luggage, the last pair twins, coming from the hallway where the twins were murdered. Very strange, is Kubrick merely setting the stage for the horror to come? Or is their deeper meaning here. Would appreciate your take on it, thanks, (and sorry if I somehow missed a clip where you already commented on the above).

The film is a psychological fairy-tale/parable of man/humankind/America surmounting its inner traumas/dark side/past and abandoning a cycle of evil rebirths. And Kubrick and Diane Johnson saturated the film with motifs from Freud's The Uncanny (mirrors, doubles and repetitions) and also with Bruno Bethlehem's The Uses of Enchantment (fairy-tales interpretations). These two works hold the meaning of the film. I won't rob you the pleasure of fitting the pieces of this puzzle together. All the elements in the film fit. Suffice to say that all the motifs in the film that let so many interpretations proliferate (even go crazy) all these years are held together beautifully by Freud's The Uncanny essay. And Kubrick himself pointed the direction in one Michel Ciment's interview. Though some people gave a little attention to it, I don't think it received the close reading it deserves. The film's own structure is based on this. Freud saw in fiction a perfect medium to evoke the uncanny effect in the reader/viewer. The uncanny being the eerie effect one feels when confronted with a familiar situation that for some reason makes him uneasy about it. This is due to repressed events the life of humans/characters or by the structure/format in fiction. That is the key, for example, the effect we feel by the recurrence of red and blue in the film, the two-ness (doubling) in the film...these are all repetition motifs that catch the viewer attention and makes him unease. The uncanny has an effect in the viewer but also in the characters: Jack says he finds the hotel "homey", "cosy" and like "I've been here before" and he loves it; the same is not for Wendy and Danny, who find it "scary" (they are reliving the trauma). The former is in a homely place, at ease (Jack knows the ghosts or treat them as real); the latter are in a unhomely/ haunted-house, and are frightened. So Kubrick made the uncanny be felt inside and outside the story...for our delight. Orson Welles comments on Kafka's parable "Before The Law Stands a Guard" that the logic of the story is the logic of a dream... a nightmare. Kubrick's The Shining is no different. At first we are led to believe that the ghosts are inside the mind of the characters, later that the ghosts are real and finally we conclude that nothing inside is real. It is a meta-fiction work of art. The final scene is its perfect denouement. Merry Christmas!

The maze is in his head because in Doctor Sleep there isn’t a Maze outside the hotel 🏨 except for In his mind & you also did a video showing how there wasn’t a Maze outside the Hotel at the start of the movie !

Awesome video Rob! One of the best film critics on RU-vid!

Have a great Christmas Rob!

I have wondered if the is some special meaning on the ball rolling on the carpet. Jack supposedly throws the same ball on the wall on other part of the film. The hotel has a huge "ball room" and on the final scene there is a picture of a 4th of July "ball". Kubrick even wrote and alternate ending in which Ullman brings the ball to Danny at the hospital.

One thing I picked up on are the inconsistencies* which pop up throughout the film, but they're so subtle because they're usually in the background or shot in angles in the foreground. 1: *Ullman's Desk.* When Jack is being interviewed with Mr. Ullman, pay close attention to his desk - or rather, the pen on the left of his desk. I watched the video of the interview, and counted exactly 13 times the camera cuts back to Ullman sitting at his desk, where the pen is sitting there, but in 7 of those shots, the pen is tipped slightly upward. Also, in shots 4 and 5, the camera changes positions, dropped downward just a touch. But in shot 6, the camera is raised slightly upward, then slightly moved to the left in shot 7, then back to the right in 8, brought back down at 9, raised again in 11, where it stays until the scene ends. 2: *Jack's Outburst.* When Jack snaps at Wendy for 'distracting him,' there's a chair and small table against the wall behind Jack. Three times we cut back to this wall, and in the 2nd shot the chair and tiny table are gone. Not only that, but the pages of the book on Jack's table also move. The first and third shots have a chair, small table, and pages down, but in shot 2, the chair and table are gone, and the pages are moved upward. 3: *The Typewriter.* It's white for the first half, but it suddenly turns blue from Jack's nightmare onward. What do you make of these?

would also like to give my additional meaning to the carpet of room 237 :) i think the colors of the carpet being purple and green are in line with danny's bruises inflicted by jack in the sense that bruises sometimes turn purple and yellowish-green and that his dream of his experience in room 237 is about his realisation and guilt of the abuse he's inflicted on danny both physically (the colors and the bruises from the strangling) and sexually (the sort of phallic shape evident in the carpet as well) basically i like to perceive the whole of room 237 as a visualisation of the abusive relationship between jack and danny; for both of them

Merry Christmas Rob! Your video essays have enriched my life and I am grateful.

Wonderfully observed, interpreted, and analyzed yet again Rob! Nice one! Merry Christmas! Have a good one :)

*@**10:01**:* "Now to a very different... *type* of clue." *I see what you did there! ;)*

I think that they are very "art deco" of the 1920's, which ties into the picture at the end of the movie. There were many types of art in the 1920's, but the main ones were Impressionism, Art Deco, Cubism, Abstract Art, and Realism. Room 237 is a time portal to the 20s.

It always seemed to me that the carpet patterns were male (hallway) and female (rm. 237). They also seem to suggest the patterns in the giant native painting over the fireplace in the main hall (the one Jack throws the tennis ball at). That painting is of male and female fertility gods. It's all very ritualized... sex and death and the cycle of rebirth.

Recently I revisited The Shining film, with the intention of establishing a timeline of the whole story. I realized that the title slides change from identifying events, like “The Interview”, to instead identifying days, “Wednesday”. I believe Kubrick did this to keep us off balance. Like everything else in the film.

Love your in-depth analysis!

Stella work as ever. I actually rule and compass draw various geo patterns and encountered that perception swister. Yea, when our perception is grasping for something "solid" , it must put us in a sugestable state,. Brilliant, Kubrick strikes again. Hehe, made visible or 3d , thanks to you Rob. Cheers mate.

To put it more simply, what is being said is that Danny and Wendy are trapped,lost, in s labyrinthine maze, while Jack is cruelly above snd not subject to that lostness. He overlooks their plight and smirks.

Merry christmas

The observation that the arched openings in the centre of the maze would be invisible on a map is interesting. Maybe this implies part of how Danny eludes Jack in the maze at the end, since Jack is only seen studying the maze from the scale model (a top down view, like a map) but Danny actually reached the centre of the maze already in his walk with Wendy. Of course this is assuming a tiny child could remember details like that about the maze and calculate that into his route while running for his life, but Danny is also smart enough to retrace his footprints so it's possible he either knew this or was supernaturally influenced to factor that in. Of course it's also ignoring how the scale model and the actual map seen of the maze don't match with the physical maze at all, how often the maze changes layout etc. And in the shot where Jack looks at the model, the model's arched entraceways in the centre are clearly visible to us, and thus probably visible to Jack, so maybe I'm wrong and Jack did notice the archways in the model. But it does seem noteworthy that Jack is only shown observing the maze from its model, iirc he's never shown entering the actual maze itself until the end chase, while Danny is specifically shown in the maze itself and reaching the centre earlier. And the shot of Jack looking at the model cuts to the overhead shot of the real maze where the archways are invisible to us, which seems to imply we're seeing the same top-down view Jack had of the model and so certain things weren't noticeable to him.

To put it in a few words: This hotel has some serious case of bad Feng Shui

Imagine being the studio employee who had to type out Jack's "manuscript". 😯

Thx for this interesting present, Rob! Maybe I´ m late noticing this, but in the center of the maze, there are to Christian crosses. The one below is in the right position an the other above is inverted. I didn't see any other cross as perfect as those two.