Movies

‘The Shining’ The Musical: A Disorienting Nightmare of a Film Slips into the Absurd

You gotta see this.
The Shining
Warner Bros.
By  · Published on September 1st, 2017

Here’s a question for you: what’s the one thing Stanley Kubrick could have done to make The Shining even more surreal? Now here’s the answer: he could have made it a musical.

Just imagine for a second if in the midst of Jack Torrance slowly going insane, the spiral was amplified with a jaunty song, a little dance, perhaps. An already disorienting and terrifying film would have traversed into the realm of the absurd.

Well, now you don’t have to imagine this scenario, because editor Antonio Maria da Silva has realized a new spin on a classic nightmare, specifically the scene in which Jack and Grady are in the red restroom cleaning ghost-liquor off Jack’s coat. Besides being wholly unnerving in the best way, the real reason I wanted to share this is the astonishing editing and compositional prowess da Silva has in display here.

I’ve seen hundreds upon hundreds of video essays in my time, but none quite as uniquely proficient with the technology. It’s videos like this that remind me the new criticism isn’t just visual, there’s a large creative component as well in the delivery; that’s not a pivot in how we discuss films, it’s an evolution.

Related Topics: ,

Novelist, Screenwriter, Video Essayist