The Ending of The Shining?

[Visceral]

That viewpoint irritates me, it's art its not real life. Kubrick was thinking about something when he made this film, something attracted him to making an adaptation. To say that Kubrick had no special intention when making this film or any means that any attempt to interpret the work, right or wrong, would be pointless.

This isn't the case, there are enough points to show one that there is an underlying subtext, even though Kubrick was mysterious and obscure enough to make us argue about it.

Interviews with the cast and crew show that the attention to detail that Kubrick had meant he wasn't making an ink blot but something that was intended, even if my view might be wrong.

 

[moviedoors]

That viewpoint irritates me, it's art its not real life. Kubrick was thinking about something when he made this film, something attracted him to making an adaptation. To say that Kubrick had no special intention when making this film or any means that any attempt to interpret the work, right or wrong, would be pointless.

This isn't the case, there are enough points to show one that there is an underlying subtext, even though Kubrick was mysterious and obscure enough to make us argue about it.

Interviews with the cast and crew show that the attention to detail that Kubrick had meant he wasn't making an ink blot but something that was intended, even if my view might be wrong.

That doesn't mean what he intended was something as dunderheaded as "the gold standard!" or whatever. Kubrick was far too much of genius for his movies to so easily be reduced to a one word catch phrase. There's analyzing the text and then there's undue extrapolation and run-on deductions.

I think people misinterpret Kubrick's infamous tendency for doing dozens and dozens of takes. He was a perfectionist, but in this instance, I don't think those were the actions of man who wanted something exactly so. It strikes me as searching. That he was pushing his actors out of the zone of their fallback affectations and into an unknown place. A place where he wanted to be surprised, to arrive at an affect that you couldn't premeditate.

 

[Visceral]

That doesn't mean what he intended was something as dunderheaded as "the gold standard!" or whatever. Kubrick was far too much of genius for his movies to so easily be reduced to a one word catch phrase. There's analyzing the text and then there's undue extrapolation and run-on deductions.

I think people misinterpret Kubrick's infamous tendency for doing dozens and dozens of takes. He was a perfectionist, but in this instance, I don't think those were the actions of man who wanted something exactly so. It strikes me as searching. That he was pushing his actors out of the zone of their fallback affectations and into an unknown place. A place where he wanted to be surprised, to arrive at an affect that you couldn't premeditate.

I agree with this. I don't believe in the majority of conspiracies, though I do think Kubrick might have been commentating on the Space Race

 

[redhawk23]

There was certainly an intent to Kubrick's work even if he made it cryptic enough to leave it open to debate, he at least knew the right answer. People are free to make their arguments for various subtexts in the work that are intended or not, death of the author and all that.

But it is the intent in his work that separates him from hacks like Damon Lindelof who don't even bother to make up a right answer themselves and make purposely vague work so that "people will have something to talk about" (Lindelof speaks to this continually throughout the Prometheus commentary),completely missing the strength of better work from filmmakers like Kubrick and the reason why people enjoy dissecting their work: Because something is actually there.

 

[Warhammer]

There was certainly an intent to Kubrick's work even if he made it cryptic enough to leave it open to debate, he at least knew the right answer. People are free to make their arguments for various subtexts in the work that are intended or not, death of the author and all that.

But it is the intent in his work that separates him from hacks like Damon Lindelof who don't even bother to make up a right answer themselves and make purposely vague work so that "people will have something to talk about" (Lindelof speaks to this continually throughout the Prometheus commentary), completely missing the strength of better work from filmmakers like Kubrick and the reason why people enjoy dissecting their work: Because something is actually there.

You're absolutely correct.