Retrospective: The Shining (Patreon)

I've talked before about how cool Wendy Torrance is, but seeing how Shelley Duvall has been dead for a while, it's time to talk more about that character and Duvall's performance. When I rewatched The Shining on 4K (recommended), Wendy pointed out a detail I'd never really spotted before: the ballroom is pink. That's missable partly because of the gold-tinted lighting (intentionally so — Kubrick was as good at lighting as he was at directing), but on 4K the pink finally pops out a little bit. This woman is so sharp she's pointing out details in dialogue that I never noticed before (side note — the colors in the costuming here are extraordinary. Milena Canonero not getting nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design is a tragedy).

Wendy is fun. She is living a daily nightmare, but she's clearly a blast to hang out with. Her husband abuses her anytime he looks at her for more than two seconds, but she still possesses an active imagination. She's happy to do a cute little dance in the ballroom. When she's alone with Danny she takes him on a little run around the scariest place on earth ("the loser has to keep America clean!") Even her hypervigilance isn't just a sign of trauma — she's the kind of person who's sharp enough to notice that Dick calls Danny "Doc" without knowing the Torrances do so.

The idea that Wendy — and by extension Duvall — are frail is nothing short of misogyny. Wendy is the only person keeping the Overlook Hotel from burning down, something which Stephen King was unable to do. Looking kinda stressed and shitty is a pretty natural part of life in an abusive household. If knocking out your abusive husband with a baseball bat and locking him in a walk-in freezer is weakness, I shudder to think what strength looks like.

I reckon this piece is my apology to both Wendy Duvall and Stanley Kubrick. Like everybody else, I believed the myths and exaggerations propagated about Duvall and Kubrick over the years (by all accounts, the staircase confrontation was done in only a few takes). The infamous behind-the-scenes documentary cited as evidence that Kubrick abused Duvall was, bizarrely, edited by Kubrick himself (he made sure to exclude any footage of himself being nice to Duvall). Accounts from people who were regularly on set make Kubrick sound more like an overly passionate hardass than a true abuser. Duvall's misery at the time only partly stemmed from the shoot — she had just broken up with Paul Simon, she was physically unwell, and worst of all, she was living in England. Yet she shows tremendous strength — even in that little documentary, Duvall stands up to Kubrick, calling him out for being a dick. As superficially inspiring as the myth about Poor Little Duvall was, the real story is much cooler — a woman having a bad time and turned it into one of the greatest performances in English-language cinema. Thanks, Shelley. The world is a better place because of you. I shudder to think of what you could have accomplished at peak physical health.