The following essay is a reworked version of an assessment I completed as part of La Trobe University’s first year Cinema Studies subject, Introduction to Film Analysis. For comparison, the original version can be found below this piece.
This critical analysis will focus on the use of sound and mise-en-scène within the ‘MONDAY’ scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 115-minute version of The Shining (1980). In the conversation between Jack (Jack Nicholson) and Danny (Danny Lloyd), Kubrick’s style offers a chilling impression. This offering is firmly made through his choice of sourced orchestral score. However, its impression from particular use is not conveyed without the assistance of other style aspects, namely performance in mise-en-scène, of which voice forms an important part. Originally I had written that within Nicholson and Lloyd’s performances, movement (along with the other aspects of mise-en-scène) contributed to a strong sense of ‘normalcy’. This sense is given that one was purely watching the scene; that is, without sound. By doing this, my thought was that movement and sound could be separated, and considering the scene with sound is when its chilling essence would be revealed. This also meant that movement gave us one side of the coin while sound gave us the other. Yet, I have found the scene is more complex than the notion of mise-en-scène conveying one impression while sound conveys another. Further, I referred to normalcy as nothing outside of general expectations was occurring in regards to Jack and Danny’s bond. Yet, I cannot judge what is normal without analyzing their bond specifically, which is what I failed to do in the original analysis. So, by investing myself in the scene once again, and after a tweaked action description in an attempt to make it tighter, my main aim is to establish how movement – in mise-en-scène – and sound work together, and to uncover how both aspects of style offer and contribute to a specific sense of normalcy between Jack and Danny.
Describing the action
The scene’s trajectory can be traced by changes in music – Béla Bartók’s transfixing Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta III – Adagio – spoken language, and movement, as all three serve to punctuate the scene, albeit quite smoothly. Taking us from initial suspense on which the scene begins, they then delve us right into the heart of that suspense.
The word ‘MONDAY’ appears onscreen and then we see Danny carefully creeping into the living quarters as he pays careful attention to keeping his eyes on the entrance of Jack and Wendy’s room. Bartók’s piece complements this careful creeping with a quick yet gradual fast-to-slow tempo of high-register piano, arousing our initial interest. The score then graduates to a taut use of strings, heightening our curiosity of Danny’s movements as his gaze off screen peaks. A dramatised yet subtle advance of strings brings us to Jack sitting on the bed. The transition from creeping piano to pronounced strings cues us for, or rather pulls us into, the aforementioned suspenseful heart.
Jack tiredly calls Danny over to him. This instance is when we hear the scene’s first piece of dialogue. Considered alone, the words are quite plain – “Can I go to my room and get my fire engine?” “Are you having a good time?” etc. Underlying such plain dialogue is the score that does nothing less than steep us in suspense. Kubrick has us on what seems like the subtlest of roller coasters, as a rich juxtaposition between the ordinary dialogue and the somber orchestration puts us at an odd point of weighty anxiety of what to expect. The tautness of strings move higher and higher up the register, and we may find ourselves breathing in more and more shallower breaths until the peak subsides, giving us only a moment to breathe. The strings are allowed to advance dramatically and wildly again, but shortly as they are brought down to a low rumble underlying the words and accompanying tympani.
Bartók continues driving the suspense through taut use of violin, shortly partnered by toll tiptoeing piano. It is as if our feelings of suspense manifest through this creeping throughout that misses the odd key out of caution or fear of whether to continue or not down the uneasy path, not knowing what might be waiting ahead in the dark.
Now it is Jack’s tone that begins to indicate his darker character traits. He has spoken with a weary, trance-like voice, and here the glimmer of his unhinged character begins to be heard in his mildly crazed remark, “I wish we could stay here forever, and ever, and ever”.
Danny’s line to Jack, “You would never hurt mum and me, would ya?” is a cue that the dialogue has come up to speed with the atmosphere provided by the variations in vocal tone from Nicholson and the orchestral curiosities of Bartók. At this point, the piano tolls, marking a brief and slower passage containing longer pauses between notes. This has a drawn-out, sweeping effect, as to indicate that once Danny has posed that question we are left momentarily hanging in suspense of what Jack’s answer will be.
He starts with, “I love ya, Danny. I love you more than anything else in the whole world”. This, too, is delivered in a menacing tone from Nicholson, and it features the most menacing instrument of this scene’s score, the celeste. Its sound forcefully continues the roller coaster-like sensation, and it quickly progresses to a sprawling, exponential anxiety, bringing us to the chilling chord, and edit, that cuts off the scene – WEDNESDAY.
Sound and mise-en-scène working together
In concluding my first version of this analysis I wrote, “… considering the action with sound adds crucial depth to Jack’s previously considered normalcy towards Danny. And the presence of sound actually inverts the meaning of Nicholson and Lloyd’s performances. Jack’s smiles are now sinister; his hands around Danny become threatening; and Danny’s close position on his father’s knee gives him no way out. Likewise, Danny’s deadpan expression and lack of movement may now be interpreted as him being frozen with fear.”
While I maintain that sound is offering a sinister perspective, treating movement as sound’s opposition is to overlook certain performance aspects, namely those of Lloyd. Firstly, the scene begins with Danny creeping into the room. He then approaches his father slowly, and does little more after being placed on Jack’s lap. We never even see Danny smile. All of these aspects complement my perspective on sound.
Moreover, considering the nuances in Kubrick’s style, he brings the orchestrations of Bartók firmly to the forefront. Rather than score and voice sharing equal presence, the former is robust in comparison to the subtlety of vocal performance. Yet, score and performance complement each other quite well, particularly regarding how Bartók’s flourishes of suspense and anxiety work nicely with Nicholson; his facial expressions and partnered tonality move Jack from genuine to mildly-crazed, and finally to duplicitous, or rather they move him from mildly to somewhat overtly sinister.
From further perceiving Kubrick’s variations of stylistic presence it is now clear both aspects are working together. Moving forward, I will explore what both have to offer regarding the context of Jack and Danny’s bond.
A sense of ‘normalcy’
Score, speech, and movement offer us the essence of Jack and Danny’s bond, and it is a one that is deeply fractured. The style that indicates this suggests that we are witnessing their relationship as it is normally.
Jack’s first encounter with Lloyd in The Gold Room lays bare his previous abuse towards Danny and his current disdain for him. While we are not aware of previous abuse in the ‘MONDAY’ scene, Danny undoubtedly would be. As Nicholson, at times, creates a seemingly affectionate impression, Lloyd creates the cold counterpoint. Jack never seems surprised by this lack of warmth towards him; neither does Danny’s fairly detached manner ever offer warmth. Performance-wise, these are the most telling indications that their bond is fractured.
While we can perceive from the meaning of performance alone that there is something amiss between Jack and Danny, there remains what Kubrick’s strength of score presence adds the sense of normalcy. My view here is that Kubrick is using score as a commentary. As Geoffrey Cocks (2004) has argued, Kubrick’s choice of Bartók, among other composers, was artistically loaded. Cocks (p. 248) states that Bartók left “imprints… in the music to affect and inform the listener about the world in which the music was written”. Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta – Adagio was composed in 1936, and it “marked an attempt to confront and musically overcome the massing darkness of fascism in the 1930s” (p. 248).
While my argument is not drawing parallels with such global horrors, it is drawing them with horrors that are domestic. Given the film’s harrowing domesticity and the mood created by Bartók’s ‘imprints’, Kubrick’s choice of score is functioning as much as a comment on this point in the narrative as it is regarding Cock’s suggestions on fascism. Kubrick’s choice of Bartók is then contextually apt as musical emphasis suggests Jack and Danny’s harrowing past. Music for String’s mood is the strongest auditory indicator of such drama and tension between them in general, and of anxious awareness on Danny’s part in particular.
Moreover, by aligning with Nicholson, as aforementioned, score-as-commentary additionally moves beyond the suggestion of history, and towards a chilling presage that brings the scene to a close: as Jack deceptively utters, “I love ya, Danny. I love ya more than anything else in the whole world, and I’d never do anything to hurt ya. Never…” Bartók’s piece sprawls towards an intensely anxious cutoff point, but not only to this. Sound and performance ultimately press us towards the horrors between Jack and Danny that are soon to come.
As I have argued, Kubrick has created a stylistically nuanced and complex scene where partnered sound and mise-en-scène are most telling of the troubled relationship between Jack and Danny. Establishing a specific sense of normalcy between them makes for a more accurate reading of the scene, serving to strengthen The Shining’s theme of domestic horror overall. In rewriting and extending this piece my hope is that I have improved upon my original version and that I have also provided a good starting point for further explorations into Kubrick’s film as a whole. Those being analytical possibilities that not only relate to the indications of mise-en-scène, but particularly to how the film’s human drama is so precisely expressed through Kubrick’s choice of sourced orchestral score.
References:
- The Shining 1980, DVD, Warner Home Video, Neutral Bay NSW, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 115 min. feature length.
- Cocks, G 2004, The wolf at the door: Stanley Kubrick, history, & the Holocaust, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York.
A special thanks goes to Anna and my gorgeous partner Anastasia for assisting me with making this entry what it has finally become, and also to Craig for encouraging me to begin this blog in the first place.
The original analysis
This critical diary entry focuses on the use of sound within one particular scene from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980).
The action consists of a rather uneasy and chilling conversation between Jack (Jack Nicholson) and Danny (Danny Lloyd), which generates such feelings for the viewer most predominantly through sound. An important distinction for the scene is that watching it without sound conveys a strong sense of normalcy; Jack lifts Danny onto his lap, he cuddles Danny, he smiles at him, and so on. Character movements, props, lighting, and the various other aspects of mise-en-scène largely tend to support this. The essence of this scene is in its sound.
The scene can be divided into five parts that are distinguished by changes in music (Béla Bartók’s transfixing Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta III – Adagio) and spoken language. Both serve to punctuate the scene by upping the level of suspense as the transitions are made, or rather, felt. This gradually brings the scene to a peak in suspense.
In the scene’s first part, Danny carefully creeps into the room, and we hear the “non-synchronous”, “off-screen sound” of cold, howling winds outside (Giannetti 2002, p. 210, 215). Bartók’s piece complements Danny’s careful creeping with a quick, yet gradual, fast to slow tempo of high-register piano, arousing our initial interest. The tense and cautious feel of the piano almost gives Danny’s movements a sense of synchronous “mickeymousing” (funnily enough, as a side note, Danny wears a knitted Mickey Mouse jumper) (Giannetti, p. 220). The score then graduates to a taut use of strings, heightening our curiosity of Danny’s movements as he fixes his gaze off-screen. A dramatised yet subtle advance of strings brings us to Jack sitting on the bed. The transition from creeping piano to pronounced strings pulls us into the beginning of the next part.
Jack tiredly calls Danny over to sit on his lap. This instance is when we hear the scene’s first passage of dialogue. As with the relative normalcy of character mise-en-scène mentioned above, the words in this section of dialogue give us nothing out of the ordinary until we consider their spoken tone. Alone they are quite plain – “Can I go to my room to get my fire engine?” “Are you having a good time?” “Do you like this hotel?” “Yeah, I do. I love it.” etc. Yet here, Jack’s tone begins to indicate grave and darker character traits. He starts with a subdued, deadpan voice. Yet, as this part progresses, the glimmer of his unhinged character begins to be heard in Jack’s trancelike remark, “I wish we could stay here forever, and ever, and ever”.
The score of this second part does nothing less than steep us in suspense. Kubrick has us on what seems like the subtlest of roller coasters, as a rich juxtaposition between the dialogue’s normalcy and the somber orchestration puts us at an odd point of weighty anxiety of what to expect. The tautness of strings move higher and higher up the register, and we find ourselves breathing in more and more shallower breaths until the peak subsides, and gives us a moment to breathe, steadily… yet it is only a moment. The strings are allowed to advance dramatically and wildly again, but shortly, as they are brought down to a low rumbling (accompanying a tympani) underlying the dialogue.
Bringing us to the third part of this scene is, again, an almost mickeymousing effect from strings and percussion led by a higher register of piano. It is as if, as viewers, our feelings of suspense manifest as a creeping tiptoeing throughout that misses the odd key out of caution or fear whether as to continue or not down the uneasy path, not knowing what might be waiting ahead of us in the darkness. Tone and score uncovered bring us to the scene’s fourth part.
Danny’s line to Jack, “You would never hurt ma and me, would ya?” is where the dialogue finally comes up to speed with the atmosphere already provided by tone of voice and the curiosities from Bartók. At this point, the leading piano strikes a gentle yet tolling key, marking a brief and slower passage that contains longer pauses between notes. This has a kind of drawn-out, sweeping effect, as to indicate that once Danny has posed that question to Jack, we are, more or less, left momentarily hanging in suspense of what Jack’s answer will be.
The final part provides this answer. Jack starts with, “I love ya, Danny. I love you more than anything in the whole world”. This, too, is delivered in a menacing tone from Nicholson. Yet, it also features perhaps the most menacing instrument of this scene’s score, the celeste. The sound conveys a forceful sense of continuing the roller coaster-like sensation mentioned earlier, and it quickly progresses to a kind of sprawling, exponential anxiety, bringing us to the chilling harpsichord that strikes, cutting off the scene – WEDNESDAY.
As we have seen, considering the action with sound adds crucial depth to Jack’s previously considered normalcy towards Danny. And the presence of sound actually inverts the meaning of Nicholson and Lloyd’s performances. Jack’s smiles are now sinister; his hands around Danny become threatening; and Danny’s close position on his father’s knee gives him no way out. Likewise, Danny’s deadpan expression and lack of movement may now be interpreted as him being frozen with fear.
References:
- The Shining 1980, DVD, Warner Home Video, Neutral Bay NSW, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 115 min. feature-length.
- Giannetti, L 2002, “Sound”, Understanding movies, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, pp. 207-244.
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