So on Thursday, I was looking through the upcoming movies playing here in the city and I saw that there was a special edition of The Shining playing in IMAX. This, of course, made me curious. Why was The Shining playing? Was this an anniversary? And why in IMAX? The movie was never filmed in IMAX!

I didn’t know what to expect, but I could not refuse the opportunity to see a Stanley Kubrick movie in an actual movie theater. In my life, I saw Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut in a theater, but those were the only opportunities to see Kubrick’s movies on the big screen. This was another chance!

I have spoken here at times about the notion of my views on cinema evolving over the years. I used to view the concept of digital cinematography and the ability to watch movies at home as the great democratizer of film. I loved that film was no longer an elitist notion and I scoffed at people like Christopher Nolan, who insisted that his movies only be shot on film. Snobbery! I would say as I clucked my tongue and tut-tutted at such high-minded nonsense. They simply want to gatekeep film!

I still feel that way to a certain extent. The proliferation of cheap film equipment and the ability to get that equipment into the hands of the many rather than the hands of the few is a wonderful thing, especially when it comes to allowing unheard voices to have an opportunity to tell their story. There are more films being made at this point in history than ever before and all of it is due to this change in technology.

But there have been other changes that have come along with it as well, a lot of them not for the good of the whole. What I see in cinema nowadays is a sameness that I find off-putting. Everything is perfectly color-graded. The technology has allowed amazing cinematography that has turned cinematography into a commodity rather than an art form. The lighting looks the same in everything and that lighting is absolutely perfect. I recently bought a Sony A7 IV for my classroom and the way that it shoots has made my fifteen-year old students be able to shoot cinema-quality shots that look the same as most of what we see on Netflix.

Everything is just too perfect.

And because of that, I am looking for film that has flaws. I want actors that are no longer beautiful. I want to see real people up on screen; people with awkward faces, with lines etched into their skin, with angles and asymmetry; people with a map to their soul on their faces. I want cinematography that has that grain of film; where the lighting isn’t perfect, the camera isn’t silky smooth, and the angle isn’t quite right for the actors. I don’t want CGI sets that are photorealistic; I want poorly-lit rear-projection in cars, corners of rooms that are messy, and that kind of nonsense.

I just want something that is real.

I have a long-running theory that we have an unconscious revulsion to things that aren’t real. This isn’t necessarily for things like sci-fi films, with spaceships and such. I mean when it comes to human beings or characters in film. Darren Aronofsky is making a completely AI-generated film about the American Revolution. You can see it here:

It looks neat. It looks modern. It isn’t real. As far as I know, the voices are real, but everything else isn’t. And I believe that we, as human beings, can sense this, even though we might not be able to acknowledge it. There is a level of disgust that wells up inside of us when we look at these AI images that we can’t fully articulate, but one day might be able to. Let’s coin a term here and call it GENERATIVE NAUSEA. (This is me trying to create a catchphrase…you read it here first, folks!). The bottom line with everything is that though we might at first be impressed with something, the GENERATIVE NAUSEA® will eventually settle in.

If you want examples of this, look at the evolution of the Marvel movies. At first, we really liked what was happening, but as time went on, our GENERATIVE NAUSEA® (see what I’m doing here?) outweighed our love for the films. We soon realized that we were not watching human beings anymore, but mainly computer graphics, with actors who were not even in the same room stitched together in a way that made us repulsed.

Which brings me back to The Shining…

Seeing this film on the big screen was just shocking to me. I had spent my youth watching the movie on poorly-presented VHS tapes or pixelated downloads that prevented me from truly absorbing what I was watching. And truth be told, my opinion of the film had been influenced by that. Bad sound, bad image, poor presentation; all of those things had tarnished the film for me.

But being in a theater with a three-story tall screen, with pristine image quality and a stellar sound system…it changed the film. I was absolutely immersed in this movie. The cinematography, the soundtrack, the performances were all just absolutely revelatory. I don’t think I have ever appreciated a movie more than I did with this film and I just had a complete reevaluation of the movie from my perspective.

Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd were absolutely stunning in this movie. Everyone focuses on Jack Nicholson, of course, and he was wonderful, but it was almost as if he was acting in a different movie than Duvall and Lloyd. I used to view Duvall’s performance as stilted and, to be frank, awful. I thought she was terrible in the film.

Let me admit that I was wrong.

She is incredible. There was not a moment in the movie that she didn’t seem to be giving 110% to her performance and it is a testament to how well she did that she made me believe that she was a bad actress. Kubrick wanted it that way. Why? I have no idea.

An example would be the infamous scene where Nicholson axes his way through the door, into the bathroom where she is hiding. Nicholson got the entirety of the focus in that scene because he hammed it up like nobody’s business. But if you watch it again, watch Duvall. The intensity and sheer and utter terror that Kubrick captured on screen was shockingly visceral. Supposedly, he drove her a little nutty while making it.

Just as good was Danny Lloyd, who played Danny Torrence. Again, under different circumstances, I had viewed the performance as a bit cheesy and stilted. But that was what Kubrick wanted, and seeing this little boy’s face on the big screen was just absolutely shocking. He was so good. I believed every bit of what he was doing on the screen, even the performance of his “finger” as Tony. Absolutely stunning.

As far as Jack Nicholson is concerned, he was great! Enough has been written about Nicholson over the years, so there’s no need to drag it out. I will say that, at times, it felt like he was just screwing around and didn’t seem to be taking the film as seriously as everyone else. But then again, that might have been the point? And to be honest, there were moments of levity in his performance that were shocking in their honesty.

There are a billion other things to write about. Kubrick’s use of the steadicam was groundbreaking, and there were a few shots in the film that left me in awe…simple shots that have echoed through history even to today. The following shot (at 1:21) is so simple, yet so incredible from every perspective…

I could go on and on. The music just blared the whole time. The screen overwhelmed us. It was just a wonderful afternoon of seeing a film.

So, where do I end this? Let me just say that this movie is a masterpiece and that I may be coming around to ONLY seeing films in IMAX anymore because it may be the way that films SHOULD be seen. They had an extended preview for The Odyssey before the movie and I can guarantee you that I will be there the day that comes out, ready to be immersed in film completely.