What does the ending mean?
“I hope the audience has a good fright, has believed the film while they were watching it and retains some sense of it. The ballroom photograph at the end suggests the reincarnation of Jack” Stanley Kubrick Here’s a section of Jonathan Romnay’s essay on The Shining from the August ’99 edition of Sight and Sound. Amid the quiet – broken only by the ghostly strains of a 20’s dance tune – the camera tracks slowly towards a wall of photographs from the Overlook’s illustrious history. It closes in on a central picture showing a group of revellers smiling at the camera and the in two dissolves, reveals first the person at the centre of the group – Jack himself, smiling and youthful in evening dress – and then the inscription, “Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921” Cue credits, cue shudder from the audience. Just what makes this chilly pay off so uncanny? It appears to reveal something, the final narrative turn of the screw, or perhaps an explanation of the stories ambiguities – but really it
