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REDRUM ROAD – ROUND TWO – SKIP TO A PAGE
COME TOGETHER ⎔ SOMETHING ⎔ MAXWELL’S SILVER HAMMER ⎔ OH! DARLING ⎔ OCTOPUS’S GARDEN ⎔ I WANT YOU ⎔ HERE COMES THE SUN ⎔ BECAUSE ⎔ YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY ⎔ SUN KING ⎔ MEAN MR. MUSTARD ⎔ POLYTHENE PAM ⎔ SHE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW ⎔ GOLDEN SLUMBERS ⎔ CARRY THAT WEIGHT ⎔ THE END
ROUND ONE START ⎔ ROUND THREE START ⎔ SPECIAL: STORY ROOM
- Wendy spins Danny toward the camera in two herky-jerky motions that go beautifully with the intro.
- Also, it works to have Paul/Jack exploding at Ringo/Wendy for these first few seconds in the sense, again, that this song was written to try to express how badly Ringo hated the vibrations of being in the band. In that spirit, this little outburst of “This is so fucking typical…!” straight into “la la la…I’m under the ocean now” captures the essence in a magically terrible way.
- And a second later, the bloody flood waters come gushing in to put us all under the sea. You know, this was already one of my favourite overlay shots for the way it makes a True Detective intro shot of Wendy’s head, but here it’s a stunningly perfect visual metaphor for Ringo’s expression. He wants to be under the sea.
- “He’d let us in/Knows where we’ve been” – What’s funny is how this line underscores both the ignorance of Wendy as to where Jack and Danny have been (237–although in Jack’s case it’s more her ignorance of what happened to him there), and the equal degree of no-doubt-benefit the one is giving the other. The one is not “let[ting the other] in”, as it were, and suspecting the worst intentions.
- “In his octopus’s garden, in the shade” — A split-second after “shade” Danny appears in the dark of his bedroom.
- “I’d ask my friends to come and see” – Danny’s stare face, zooming out. And a split-second later, we get the first forward REDRUM, which Wendy will be seeing, boy howdy. Both these images work beautifully to express Danny’s desire for Wendy to understand what happened to him.
- “We would be warm/Below the storm” – A small thing, but Wendy is clutching Danny tight here, which would be warm, one assumes. Especially since everybody’s wearing sweaters and jackets and shoes inside in this place, body heat would be especially noticeable. And as we saw in the WEDNESDAY establishing shot, there’s a storm going on outside. And as we’ll hear later on the Glenn Rinker broadcast, three people died this day due to “exposure to freezing winds”.
- Also, when the shot cuts back to Wendy, she’ll have Paul Peel’s After the Bath behind her head, which features two naked twin children getting warm by a blazing fire.
- “We would sing and dance around/Because we’d know/We can’t be found” – Jack’s not exactly dancing so much as flailing, but it’s cute. And on “can’t be found” Wendy is shaking her head and saying “It’s not possible.”
- “In his octopus’s garden/In the shade” – On “shade” Jack is doing his cutthroat motion.
- Shade is, of course, another word for a ghost. In a way, the whole genesis and purpose of Ringo’s song was saying “I’d rather be dead than be in the Beatles anymore.” And of course, Lloyd is about to let Jack in, and both Jack and Lloyd seem to know where the other’s been (“You were always the best of em…”).
- Also, mirror Jack tilts his face down, shading it, as he accuses Danny of being the one who strangled himself.
- This is from the gurgly fish noises part. During the last iteration of this sound (round 1), Wendy was in the interview with the doctor, trying desperately to figure out how to present the story of Danny’s abuse to the doctor. So there’s a nice parallel in that and Wendy’s present frets about Danny’s health. And Jack’s being only too happy to blame shift.
- “Oh what joy/For every girl and boy/Knowing they’re happy and they’re safe” – On “safe”, Jack is looking in on the dark room where Danny should be sleeping. In fact, he’s tripping balls.
- “We would be so happy, you and me/No one there to tell us what to do” – Jack is inspecting the empty Gold Room bar, while backward Jack is assuring Wendy he saw nothing at all in room 237. Each part of each phrase plays to this sequence.
- Also, this concept of not having anyone to tell you what to do seems to play well to the film’s theme. Once the family is cut off from everything, they almost have to make up their own family morality. Which speaks to the creation and purpose and sustainment of myths and religions. In fact, Danny and Wendy seem to know how to live without requiring any overt faith (this might also account for why we never see any Sunday in the film). They’ve adapted to their environment. Jack is the one who needs an overlooker, a god figure to tell him how to behave. When he doesn’t have one, he dives into pointless work/play (“All work and no play”) and then almost has to invent a god in Lloyd to determine his behaviour, and justify his sense of freedom.
- I want to point out that this moment in the round 1 version of the song is Wendy trying to put a happy face on Jack’s violence. And here Jack is selling his soul to Lloyd. So I wonder if Wendy’s cover up for Jack is her own (partial) soul-sell moment. The round 3 moment has a storeroom Jack saying if Wendy lets him out, it’ll be “just like nuthin’ ever happened”. Maybe that’s more the point. Wendy acting like Jack’s violence was no big deal, and Gold Room Jack selling his soul for a “glass of beer” as if that weren’t no thing.
Click here to continue on to Redrum Road: I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – Round 2
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OTHER MAIN PAGES FOR SHINING ANALYSIS
THE MIRRORFORM ⎔ THE BEATLES ⎔ THE RUM AND THE RED
BACKGROUND ART ⎔ OVERLOOK PHOTOGRAPHS ⎔ GOLDEN SPIRALS
PHI GRIDS ⎔ PATTERNS ⎔ VIOLENCE AND INDIGENA ⎔ ABSURDITIES
THE STORY ROOM ⎔ ANIMAL SYMBOLS ⎔ THE ANNOTATED SHINING
EYE SCREAM 