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REDRUM ROAD – ROUND THREE – 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 TWO START ⎔ SPECIAL: STORY ROOM
- The hopping flea (The Mighty Angelo) in the cartoon behind Durkin here (To Itch His Own) jumps in perfect time with the opening beat of the music, as the scene fades. I don’t know if this was Harrison’s last song he wrote for The Beatles chronologically, but it was his first and last A-side track for the band, and this cartoon is famous for ending the careers of both its prolific producer and its composer (who did hundreds of Merry Melody shorts). Both retired afterward.
- Also, the TV behind Durkin here is the same model we’ll see in the kitchen with backward Wendy in a minute. And there’s a Coke reference in round 2 and 3, this one by a smidgen.
- Right on the first “some” in “Something in the way she moves/Attracts me like no other lover” we see Danny’s second(?) vision of the twins right after touching 237. But in the mirrorverse, he sees them before he touched the doorknob, technically. So it reads almost like a “longing, hopeful vision of her” quality.
- “I don’t wanna leave her now/You know I believe in how” – Starts just as Danny starts walking backward from 237. The last two instances of this song played over the first breakfast and the first Summer of ’42. You may recall from round 1 how Golden Slumbers played over this sequence, and how I showed the way the refrains helped suggest a connection between Wendy and the mysteriously open door behind Danny right here. Well, consider this an addition to that. All the repeats of Something have some connection to Wendy, and the lyric of not wanting to leave someone really speaks to Danny’s conflict in being an explorer. He doesn’t want to leave his mom behind, but things keep calling out to him in the world. And he sees his mother in them. In them he sees a form of return.
- Also, as opposed to the soldier coming home feeling of the last version of this drive, with Hallorann driving forward toward his doom, the “don’t wanna leave her now” feels more like a comment on life. He’s seeing the smashed up Beetle, and he’s realizing how little he wants that to be him. He soldiers on.
- “Something in her style that shows me” – Wendy has laid out a very similar breakfast to the first breakfast, and what song was playing then?
- Also, in the round 2 Something, backward Jack was being tempted by Grady, and here it’s Danny with 237. Round 1 Jack was being tempted by Ullman’s glad-handing approval.
- “I don’t wanna leave her now/You know I believe in how” – In the round 1 Something, Watson entered the interview, and exposed this painting in Susie’s office for a split second. The moments are off by 30 seconds in terms of the two rounds, but still interesting. By the way, because I never went to the trouble of actually studying the three mirrorform rounds side-by-side, I feel like I’m probably missing out on a tonne of these little wall art connections. Maybe not.
- Backward Danny seems to be feeling this lyric in not wanting to give up on his interest in 237 (sure enough, he’s triking back by that spot in a minute), and Wendy is feeling this lyric with regard to not wanting to go face Jack. The “how” is that baseball bat in the distance.
- “You’re asking me, will my love grow?/I don’t know, I don’t know” – Wendy’s asking Tony/Danny to listen to her for a minute. And there is a note of Wendy making this gesture (fighting Jack) to win back Danny from the oblivion of his dissociation. It would’ve been way simpler to take Tony/Danny to the snowcat when she had that idea than to just stay put and see how things shook out (she was planning for a fight with Jack and the “crazy woman” anyway), but she chose to stay to see if peace could be made between all. I’m not saying this was a completely unreasonable reaction, but Tony and Danny have seen REDRUM, and their love for Wendy might not “grow” in the light of her decisions, which seriously narrowed their chances of survival. And doomed Hallorann in a sense.
- Also, during round 1 of this song, this is the moment where backward Jack gets stumped in the labyrinth, which is when Danny is between the 3rd and 4th of his “escapes“, which correlate to the two trike rides on either side of this trike ride. So Something correlates to all the lessons and escapes except the first maze walk and it’s escape.
- “You stick around now it may show” – On “show” Danny is between 237 and the mysterious opening door. Danny stuck around 237, and the ability of the hotel to transform showed.
- This also speaks nicely to the idea that Tony helping Danny to ice out Wendy (for not acting like the best version of herself) has worked. If you, Wendy, stick around as my mother figure, then maybe my love will grow, yes.
- In the interlude, two things: 1) Tony/Danny has his one line of dialogue (“Yes, Mrs. Torrance”; in round 2 he also had one line in this passage–“Can I go to my room and get my fire engine?”–which lead him right to where Tony/Danny is now, staring at a similarly zombified, similarly dressed Jack sitting in the same spot), and 2) in round 1 of this moment, the backward bloodfall (seen by Wendy) was sucking back up along Ullman’s person, just as backward Wendy’s fruit cocktail is sucking back into the can, here.
- Oh, also both Jack and Wendy kiss Danny’s head while sitting on the bed together, during this song.
- Oh, and it’s not at the same moment, but during round 1 and 3 we can see a carton of Robert’s Milk sitting behind Wendy. The news that she’s watching is about to tell her about a “Susan Robertson” who’s been missing ten days in the wilderness. The only other woman in the film identified by name is Ullman’s secretary, Susie.
- I like to point out all the appearances of the family Beetle. This is the first of the mirrorverse appearances of it, just as the lyrics come back, with “Something in the way she knows”.
- General note: it seems key that round 2 Danny was seeking his fire engine, and round 3 Tony/Danny is sitting with his fire engine in the distance. Also, at the beginning of this track, we were still in Durkin’s, who has a fire engine next to him on a magazine seemingly called Sirens and Lights. The only other reference to fire trucks in the movie comes from Danny’s Emergency! lunchpail, which doesn’t overlay with this song ever.
- “And all I have to do is think of her” – There’s a funny feeling on this line of the Danny inside Tony thinking of the maze walk playing out in the mirrorform. Is dissociated Danny starting to put together the lessons and escapes?
- Exactly on the crash that happens right before “Something in the things she shows me” backward Wendy and Danny are stepping on the exact spot where round 1 backward Danny was springing into the air. That might be one of my favourite Redrum Road synchronicities (see below).
- Also, the following lyric (“Something in the things she shows me”) speaks perfectly to Wendy’s irrefutable role in saving Danny. You can thank Hallorann for his service, and you can praise Danny for his genius, but if Wendy hadn’t been proactive in showing Danny the world, he wouldn’t have survived the labyrinth. He would’ve been down a major lesson.
- On that note: recall that the backward mother and child here are both carrying cameras, and Tony/Danny is also being re-shown the same Roadrunner cartoon as he saw in Boulder. So the idea of being shown art, and of creating art as a result of seeing the world, are both being tied to this moment. By contrast, the shots in round 2 of this song feature only backward Jack and Grady in the artless Gold Room bathroom, and shots of Jack and Danny in Suite 3, carefully framed to exclude any of the surrounding art (for the most part).
- “I don’t wanna leave her now/You know I believe in how” – Transitions between Suite 3 and the lounge fight, and in the mirrorform, between the heart of the labyrinth and the aerial view. Wendy’s not wanting to leave Suite 3 is obvious, but the idea of the labyrinth being analogous to the world plays well with this line, in light of all the moon imagery from just before. Danny’s just been tempted to make a flight to the moon (237), and here, in the (backward) slow zoom perfectly straight up off the centre of the maze, we get the feeling of leaving earth. This might actually account for all the 11s that appear above Wendy in the gallery above the typewriter (which you can see along the top of the screen here). Apollo 11.
- This is the end of the song, and while Maxwell starts in a second, I just wanted to make a note about the Aztec temple appearance that some have noted in this view of the labyrinth, and in the stairs that Wendy clubs Jack atop in a few moments. I’ve been having a hard time drawing a line from this detail (which I think is an interesting theory, if nothing else) to anything else in the film, other than the way they overlay in this moment. But if my “leaving for the moon” notion holds water, then perhaps the form of the maze as we see it here is meant to look like how an Aztec pyramid would look from a descending/ascending space craft. Maybe Kubrick understood something about these pyramids acting as launch points of a fashion. The Aztecs built their pyramids as places to worship the gods, but perhaps (as always, I’m no expert) there was some understanding that they were conduits of a fashion, which, if the gods existed in space, could link the earth to space. As for these pyramids being locations of human sacrifices: it’s worth noting that Jack is essentially sacrificed once in the lounge (Wendy’s clubbing), and once in the centre of the maze. Remember, the minotaur myth is a decapitation myth.
Click here to continue on to Redrum Road: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer – Round 3
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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 