The End – Round 1 – EYE SCREAM

One of the most unintentionally funny moments in Redrum Road is the flight attendant’s backwards walk throughout the first five seconds of The End. There’s such a profound mood shift, and the jaunt in her step is just perfect. I’ve always thought that this scene was meant to highlight the difference between Hallorann’s civility and Jack’s boorish assholery, but this really captures it.
Also, Hallorann is Yoko in the analogy, so it’s fitting that he’d be the first person we see at the start of The End. I’m not blaming Yoko, I’ve read the documentation, and she was clearly just one dimension of a much larger sequence of issues.

“Are you gonna be in my dreams/Tonight?” – Always seems fitting in this movie. But here it plays over Wendy realizing how crazy Jack’s gotten, and it seems extra apt. She’ll be running in to this very spot to wake Jack from a nightmare about murdering her in about ten minutes screen time. Also, Hallorann will have a kind of dream from Danny.
Also, this being the start of the hotel’s dark influence on Jack’s sanity: Jack becomes rather sleep-deprived once he begins unravelling. And as for backward Hallorann: he’ll never sleep again.

The drum solo here, which completely fills the zoom on Hallorann’s face, was Ringo’s only solo in the entire history of the Beatles. How crazy, and how sad is it that it’s only 15 seconds long, and comes within two minutes of having never happened at all. There’s something almost too bittersweet for words about that, a kind of heart-rending comment on how cosmically lucky we all were that the Beatles met each other, and kept it together for as long as they could. I’m not saying this as a superfan; I only really grew up with Magical Mystery Tour and random other songs you hear in movies, like Hey Jude in The Royal Tenenbaums, for instance. Or the I Am Sam soundtrack. I’m just saying, they clearly had a profound effect on culture and society, and I think for the better. Anyway, this solo doesn’t pair brilliantly with the forward action, where Wendy only gets to say, “Yeah.”

At the end of the solo, this American flag-wearing jet seems to extra silence Wendy. Is that cuz she’s…carrying that weight?

“Love you!” – On the first of the repeating “Love you”s, Wendy turns to go, and seems to follow in the path of the plane. These “Love you”s follow her all the way out of the room, in a sad irony.

These carry through all the way to the shot of crazy Jack and the murdering of the radio, in which Danny and Wendy are seen capering about at Hallorann’s sides. A pretty adorable image.

“And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to the love/You make” – This shot of crazy Jack (and mirror Jack relishing the radio kill) starts on the solo piano trios. The word “And” corresponds to the second image below (Jack ripping out the second of three plugs), and the third image below is where the line ends (Jack unscrewing the radio). Whenever I think “Is Redrum Road really real?” this is the sequence my mind always goes to. It’s so satisfying.

The final “Aaaaaaaaahhhhh” sound pairs nicely with a slight, (almost imperceptible, really) uptick in Jack’s creepy stare (first image below). Then, the last short round of drum beats begins on a cut that makes the second image, and ends with a cut that makes the third image below. It’s really smooth.
Due to the nature of Redrum Road, this same moment is going to be the end of Round 2, on the other side of the movie. So The End isn’t simply paired with one THURSDAY-SATURDAY jump, but two. And backwards.