The End – Round 2 – EYE SCREAM

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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

Starts just as backward Danny trikes back around the corner, which feels apt, since that was Danny’s (or anyone’s) first big brush with the horror of the hotel, from within the hotel. It gives the backward story a sense of “smooth sailing from here on out”.

“Oh yeah/Alright/Are you gonna be in my dreams/Tonight?” – Wendy saying to herself that if Jack doesn’t wanna come with them, then they’ll just have to tell him they’re going alone. Wendy does get one last sleep in, after locking Jack up. So when she does dream, will she dream of Jack killing the snowcat?
It’s also interesting that during a song called The End Wendy is finally giving voice to the concept of leaving Jack, even if it is a soft leave. He did say if he ever touched another drop she could leave him. Did it count ghost drinks? Let’s say yes.
The below image is from the very end of the singing, which leads into the one Ringo/Beatles drum solo of all time. And unlike last time, this one contains substantial Wendy (Ringo). Shelley didn’t get too many chances for meaty solo work like this, but to have two sequences of just Shelley on screen for this amount of time is pretty perfect for this. While this moment is interrupted by the bashful ranger for about 6 seconds, it still opens and closes on two solitary Wendys.

“Love you” – Right on the first “love you” Danny comes into frame, and Wendy is stroking his hair. Tony/Danny is shouting “Redrum!” all throughout this passage as well. Almost like his rebuttal to all the “love you”s.
These carry through the entire rest of the ranger scene, which reminds me of my theory that the two rangers are meant to reflect the two aspects of Jack: the bashful, shy Jack who has a goofy way about him, and later the grumpy, no-nonsense, simmering Jack, prone to outburst. Backward Wendy’s tone with bashful ranger is bright and cheery and friendly, and hearing a voice return any level of her sincere kindness, after five weeks isolated, must’ve filled her heart with something like these “love you”s. As for forward Wendy she’s trying the same tactic with Tony/Danny and getting nowhere.

“And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to the love you make” – Plays across Wendy’s full lobby crossing. “And in the end” is Wendy leaving the office. “The love you take” ends right as Wendy crosses Hallorann’s death spot (giving it a feeling of “the life you take”). “Is equal to the love you make” ends right as she’s passing the spot where we heard “holy roller” on the opposite side of round 2. Also, recall that the last time we heard these words (round 1) was when Jack was staring out the window going crazy. So Tony/Danny’s intense stare, and his “Danny’s can’t wake up, Mrs. Torrance.” “Danny’s gone away, Mrs. Torrance.” reflects Jack’s much darker brand of dissociation.
Anyone who’s read my four horsemen of the apocalypse theory knows that Wendy bears a certain association to conquest, and that part of how this expressed itself is through her extremely mild sexual vibrations at Danny. So this lyric takes on a sad tone (even sadder than when it paired with Jack’s deepening madness) when we think of how Wendy wants to make love, but circumstances are making that impossible. In fact, this really reinterprets the meaning of McCartney’s gorgeous line. Our desire to take a lot of love with us to the grave sometimes makes us reach out in inappropriate ways. And that’s why conquest is like the opposite of famine. Sometimes there’s not enough to go around, and sometimes there’s much too much. Sometimes that’s what makes there be too much of something else.

As discussed at the beginning of this section, The End ends over the black and white faces art, and the landscape postcards, which look exactly like what we’ll see lots more of during the round 3 The End at the end of the movie entire. Ditto with the secret note on the pinboard, and the secret note in photo Jack’s hand.
I also like how in the forward action, the hall light is giving backward Wendy a bright, shining shoulder, since one of the last things we see in the mirrorform movie is the title going by. The Shining.

Also, during the final fade to silence, and the ensuing silence, Jack is walking straight out from the spot where photo Jack will hang at the end.

A final thought: what’s really amazing (if you’re buying any of this) is the way how Redrum Road demands that rounds 1 and 3 (as a couplet) function identically to round 2, structurally. Round 2 is the middle of the movie, it folds back on itself, so every aspect of the overlaying Abbey Road has to work both forwards and backwards for this drama. But this drama is continuous: it starts with Wendy failing to make the phone lines work, and ends with Jack coming to kill the radio. But where round 1 ends isn’t where round 3 begins; round 2 interrupts them. I realize this almost goes without saying, but the point is that, if you agree, generally, with my sometimes poetic translation of these overlays, then you agree that Abbey Road helps tell the first and last 47 minutes forwards and backwards, and that it tells the middle 47 minutes forwards and backwards.

Oh! So what’s actually amazing about that is that round 2 is an invertible narrative, and round 1 and 3 are actually two invertible narratives playing overtop of each other. It would be like if you had two palindromes that were different, but which had all the same letter values. Like:

‘TIS I, SIT!
LAP A PAL
DOG? O GOD!

But infinitely more complex, of course. And, you know, all narratively, thematically unified.

Mind-boggling. My mind is truly boggled.

Click here to continue on to Redrum Road: Come Together – Round 3

MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY

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