Tiste, ki to zanima… Zavedati se morate, da je režiral film Kubrick, pri katerem je značilno, da imajo njegovi filmi polno skritih pomenov. Tak film je treba gledati večkrat, da se ga razume.

Tukaj pa je razlaga v angleščini (to je samo mnenje nekoga, ki je sicer zelo razširjeno med poznavalci filma, ampak dokončnega odgovora ne bomo nikoli izvedeli):

But the thing that makes this film a masterpiece is the afterthoughts. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard the question “What does the ending mean? What’s up with the photo.” Well, to but it bluntly, it refers to the “Re-encarnation theory”. Towards the middle of this movie, there is a scene where Wendy brings Jack breakfast in bed. They have a little dicussion about the hotel, and Jack says “…It’s as if I know what’s going to be around every corner. I mean, I know we’ve all had our moments of deja vu, but this is ridiculous…”. Well, this is a hint to the audience that Jack was there before. He was once the caretaker there, back in the 1920’s. Hence the photo at the end, dated “July 4th, 1921”. The Jack we see alive is a “Jack” that has been re-encarted from the 1920s. Another question often asked is why the hotel is haunted. It isn’t well explained in the movie, in fact there’s only a brief moment when it’s mentioned. So brief, that the audience forgets about it within 5 minutes. “Mr. Ullman”, the manager of the hotel, says that when the hotel was being built in 1907, the builders had to fight off Indian attacks. Apparently, the hotel is built over an ancient burial ground. So this could mean that the Indians are the real ones haunting the film, and are out for revenge. Im not a strong supporter of this theory, but I’ll try to explain it anyways…

“Manifest Destiny”, or the belief that man was destined to migrate to the west, therefore killing thousands of Indians. These 2 theories are most prompt in the film. If you look closely, you will see many Indian designs on the floors, and rugs on the wall. A major part in the film, in which a main character gets killed, takes place directly over an Indian design on the floor. This is a strong point for the “Manifest Destiny” theory. Also, in another scene in which Jack gets locked in a food closet, you can see many of the food can labels faced towards the audience, showing an Indian head on each one. So, when you tear this film apart, it is very intriguing. I find this to be a little “over the top”, though. My personal thoughts on this, is that it’s **** a coincidence. I don’t think Kubrick intended for those Indians to be directly faced towards the camera. But you never know….

At the end of the film, a very nice song is played. It is called “Midnight, the stars and you” performed by Ray Noble back in the 1930’s. As the credits come to an end, so does the song.

(updated): “Midnight, the Stars and You” was not recorded live in a restaurant. The murmuring sounds of the crowd at the end were added during the sound mix, which actually goes even further in suggesting that Kubrick was drawing a parallel between the film audience and the 1921 party.

Hvaka za tale post, sem z veseljem prebrala. Sem si pa nenako mislila, da je kaj v to smer. Najbrž je problem v meni, ki si vedno želim natančno vedeti, kaj se je zgodilo in zakaj.