It's such a bizarre wonderful dreamworld of the human psyche that Kubrick created. Like if Kubrick made a Fellini film.
After two divorces, I watched it again and totally understood the whole thing. It is a great movie.
Still, my favorite is Barry Lyndon...
That sounds like a recommendation! After reading:
> Kubrick was perhaps the world's most successful maker of mainstream art films.
I'd had a vision of Kubrick as the Thomas Kinkade of the 7th art, which luckily was quickly dissipated by:
> He found a way—like few before him or since—to make interpretive movies that are commercially successful in popular culture while simultaneously appealing to cult film audiences, intellectuals and academics, cinephiles, critics, artists, and fellow filmmakers.
Of course The Shining shows that what Kubrick makes of a novel is not necessarily what the author made, but it's probably worth giving some credit for the dreamworld to Schnitzler—the novel is literally called, or so Wikipedia tells me it translates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Story), Dream Story.
I read in Roger Ebert's review, that he would have enjoyed a twist in the end, where Bill would notice the body of nick being pushed out on a bed on a hospital corridor, adding some more doubt about what has really happened. (I vaguely remember some bigshot has promised Bill that Nick was fine.)
I remember it being beautiful and interesting visually(and of course the incredible backwards opera music ritual scene) while missing the plot so completely after reading this article and some of the comments.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/ratings/?ref_=tt_ov_rat