-Spoiler Warning-
The Overlook Hotel is closed during the winter time due to the extreme snow storms in the area and only the caretaker stays in the isolated hotel, which is about 25 miles (ca. 40 km) away from the next town.
There once was a tragic incident, where the former caretaker of the hotel, Charles Grady, murdered his wife and two daughters, after experiencing a mental breakdown.
Later Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) applies for the job and takes his family to the hotel.
Jack's son Danny (Danny Lloyd) has some kind of telepathic ability that is referred to as 'Shining' in the movie.
This allows him to talk to the hotel manager Stuart Ullman through his mind and it also shows him visions of the terrible events that happened in the hotel.
This is the basic plot of Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining', which came out in 1980 and is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.
■ They weren't actually twins
There are a lot of very intense and symbolic scenes in the movie.One of the most iconic scenes is the one where Danny is riding on his little bike along the corridors of the hotel, when suddenly two girls appear in front of him. Just the appearance of the girls is creepy enough, but Danny also sees terrifying visions of their bloody dead bodies.
They seem to be the daughters of Charles Grady, the man who murdered his whole family.
Even though it is easy to assume that they are twins because of their similar looks, it is mentioned in the story that they are not of the same age and you can also see that one of them is slightly taller.
So you could think of the following possibilities:
● They are not twins, but just very similar looking sisters, who are wearing the same clothes.
● It is actually just one girl, who appears twice in the corridor, like a reflection from a mirror, due to the supernatural events in the hotel.
Some people are also saying that Stanley Kubrick deliberately wanted the girls to be twins in the movie version, to make the scene more memorable.
Since Stanley Kubrick is known to be a very visual director, I think it makes sense that he would put real twins into the roles to create a more striking image.
But of course there can be different opinions about their meaning inside the story.
■ What is the actual meaning of the twins?
The scene with the twins was so interesting that I wanted to see much more of them, but unfortunately they didn't have much screen time in the movie. It would be cool to see a prequel about the Graham family, even though the events are pretty similar.Although they only had a small part in the movie, they are actually a very important part of the story. It's not just the fact that they were murdered by their own father, but they also stand for something else symbolically.
As we know, the Overlook Hotel was build on top of an Indian burial ground, where many Indians where killed in cruelty.
I think the 'twins' point to that part of the hotel's dark history and showcase that even young kids were no exception at that time.
Well, but that is my theory, what do you think about the meaning of the twins?
By the way, they were played by Lisa and Louise Burns in the movie.
Post a Comment