2:35:10 Next, let's move on to another Kubrick film that I think is extremely revelatory that a lot of people didn't initially think was that revelatory. But now it's been so dissected and so analyzed on YouTube. And I have a whole mini documentary that's gotten quite a few views analyzing it on YouTube, as well as many other YouTubers. And that's Stephen King's novel The Shining, made into a film in 1980 by Stanley Kubrick. And this movie has been dissected into oblivion just like 2001 has. But what's fascinating about it is that it doesn't, in my view, this is my interpretation, you can disagree, but I don't ultimately think that it's about a haunted hotel. I think that it is in part about that, but it's also about something much deeper, which is about American society and Americanism as a whole.
2:36:00 And the reason that's relevant is that we find out this hotel is actually haunted because it was at one point the location where the jet set used to hang out. All the best people were told by the hotel manager, royalty, the elites, those who were successful, so to speak, in a worldly sense in life. And the main character, of course, Jack Torrance is tempted. He's constantly sort of tempted throughout the film to in his mind to think if I'm going to get amongst the elite to become a great writer, which is his his desire, I'm going to have to dispense with the things that hold me back. Right. And eventually he realizes that that's Danny and Wendy, my wife, Wendy. Right. He says, I got to get rid of Wendy. Wendy's holding me back.
2:36:52 And there's a lot of interesting elements that people have picked apart including myself such as Wendy's interest in witchcraft. That's not really apparently clear right away but if you go back and you watch the film you'll notice that. Shelley Duvall is actually reading in the very early sequences a lot of books on witchcraft. She's shown holding and studying witchcraft, so she's interested in the esoteric and the occult. She has stacks of witchcraft books, which I think suggests perhaps Jack also was reading his books, again, because he's also a literary figure who eventually becomes demonically possessed.
2:37:28 And as we know, this becomes more and more apparent as the film progresses. And I think there is an argument to be made that Jack might have actually even abused Danny. Now, that's not, I mean, beyond physical abuse. And I say that because there's a recurring theme in a lot of Kubrick films about child trafficking, underage abuse, this kind of stuff. It actually comes up quite a bit, right? I mean, Kubrick did Lolita. It comes up in Barry Lyndon. It comes up in Eyes Wide Shut. So the Lili Sobieski character that I didn't mention in Eyes Wide Shut, she's actually, apparently being human, she's human trafficked, you could say, because she's at the costume store
2:38:09 when Bill Harford is trying to get his costume for the sex cult event. And she's obviously an underage person who I think we're supposed to, she whispers to Bill Harford, for example, that you need an Irvine cloak if you're going to be hanging out with royalty. But Jack, of course, as we said, is eventually demonically possessed and he ends up sort of trapped in a victim of this hotel. But there's a lot of sub themes and motifs throughout The movie that make it clear that it's not just a critique of, you know, crazy writer trying to achieve elite status. It's about the.
2:38:48 the American idea of you can make it amongst the elite if you're willing to sacrifice at all. And the criticism here is that that includes in Jack's mind, right? He goes crazy trying to make it into the elite to the point where he's ready to sacrifice his wife and kids. He's so insane, right? That's really, I think, what the film is about. By the way, in the movie, they're actually watching a movie called Summer of 42, which is about a pedophilic relationship. So Shelley Duvall and Danny are actually watching that movie at one point, which is really bizarre. It's not really appropriate for
2:39:24 a child, right? And the movie ends, of course, with Jack doing the Baphomet pose as above so below, where he's immortalized amongst the individuals at the hotel. So we see him in a 1921 photograph telling us that essentially he's not only was he possessed, he's basically condemned to be one of these haunting phantasms of this But I think that it's also an allegory for America and how America in a sense, if it has abandoned its original principles, right? Basic moral principles, values, America can become a haunted, possessed, overlook hotel, you see. Because you know that it's, isn't it, I think, built on an Indian burial ground, all this kind of stuff, right? So I think that's what that's actually about. Next, I would say the,