Stanley Kubrick really knew how to end a movie. Once seen, the Star Child coda to the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey can never be forgotten, condensing the climax of the short story on which it’s based into one indelible image. And is there anything at once more beautiful, funny, and horrifying than Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” playing over the doomsday dénouement of Dr. Strangelove? These unshakable, vaguely nebulous finales are in many ways the key to the remarkable shelf life of Kubrick’s filmography.
The most enduringly mysterious ending of the lot, though, belongs to The Shining. For those who somehow still haven’t seen the film, the Overlook Hotel’s winter caretaker, Jack Torrance, is left to freeze to death in the hotel’s hedge labyrinth as his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny, manage to escape his cabin fever–induced, axe-wielding rampage. In a dramatic departure from the Stephen King novel on which it’s based, Kubrick closes by slowly zooming in on a black-and-white photo of a ball at the Overlook. Dated July 4, 1921, the group portrait features a maniacally grinning Torrance amid a sea of camera-facing partygoers. It raises conflicting questions: Did Torrance’s death on the grounds cause him to be absorbed by the haunted hotel? Or has he “always been the caretaker,” as the ghostly butler cryptically informed him earlier in the movie?
