The tension created by Danny's buggy ride lasts thirty-eight seconds.
Kubrick then relaxes it. Wendy brings Jack breakfast in bed. "I love it here," says Jack. "It feels like I've been here before. Like I know what's around every corner." Was that really necessary? No. To me, Nicholson is overacting a bit. Of course, Nicholson is crazy anyway but he can act more normal than he is.
Wendy and Danny go for a walk in the maze outdoors. Jack, apparently, is losing his mind already. He violently throws a tennis ball against a wall in the lobby and then catches it, throws, catches, throws again, in the manner of playing solo handball. Danny's buggy is in the blurry near-background at Jack's feet. Jack stops and approaches a scale model of the maze. Kubrick's camera slowly zooms in and Jack, smiling, can see Wendy and Danny in the maze. Was that necessary? No.
The tension release lasts exactly six minutes. At 41:20 Danny is back on his buggy running the halls of the hotel tracked by the ground-level steadicam. I take a break. The movie is 2:23:46 long. Do I self-consciously over-intellectualize The Shining into bite-sized bits of review so that I can take it emotionally? You bet.
