The Shining Meaning?

I have seen this movie more times than I care to count, and every time I watch it, I always think of a different way to view the ending. There are many different meanings this could take.
I don't get it! The part that confuses me is at the ending when they show the picture of Jack Nicholson, but its in the 1970's and he's the same age. Was he the caretaker that killed his wife and two daughters all those years ago? But how is that possible? In another life perhaps? I'm confused! What's the meaning of the movie?

I've read the book several times and seen the movie more times than I can count. That part in the movie wasn't in the book and it doesn't make any sense. When Jack first moves into the hotel with his family the hotel starts speaking to him, posessing him, driving him to do strange and hurtful things. It eventually makes him sabotage any means of escape. In the book there just isn't something right about the hotel.

I always thought the hotel itself was an entity - there was no "person" that unlocked the door, it was the hotel itself. The hotel, through all the bad things that happened there, had become an entity itself and could shine, just like Danny. So it was shining when it created all those "ghosts" - its not so much that Jack went back in time, it was just that he had succumbed to the power of the hotel and he was now a part of it, just like the rest of the ghosts.

Mining? The Shining is not really about the murders at the Overlook Hotel. It is about the murder of a race - the race of Native Americans - and the consequences of that murder.

If you are skeptical about this, consider the Calumet baking powder cans with their Indian chief logo that Kubrick placed carefully in the two food-locker scenes. (A calumet is a peace pipe.) Consider the Indian motifs that decorate the hotel, and the way they serve as background in many of the key scenes. Consider the insertion of two lines, early in the film, describing how the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground. These are "confirmers" such as puzzle-makers often use to tell you you're on the right track.The Shining is also explicitly about America's general inability to admit to the gravity of the genocide of the Indians - or, more exactly, its ability to "overlook" that genocide. Not only is the site called the Overlook Hotel with its Overlook Maze, but one of the key scenes takes place at the July 4th Ball. That date, too, has particular relevance to American Indians. That's why Kubrick made a movie in which the American audience sees signs of Indians in almost every frame, yet never really sees what the movie's about. The film's very relationship to its audience is thus part of the mirror that this movie full of mirrors holds up to the nature of its audience.

Have you ever thought that Danny might have opened the door to the freezer?