Equivocation

Rating: 5/10 (14 January 2008)

This is a difficult review to write. You see, I've just posted comments on Ella Enchanted where I comment that, as someone who has never read the book, the film is absolutely fine. But it's difficult for me to approach Stanley Kubrick's The Shining on that basis because, you see, I've read Stephen King's The Shining.
If I do my absolute best to put the book out of my mind, I suppose that the film must be acknowledged as a tolerable horror, with two major flaws - one, it's overlong, and what should be a slow burn loaded with increasing dread becomes simply boring, and two, Jack Nicholson's established screen persona means that there is absolutely no suspense in his development from decent though flawed father/husband to scenery-chewing maniac - the final madness is there from the first frame he appears in.
If you've never read the book and you're a horror fan, then you'll probably enjoy it - no huge surprises, but it ticks most of the boxes. And it looks very good.
But what a missed opportunity! Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a film about a man who goes mad in a haunted hotel. Stephen King's The Shining is a novel about an evil entity which inhabits a hotel, and which wants to consume a boy's psychic power: the boy is strong enough to resist it, so it works on the weakest link, the father, and gradually erodes everything which made him a good, decent man. Jack's transition from the decent though weak man he starts out as, to the point where the Overlook is in control of his every action, is absolutely central to Stephen King's The Shining, and it could only have worked on screen if Jack was portrayed by an actor who was initially credible as a decent, gentle man. Not Nicholson - I love him, but he was (in my view) a spectacular piece of miscasting for this movie. Picture Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, or someone similar, and how dramatic and shocking their descent to axe-wielding maniachood would have been.The contrast is essential to Stephen King's story: with Nicholson, there was no contrast.
It is also worth commenting that King's The Shining is about a man who loves his family: Kubrick's The Shining is stated, by the screenwriter in one of the DVD documentaries, to be about a man who hates his family. A fairly fundamental difference, yes?
Ah well. "What if"s never got us anywhere. Go and see Stanley Kubrick's The Shining anyway, and enjoy Jack Nicholson chewing scenery. The scenery's pretty good eye candy and, besides, he does it so well.