A masterpiece like only Kubrick could make

Rating: 10/10 (24 June 2013)

A writer accepts the job of caretaker in a hotel during the winter, when it's closed to the public. Alone in there with only his wife and his (apparently psychic) child, he slowly falls for the influence of the hotel's ghosts, specially the former caretaker who murdered his entire family in a surge of madness...
The Shining was a Stephen King novel published in 1977, and often regarded as one of the best horror novels. I'm not a fan of King, though, and I highly disagree with that opinion: I've read it, and thought it was a mediocre story, with absurd twists and so full of King's favorite clichés that one could easily predict what happened next.
King criticized the movie a lot, saying Kubrick didn't understand horror. How ironic that the movie improves so much the story's idea.
Kubrick did major changes in the story. Whereas the novel was a straight-up ghost story, the movie is a psychological tale of madness. We are treated with Jack's slow decent in that realm in such a way that we too feel like we are experiencing this: the numerous long shots, the feeling of emptiness from the big but empty hotel, the passage of time and the realization of how little one can do in there alone... It's easy to feel that Jack is slowly snapping from it all.
If anything, the ghost aspect of the story is highly ambiguous: is Jack really being influenced by the paranormal, or is he just going mad? The fact no one else see the ghosts, only when they too snap from the pressure, also puts in question this. That's where lies the movie's true strength: it plays with us, play with what we believe we are seeing. Can we truly trust what we are shown?
The choice of location was nice; such a big place creates such a sense of emptiness, it's scary. Kubrick, as shown with '2001' or 'A Clockwork Orange', is unsurpassed when it comes to creating an eerie atmosphere, which he further accentuates with his choice of music (which doubles as being very nice to the ears). There's always that impending sense of dread, the feeling that something bad is going to happen whenever a character turns a corner in the hotel corridors.
The acting is perfect, something one can only achieve when working with Kubrick. Jack Nicholson is on familiar terrain, playing a crazy man; however, he truly does the part of the slow decent into madness with a high degree of realism. His performance is one of the best I've ever seen, from him and from anyone else. Shelley Duvall, too; she is a good actress and she truly brings to life her character's fragility and distress throughout the movie. Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd, the two other major players in this story, as well as the ghosts, are also very good.
Saying this is a good movie is a severe understatement. This is my favorite Stanley Kubrick film, one of my favorite films ever, and possibly the greatest horror ever. Stephen King should feel honored that Kubrick did such a great job based on his idea.