Not as "Shocking" as it tries to be

Rating: 4/10 (19 June 2006)

No other director has had every one of his works so ridiculously over-analyzed as Stanley Kubrick. Endless throngs of critics have spent page after page after page poring over every minute of every one of his films, scrutinizing every frame for possible nuances of meaning that Kubrick subtly worked into the film. Most critics, when reviewing any Kubrick film, hardly ever mention the actors' performances, all they talk about is Kubrick, and how every nose twitch that every actor made was cunningly crafted by the director, and communicates volumes. If an actor gives a bad performance in a Kubrick film, it's the actor's fault. If they give a good performance, it's the director's doing.
I am not saying that Kubrick was bad. He most certainly was NOT bad, in fact, he was darn good... most of the time. Kubrick had his ups and downs, and this was one of his downs.
Anyway, enough general comments about the director, and now for the film. Maybe I would have liked the film better if I hadn't read the book first. As is, I was expecting a film to stick at least SOMEWHAT close to the original story, and for the first half it sort of did (although there was only one scene in which the dialogue was really the same as in the book, and that was the party scene), but in the second half, Kubrick changed the story from a spectral ghost tale into a psychological terror/thriller, which in itself is a bad enough decision, but the ending itself... well, I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that someone besides Kubrick should have made the decision about how to change the ending. Kubrick was excellent with ambiguity and loose ends, but he seemed a little too aware of that talent, and so he insisted on working those elements into every story he worked with, even the ones where an ending didn't fit.
What I mean is, when a book has a, unhappy or unresolved ending, it is a bad thing to change the ending to a neat-and-tidy happy one for the film version (because it's Hollywood and stories have happy endings in La La Wood). But it is equally as bad to change a happy ending in the book to a scary and ambiguous ending in the film, just for the sake of being "shocking."
Most of the performances were good (Shelley Duvall hammed it up a little, but not too badly, and the actor playing Danny was terrific), except for, unfortunately, the most important one: the performance of Jack Torrance. I'm sorry, but Jack Nicholson was an incredible ham, he overdid almost everything, almost a parody of his best performance (as Melvin Udall). His line delivery is so absurd as to be comedic, and his movments... not much to be said.
A few parting words: Roger Ebert finally got around to writing a review of this film, and, of course, he does exactly what everyone else does with a Kubrick film: Reading way too much into every little thing in the film. I think I can sum up my opinion of this whole issue with this parable:
Suppose, just for a moment, that some other director had made this exact same film. No, I don't mean that they would lend their own creative vision to the film, what I mean is, suppose some other director made this EXACT film, word for word, shot for shot, expression for expression. Suppose the only difference between this mythical film and the actual one was which director's name was stamped all over it. What do you think would have happened?
I'll tell you what would have happened: The critics and audiences would have ripped this other director to shreds. Fans of the book would be out in angry mobs over the ridiculously changed ending, and the film critics would be shaking their heads at Jack Nicholson's incredibly overacted performance. The film would not be anywhere near any critic's "top one thousand films of all time" list. No other director would get away with this film. Stanley Kubrick got away with it for one reason and one reason only: He is Kubrick.
Now, many people who adore this film haven't read the book, which I strongly recommend they do. The ambiguity and changes of the film would probably have worked fine were the film not pretending to be based on the novel (if Kubrick had just changed the title, character names and the dialogue in the party scene, he could easily have passed it off as an unrelated movie and I probably would have liked it much better), but I did expect something that at least SOMEWHAT resembled the book. If it weren't for the party scene, I wouldn't have believed that Kubrick and Diane Johnson had read anything in the book besides the blurb on the dust jacket.