Fatally Flawed

Rating: Null/10 (11 April 2011)

If The Shining were about camera work and atmosphere only, it would rank with Kubrick's best, which is to say about as good as the movies get. To Kubrick's hand-held camera and cinematic imagination, the hotel's vast empty corridors and adjacent rooms become a labyrinth of horror in which evil of any kind might emerge. Only The Sixth Sense, of recent vintage, comes close to capturing the same spooky anything-can-happen atmosphere of the Shining's Overlook Hotel. If the film were about script only, it would still rate an arguable 5 stars, as Kubrick & Co. substitute mood and spectral apparitions in place of the book's hokier parts, such as flying topiary. Nor do I think the film is overlong, since a leisurely buildup is essential to the crashing, mind-altering climax.
But this is not the early Kubrick, the sure-hand behind Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, or 2001. This is Kubrick in decline. A director who either cannot or will not control the wild excesses of his celebrity-star Jack Nicholson in the film's pivotal role. In a part that fairly cries out for sublety and nuance, especially in limning the descent into madness, we get instead a leering, smirking self parody of an actor obviously wallowing in a chance to pull out all stops. And who can believe that that dreadful mood-killing line, "Here'sss Johnny!" is actually in the script. Rarely has such a grossly self-indulgent performance been allowed to reach the screen in unaltered form. And for that, there is only Kubrick to ultimately blame.
I realize I risk offending Nicholson's legion of fans for whom this "cool dude" can do no wrong. But the fact is he traded in his acting credentials soon after Cuckoo's Nest for the easier road of self-parody, in which the silk purse of Five Easy Pieces becomes the sow's ear of the typical Nicholson Role. I care because in more disciplined hands - say an Anthony Hopkins - this could have been a great movie, instead of the artistic irritant it finally is.