The Shining, Part 1: Kubrick's Version

Book: The Shining (1977) is Stephen King's third novel, and according to Wikipedia, the one that established him as a popular author.

Movie: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining came out in 1980. The screenplay was written by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson. Starring Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall and Danny Lloyd, the movie became an instant classic and is still hailed as one of the best horror movies of all time. #57 on imdb's top 250.

Plot differences: The end credits hail King's The Shining as a "masterpiece of modern horror", which is slightly strange, considering how little of it was used in the screenplay. The movie skips quickly through the beginning, leaving out the entire backstory about Jack beating up a student, losing his job, running someone over with his car and denouncing alcohol. The story becomes sort of "normal man becomes haunted by evil hotel", while in the book, it seems to go deeper than that, into Jack's own demons that he hasn't dealt with. Jack's fascination with the hotel is there to some extent, but the "I'll write a book about the Overlook Hotel" plot is left out. The history of the hotel is not discussed in detail in the movie, which makes the terror of the evil room seem kind of random.

The ending is also changed, albeit not as much. In the end of the movie, Wendy and Danny escape through the mace, which doesn't exist in the book. Jack, after chasing them, freezes to death with a mad grin on his face. In the book, the hotel blows up, and while Wendy and Danny escape, Jack is left inside and dies with the hotel. In the movie, Jack kills Dick Hallorann rather abruptly, but in the book he lives and saves Wendy and Danny.

Character differences: Jack's friend Al, who got him the job, is not in the movie. Their past as drinking buddies turned AA buddies has been left out, which takes away some of the nuance in Jack's character too. A much stranger difference is that the hotel's general manager, Mr Ullman, is a very unlikeable character in the book. He's pompous and petty, rude to his staff and only seems to care about the hotel. He doesn't want to give Jack the job and almost fires him mid-way through the book. In the movie, he's a likeable, polite man who's only happy to give Jack this job. His warnings about the previous caretaker's death seem to be made with concern for Jack, not just the reputation of his hotel. I'm not sure why Kubrick chose to do it this way, and it takes away some of the tension Jack feels in the book. Wendy's nagging, superior mother and Jack's student who cost him his job are also left out of the movie, but this feels like a far less meaningful omission, as they only appeared in flashbacks in the book.

Author opinion: King was disappointed in Kubrick's take, because so few of the events and elements in the book were in the movie. He went on to make his own miniseries of the book, which I will discuss in the next post.

My opinion:
This is one case where I have a lot of respect for the book and the movie, even if they're good for very different reasons. The Shining is probably one of King's best novels. It's what he does best: describing a male author who struggles with his own demons while fighting a supernatural evil. Of course, the setting is pretty silly - who would take their child in the middle of nowhere when the father is an alcoholic and has rage issues? Pet Sematary had the "build a fence" issue, and this book has a similar glaring problem: don't go there and you'll be spared. But the characters are strong, and the story works on many levels. One of King's strong suits is inner dialogue, and in this book, the inner dialogue of the characters meshes constantly with the dark powers in the hotel trying to overtake their minds.

This is also one of Kubrick's best movies. He's in his own element, offering us horror through skillful visuals. The hotel set is magnificent: large, oppressive and with long hallways. Kubrick's use of colors, especially red, is an effective way of creating suspense in a horror film. I liked the subtle visual ideas: the disappearing/reappearing twins, the tricycle Danny rides through the long hallways, and particularly the mace, which I thought to be much more imposing than the attacking topiary in the book. Less is more, and this movie has achieved many scary scenes with relatively little special effects. The one thing I found a little lame is the blood gushing into the hotel hallway. It sort of loses meaning because it comes up three or so times throughout the movie; fake blood is the oldest trick in the book and not all that scary to a modern viewer. But it still manages to be somehow stylish. The "Red rum" scene where Danny goes into a trance is very effective and particularyl well acted by Danny Lloyd.

The big problem with the movie, however, is that Kubrick has basically thrown away most of the story. The setting and some of the key scenes are there, but that's about it. It doesn't ruin the movie - a part of making a good adaptation is having your own voice about it - but I do think some of the story would have deserved to be there. I'm talking particularly about the alcoholism, violence issues and marital problems. It's a long movie, but it feels a bit hurried due to the lack of character development and dialogue; they go into the hotel, it shows its scary side, the end. In a horror movie, there will be a lot of gasping and screaming. To make it seem real, you need to know the characters and relate to them. In this respect, Kubrick's movie falls slightly flat.

Another misgiving is the casting of the main character. Jack Nicholson is a good actor, but as Jack Torrance, he's pretty creepy from the start. His smile doesn't seem genuine, and he doesn't seem like a nice Dad. I think Jack Torrance needs to be a kind, likeable character whose darker side is only slowly revelead to the audience. I also agree with King that Nicholson's role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest might serve as a hint that the character will go crazy. In the book, I liked Jack Torrance. In the movie, I dislike him and have no sympathy for him.

I'm still not sure about the way they did Tony. In the book, Danny has visions of a young man named Tony who shows him scary things. In the movie, Tony speaks through Danny's mouth and pinky finger. It's a way of making Tony seem like a child's imaginary friend - until he starts showing Danny scary stuff. As such, this is effective - supernatural encounters explained away with a child's imagination are one of the constant themes in horror films, and usually it works well. However, the stuff Tony showed in the book was much more varied than just the frights of the hotel; Danny could read his parents' and others' thoughts and communicate telepathically. Some of that is in the movie: Dick Hallorann and Danny communicate telepathically, and Danny can also hear his parents arguing sometimes. But there don't seem to be any instances where he directly hears his parents' thoughts, and I thought this was a loss. One of the most touching things in the book for me was when Danny could hear scary words in his parents' heads - DIVORCE and SUICIDE - without really understanding what they entail. His confusion over the parents' marriage is pretty much left out of the movie altogether.

The movie is more visual than verbal, and the omission of much of the dialogue and backstory makes it Kubrick's story rather than King's. However, it amplifies the horror in some scenes; while the book is story-scare-story-scare, the movie is at times scare-scare-scare, which is probably what made it popular in the first place. Both the book and movie work well on their own levels, but because of all the omissions mentioned above, I much prefer the book.