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A review by ethancf
The Shining by Stephen King
5.0
One of those all too rare books that I was not quite ready to leave.
I'm not a huge fan of King's prose. While I love his stories, reading him isn't something that ever really "got" me. For The Shining, though, I was hooked immediately. This is a perfect novel. The prose, the pace, the characters, the setting, the horror, the atmosphere. As someone trying to revise a horror novel of their own, I sort of hate The Shining. Nearly every other page, I was saying, "damn, that's good. Damn, I wish I could have come up with that. Holy shit, I have tosteal homage that later."
This is the first book I've read in a long time that I feel the need to own. The first book in a long while that I know I'll pick up every once in a while just to skim through a few select pieces, and likely do a full read through once every year or two. The only other books that hold that honor are Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, and as of right now both books in Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller series (damn him, the third isn't out yet). I have other favorite books of course but these are the ones that I could read constantly. They are inspiring and wonderful and I can flip to any page and instantly lose myself in it. I've only read The Shining this one time, but I already know it will be one of those books for me.
Now, away from gushing about the book and onto a more delicate and controversial subject: the Kubrick adaptation. King has disowned it and it is commonly regarded as a terrible adaptation (even if it is also considered a great film). Here's the thing: It's actually one of the best adaptations I've ever seen.
Is it faithful? Absolutely not. Though I will note that people who criticize Kubrick's film tend to over-exaggerate the liberties the film takes with King's novel a great deal. For the most part, they are the same story. The primary difference is in how the family structure is characterized. As a novel, there is a great deal of room to characterize the family more. The film has to compress all of this into two hours, and while the characters in the novel are a great deal more interesting and developed (which makes the horror of the story all the more tragic - horror is about the characters, after all), they aren't all that different, either.
Jack Torrance is of course the center of these changes. Much of the novel and the film revolves around his descent into madness as The Overlook and his isolation wears on his sanity. In the novel, Jack is an everyman who has ruined his life through alcoholism, but his family loves him desperately. In the film, Jack is a recovering alcoholic who seems to have his family living in constant fear of him. His eventual madness seems much more inevitable in Kubrick's vision. This is the ultimate flaw in the adaptation and the largest weakness of the film, I feel.
But for all the other liberties the film takes, it is correct in doing so. So many of these changes would be nigh unfilmable (at least in a two hour film - I am vaguely curious about the more "accurate" miniseries), and the change Kubrick makes not only accomplish the same effect but also amplify the terror. The film is, in my opinion, much scarier than the novel. Both are terrifying, don't get me wrong, but something about that last act of the film where Wendy is running around seeing weird things just gets to me. Not to mention the bathtub scene. If I'm alone in my apartment, I have to push the shower curtain out of the way so that I have a full view of my bathtub. Am I baby? Yes, yes. But goddamn if that scene isn't a masterpiece of absolute horror, I don't know what is. I mentioned before that I try to write horror myself. A few years ago I was in a fiction workshop class while doing my undergrad, and I wrote a horror story. An early scene that built atmosphere and terror took place in the bathroom of a motel.
Now, I feel the need to state that I never once thought of The Shining while writing that scene. I hadn't seen the film in years, hadn't read the book at that point. But I know I saw The Shining when I was pretty young. All I'm saying is, I'm positive that that scene left some serious psychological scars on me. Thankfully, I was able to translate this into my own fiction and terrify some classmates (I had a few classmates get quite angry with me for scaring them out of their bathrooms).
Anyways, I'm getting off topic. Kubrick never understood King's novel. King has never understood Kubrick's film. The minor differences are definitely enough to make it a topic worthy of discussion, but despite Kubrick's lack of what made the novel so incredible, the film more than makes up for its flaw of character in building the most terrifying atmosphere this side of Scott's Alien or Hooper's Texas Chain Saw. And while The Shining novel may place a great deal of importance on the Torrance family, the real star of the show is still The Overlook Hotel - and that's where the film absolutely nails King's vision. It doesn't use every detail - how could it - but it sets the same tone and makes you just as scared.
I'm reminded of my letterboxd review of the Michel Faber adaptation Under the Skin. The Shining is similar - it may not be a faithful adaptation, but it is a perfect adaptation nonetheless.It captures the essence of the novel and translates it into another medium with grace and precision. The written word and the screen capture things differently, and trying to "faithfully" capture a novel on film is an impossible task (for most books. There are, as always, exceptions). Get past the liberties taken with plot. Ignore the absence of the details you loved. Revel in the absolute terror of The Overlook hotel.
I'm not a huge fan of King's prose. While I love his stories, reading him isn't something that ever really "got" me. For The Shining, though, I was hooked immediately. This is a perfect novel. The prose, the pace, the characters, the setting, the horror, the atmosphere. As someone trying to revise a horror novel of their own, I sort of hate The Shining. Nearly every other page, I was saying, "damn, that's good. Damn, I wish I could have come up with that. Holy shit, I have to
This is the first book I've read in a long time that I feel the need to own. The first book in a long while that I know I'll pick up every once in a while just to skim through a few select pieces, and likely do a full read through once every year or two. The only other books that hold that honor are Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, and as of right now both books in Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller series (damn him, the third isn't out yet). I have other favorite books of course but these are the ones that I could read constantly. They are inspiring and wonderful and I can flip to any page and instantly lose myself in it. I've only read The Shining this one time, but I already know it will be one of those books for me.
Now, away from gushing about the book and onto a more delicate and controversial subject: the Kubrick adaptation. King has disowned it and it is commonly regarded as a terrible adaptation (even if it is also considered a great film). Here's the thing: It's actually one of the best adaptations I've ever seen.
Is it faithful? Absolutely not. Though I will note that people who criticize Kubrick's film tend to over-exaggerate the liberties the film takes with King's novel a great deal. For the most part, they are the same story. The primary difference is in how the family structure is characterized. As a novel, there is a great deal of room to characterize the family more. The film has to compress all of this into two hours, and while the characters in the novel are a great deal more interesting and developed (which makes the horror of the story all the more tragic - horror is about the characters, after all), they aren't all that different, either.
Jack Torrance is of course the center of these changes. Much of the novel and the film revolves around his descent into madness as The Overlook and his isolation wears on his sanity. In the novel, Jack is an everyman who has ruined his life through alcoholism, but his family loves him desperately. In the film, Jack is a recovering alcoholic who seems to have his family living in constant fear of him. His eventual madness seems much more inevitable in Kubrick's vision. This is the ultimate flaw in the adaptation and the largest weakness of the film, I feel.
But for all the other liberties the film takes, it is correct in doing so. So many of these changes would be nigh unfilmable (at least in a two hour film - I am vaguely curious about the more "accurate" miniseries), and the change Kubrick makes not only accomplish the same effect but also amplify the terror. The film is, in my opinion, much scarier than the novel. Both are terrifying, don't get me wrong, but something about that last act of the film where Wendy is running around seeing weird things just gets to me. Not to mention the bathtub scene. If I'm alone in my apartment, I have to push the shower curtain out of the way so that I have a full view of my bathtub. Am I baby? Yes, yes. But goddamn if that scene isn't a masterpiece of absolute horror, I don't know what is. I mentioned before that I try to write horror myself. A few years ago I was in a fiction workshop class while doing my undergrad, and I wrote a horror story. An early scene that built atmosphere and terror took place in the bathroom of a motel.
Now, I feel the need to state that I never once thought of The Shining while writing that scene. I hadn't seen the film in years, hadn't read the book at that point. But I know I saw The Shining when I was pretty young. All I'm saying is, I'm positive that that scene left some serious psychological scars on me. Thankfully, I was able to translate this into my own fiction and terrify some classmates (I had a few classmates get quite angry with me for scaring them out of their bathrooms).
Anyways, I'm getting off topic. Kubrick never understood King's novel. King has never understood Kubrick's film. The minor differences are definitely enough to make it a topic worthy of discussion, but despite Kubrick's lack of what made the novel so incredible, the film more than makes up for its flaw of character in building the most terrifying atmosphere this side of Scott's Alien or Hooper's Texas Chain Saw. And while The Shining novel may place a great deal of importance on the Torrance family, the real star of the show is still The Overlook Hotel - and that's where the film absolutely nails King's vision. It doesn't use every detail - how could it - but it sets the same tone and makes you just as scared.
I'm reminded of my letterboxd review of the Michel Faber adaptation Under the Skin. The Shining is similar - it may not be a faithful adaptation, but it is a perfect adaptation nonetheless.It captures the essence of the novel and translates it into another medium with grace and precision. The written word and the screen capture things differently, and trying to "faithfully" capture a novel on film is an impossible task (for most books. There are, as always, exceptions). Get past the liberties taken with plot. Ignore the absence of the details you loved. Revel in the absolute terror of The Overlook hotel.