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FROM PAGE TO SCREEN: THE SHINNING
By Tim RitterOne area of interest in entertainment where people are most divided is when books are adapted into films. Especially best-selling books that have a huge fan base. There have been many successful movies made from great novels and many misfires as well. One of my personal favorite book-to-film translations is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. I am a big fan of the book and of Kubrick’s take on it as well. This is one horror adaptation that really divides the fans and I’m not sure why. Even Stephen King himself dissed Kubrick’s vision of his own novel when it came out in 1980. (King even had his novel remade into a television miniseries in 1997, and I’ll get to that later.) All this sure didn’t stop the box office take from climbing to $80 million plus in the U.S. alone when Kubrick’s film was originally released…
I recently revisited The Shinin novel and Kubrick’s film. I try to watch Kubrick’s masterpiece at least once a year and decided that because a friend of mine had so many questions about Kubrick’s take on things, I’d re-read the novel again before viewing the film.
The basic story is exactly the same in both King’s book and Kubrick’s adaptation. Writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), who’s had a bit of a troubled past (including a bout with alcohol and using a strong arm on his son), gets a job for the winter as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. His wife Wendy and his young son Danny accompany him. Danny has some sort of extra-sensory power, which includes seeing possible futures and mind-reading. (King explores this theme again and again in later works, from The Dead Zone, Firestarter, all the way up through the recent Dreamcatcher, really.) Once the three characters are snowed in for the brutal winter, they lose all contact with the outside world. Jack slowly goes mad because apparently, the Hotel has an Evil Force within it that uses and manipulates all of Jack’s worst traits to make him try to kill his family. Danny is able to summon help (psychically) from the hotel’s cook, Hollorann, who comes from Miami at the last minute to try and save the boy and his mother.
The really cool thing about Kubrick’s The Shining is that so many things are interpretational. Nicholson seizes the role of Jack Torrance and runs with it. He’s a man possessed with madness even before he arrives at the Overlook Hotel. This was King’s biggest beef with the movie: that Jack was already crazy even as he took the job of caretaker of the Hotel. King also stated that since Kubrick did not believe in the supernatural, he didn’t do an effective job of showing that the Hotel was haunted and went more with the psychological aspect of the movie---one man’s crumbling sanity. But to me, all this fits like a glove and Kubrick did an excellent (yet subtle) job of conveying that there are ghosts and an evil “presence” causing things to happen. At first, the viewer might suspect that everything is indeed in Jack’s mind and he’s cracking…but there’s no denying that there’s “live skeletons in the closet” running around when the food storage room door is opened from the outside, letting Jack out after his wife locked him in. Furthermore, by the end of the film, Wendy sees some of the ghosts as they materialize into the real world---and the viewer must conclude that, yes, Jack was crazy, but not so crazy that he was seeing things. The Evil Presence in the Overlook Hotel (called “The Manager” in the novel) was indeed manipulating Jack and trying to control him like a puppet.
I view the book and the movie as going hand in hand. If you read the book, there’s a lot more character background on Jack and his family (and the Hotel) that come to light. While Kubrick did indeed skip revealing a lot of these things to his audience, reading the book definitely can enhance the movie as you watch it. I think Kubrick figured that everybody and his dog that was going to go see the movie had already read the book and that they’d easily be able to fill in the gaps. Plus, when you have a great actor like Nicholson and you’re pushing him to that “over-the-top” performance, too much exposition is likely to hurt the movie. Nicholson’s zany performance brings so much of Jack’s background out that you can easily read between the lines with every expression and body movement that he makes. It’s easy to see the book and the film as parallel universes where the same actions happen, we just don’t know about some things from the movie, we get that information from the book. The theme at heart of both book and film comes from the novel itself in the Hotel’s expressive motto: “This inhuman place makes human monsters.” Danny sees and feels this before they ever arrive at the Hotel.
Jack Torrance comes to the Overlook a shattered man, trying to do the right thing for his family. He’s had a drinking problem. He’s an aspiring writer who’s having trouble with writer’s block (another King theme used many times). And worst of all, a few years back, he hurt his son when he was drunk one night after finding Danny messing up his papers. In the book, Jack broke Danny’s arm, in the film, it was simply dislocated. Either way, this is a man haunted by alcohol, an uncontrollable temper, and child abuse. Add to that (from the book) the fact that Jack was recently fired from his teaching job for beating the tar out of a student that was slashing his car tires and you have a man on the edge. He’s barely in control of his actions, feels very inadequate, and is struggling to be a provider for his family. He wants to get somewhere but feels so trapped. Trapped by circumstances. Trapped by his marriage. And trapped by his son. So I can easily buy that Jack was teetering on the edge of sanity before he got the job at the Overlook.
The book also goes into great detail about Jack and Wendy’s childhoods. Jack had a very abusive father while growing up and King infers that Jack is struggling not to become like his daddy: an alcoholic man who beat his family and forced them to “take their medicine” when the whim hit him. Jack’s haunted by his father to the point where (in the book) his daddy’s voice demands that he smash up the CB radio that keeps them in touch with the outside world. Wendy has family issues as well, particularly with her mother, who has never been pleased with her daughter and isn’t afraid to show it. First of all, her mom wanted a boy and was always resentful when she had a daughter. Second of all, Wendy can never seem to do anything right in her mother’s eyes, and this explains why she doesn’t want to return to her family no matter what Jack does. In Wendy’s mind, her mother will give her that “I told you so” attitude that she’s felt her whole life and Wendy will do anything not to go crawling back to that situation.
Of course young Danny is able to pick up on all the emotions his parents have and feels it more than understanding it because of his young age (seven, in the book). Dark visions and emotions cloud his world as his parents bicker with each other amidst their own internal demons. Words like DIVORCE, SUICIDE, and FAILURE constantly plague the poor boy and his imaginary friend, Tony. (The book later reveals “Tony” to be Danny’s middle name---Daniel “Anthony” Torrance, in a nice twist. This is actually Danny’s older subconscious “self” and Kubrick defines this in the film visually with Danny’s “finger person” that he converses with.)
Then we get to the Overlook Hotel itself. Long, abandoned corridors. Dark secrets. Whispering voices. In the book, there’s the wasp nest that rehatches in Danny’s room and the topiary animals that come alive (both added in the TV movie, to little effect compared to Kubrick’s shrub maze).
For some reason, Kubrick gives very little detail about the Overlook Hotel’s background, other than Mr. Ullman (the manager) mentioning that the last caretaker holed up in the Overlook for a winter got “cabin fever” and axed up his two daughters and wife, later blowing his brains out with a gun. Of course, this sets up the idea that the Hotel could be haunted in the viewer’s mind and now that we know a little bit about Jack’s past, we can see that “an evil presence” would have very little problem influencing his actions if it was indeed there. Jittery from alcohol withdrawal, walking on eggs with his wife, and unsure how to discipline his son, he emotions are a wreck. Add his hostile and hopeless feelings into the mix, and you have the very definition of a “receptive vessel” for demonic forces. The scene in the movie that really shows that the Overlook’s force has “taken hold” of Jack occurs about midway through the movie, when Wendy and Danny are walking in the snow outside and Jack is staring at them through a window with this blank, insane, almost murderous expression painted on his face. At this point we know Jack is GONE (in conjunction with the book) and that someTHING else is in his driver’s seat. (King has actually used this “demon possession” theme in most of his books---Pet Sematary, The Regulators, and Desperation come immediately to mind.) This is also why The Shining can rightly be compared to The Exorcist. At its core, it’s about the goals of a “demonic force” trying to cause chaos in the real world (and gain more power) with a little kid centrally involved. King’s book actually focuses more on Danny in relation to the Evil Force, but Kubrick focuses more on Jack's madness and ultimate possession. (A lot of people want to know why the Hotel does what it does. In the book, it’s explained that if Jack kills Danny and sheds his son’s blood within the evil walls, the “demon force” will become more powerful, fueled by Danny’s great “shine” (psychic) powers. Somehow, the life force from the boy will help the corrupt power grow and reach out into a more worldly and tangible evil. Of course, one could also argue that “evil” doesn’t need a reason---bad is bad. Its ultimate goal could just be the sheer wicked joy of making a human being that is so open to its whims become a murderer.
As for the history of the Overlook Hotel, the book is quite enlightening and offers quite a look inside its rather bloodstained history. Robert Watson was the original builder of the Hotel in 1907-08. (His grandson is the current maintenance man that shows Jack the boiler room in the book---in the film, he’s the guy who has a brief conversation with Jack in Ullman’s office during the “Interview” session.) Watson Senior’s son died on the grounds of the hotel while playing in an area that later becomes the playground. Watson’s wife also dies while they are staying in the hotel---from a bad flu. When the Hotel failed to generate money, Watson eventually became just a lowly caretaker of the Hotel himself (the new investors feel sorry for him). Watson eventually dies inside the Hotel after being electrocuted from plugging a finger in a light socket. The way Kubrick interpreted the novel, perhaps the original Watson…who lost his family and finally his own life on the Overlook’s grounds…was really Jack Torrance. Or perhaps Watson’s spirit is being reincarnated over and over again into the various doomed caretakers that oversee the Hotel. This is a theme that Kubrick himself developed in relation to the book, it didn’t come from King’s novel. Later, King ironically used this theme of reincarnation as a form of purgatory in the short story That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French (collected in Everything’s Eventual).
The Overlook Hotel stayed empty until after World War II. Evil brewing? Evil growing? Another interesting thing Kubrick added was the fact that the Hotel was built on an ancient Indian burial ground…a concept that was later the “big twist” in Poltergeist. But if indeed they pushed Indians violently off the land to build the Hotel…and built it on their burial grounds…you could easily see how an “evil force” could haunt the very walls of the Hotel as revenge for what happened. The “Evil One” would want no one to have a good stay at the Overlook, that much is for certain!
In 1945, Horace Derwent, an eccentric millionaire, plane builder, and movie producer, bought the Overlook in hopes of making it profitable. Whenever guests were actively staying in the Hotel, there was murder and mayhem. Perfectly healthy people died in rooms from sudden strokes and heart attacks. Presidents stayed in the Presidential Suite. There were many rich people that had affairs in the hotel and many wild parties where masked participants had orgies. (Derwent is briefly seen in Kubrick’s film at the very end---he’s the guy with the mask on that pops up off the bed when Wendy sees him.) The old woman in room # 217 (# 237 in the movie, changed at the request of the real Hotel that Kubrick used for exteriors) committed suicide in the bathtub. She overdosed on pills and eventually drowned in the water because a young lover that she was having an affair with saw greener pastures. There was also a perverted masked ball orgy with lots of movie stars and madness that went down in 1945 with a “shocking” unmasking of the rich and famous when the midnight hour clicked over. (This is seen briefly in the movie but Kubrick changed the year to 1921 for some reason. It’s hinted that some of the liaisons ended in murder when jealous lovers found their partners with individuals they despised.)
In 1957, there was an Enron-style scandal at the Overlook where the CEO that handled the Hotel’s finances was caught. Of course, he ends up killing himself. In 1961, four writers invested in the Overlook and tried to make a “writer’s retreat and school” at the Hotel for aspiring writers with enough money. This ended badly when one of the writers committed suicide in the Presidential Suite by jumping out of the window and landing three stories below. In 1969, the Overlook became a “Mafia Hideaway,” so to speak, for ‘goodfellas’ to hang out in between jobs. This led to gang murders inside the Hotel when one group decided to “whack” another group on premises. Three were massacred (in the Presidential Suite again), including an ax murderer hitman dubbed Vito “The Chopper.” Allegedly, Vito made mob hits by chopping his victims into itty-bitty pieces!
It is also revealed that Derwent’s wife, Sylvia, ran a whorehouse for extra money right out of the Overlook! Of course, many rich and famous people participated in these activities, including a famous senator that was strangled in one of the rooms amidst a bizarre sex crime.
Finally, when new investors purchased the Hotel in 1970 and tried to make a go of it as a legitimate resort (open only five months out of the year), Grady, the caretaker they hired to watch the place in the winter months, went ballistic and killed his wife and two little girls, endcapping this with his own suicide..
That’s a lot of baggage the Overlook has---especially when you combine both King and Kubrick’s takes on why this place might be “evil.” There’s surely enough material there, whispering in the walls, to drive a snowbound person with personal demons stark raving mad! As Hollorann explains to Danny in the novel: “Ghosts. Every hotel has them. The Overlook…has more like the residues of feelings of the people who stayed here.” And died violently there, of course. The Overlook is also described by King as a place “where time stops and things go on and on forever. All things had a life there, repeating themselves like movie loops.” With one Evil Force (or “Manager”) controlling the entire freak show, of course. Another description that King offers of the Hotel is this: “It wasn’t a perception of sight or sound, but separated from those senses by the flimsiest of perceptual curtains. All the hotel’s eras were together now, all but this current era, the Torrance Era.” King goes on to describe seeing the Overlook as a 3-D movie without the glasses…you can’t see the movie on the screen as you’re supposed to until you put the special glasses on…and Jack is finally seeing the “full scope” of everything around him as his madness (and the possession) overwhelm his senses. The Hotel is described as “wearing many masks, but being only one.” Further revelations tell us that the Hotel wants Jack to kill his family so they will all belong to it and make it stronger, “the way a battery powers electrical equipment in a car.” It wants to absorb their very life forces, especially Danny’s.
Is Kubrick’s Shining now starting to make more sense with all of this background? I think most of what King wrote was used as a springboard for Kubrick’s version or interpretation of Jack Torrance as he succumbs into madness. The book and the film are aligned in the same way that King described the Overlook itself: putting on those 3-D glasses (reading the novel) gives one a much clearer picture of what’s actually going on up there on the silver screen and why. Plus, Kubrick adds his own mythos into the mix. Additionally, we get the incredible performance of Jack Torrance as essayed by Jack Nicholson. (More parallel worlds here? Jack was played by an actor named Jack and Danny was played by an actor named Danny!)
There are so many things…and coincidences…and interpretations…that one can read into IThe Shining that it’s absolutely incredible. I think that’s why it is one of those movies that horror fans watch over and over. With each and every view, there’s a new concept…twist…or variable…that one can ponder or study. Like the shot of Jack looking out that window that I mentioned earlier. The movie ends with Jack being frozen in the ice after chasing his family with an ax through the shrub maze…and his expression is exactly like it was when the “evil” possessed him at that time. Did it die with him? Did it go back into the Hotel?
In both the novel and the film, Wendy and Danny live. The Overlook Hotel does not, however. In the book (and TV movie) King opts to blow the Hotel up and definitely destroys the evil, although there is a final shot in the TV movie where it’s going to be rebuilt. (Hollorann also lives in King’s versions and is “possessed” by the Evil briefly after rescuing the mother and son…but he’s not as gullible as Jack and is able to overcome it.) In the movie, Hollorann “comes to save the day” and is chopped up very easily by Jack (it’s the only murder Jack actually commits). Like Psycho before it, this scene was a total shock to the audience…a major character that is presumed to live is suddenly made chopped liver by the resident madman. This goes right along with another of the book’s main themes: that bad things happen to good people.
By not blowing up the Hotel, I think Kubrick lets the Evil live…and with Kubrick’s reincarnation theory (or some critic’s “parallel universe” theory---that all the Overlook’s terror-filled history is always happening, over and over again, in some dimension just outside of our own), it’s a never-ending vicious cycle of perpetual madness. Blowing up the Hotel just doesn’t seem right, even in King’s novel. Jack neglects the boiler room (which is the biggest job duty he has) and at the end---Poof! Up it goes. King’s own ending almost seems too “Hollywood” compared to the subtle creepiness of Kubrick’s more literary ending… that Jack’s soul is sucked into the Hotel and becomes a part of it.
You see, the Hotel got something after all.
Another “discrepancy” that some mention was the casting of Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance. True, in the book, she is described as a stunning blonde with a shapely figure and Rebecca De Mornay certainly looks the part. But the rather strung-out, chainsmoking, feeble, and rabbit-scared persona that Duvall gives the character somehow feels exactly right, especially in relation to her decision to stay with such a problematic and psychotic husband that Nicholson so perfectly essays. Her fragile meekness is what makes the relationship so believable.
Avid readers that swear by the book fail to remember that Kubrick’s vision gave us such classic images as the elevator full of blood, Grady’s skewed ghost daughters in the halls, the reams and reams of Jack’s manuscript that decry “ all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, and Nicholson going on a rampage with an ax (as opposed to a rogue mallet in the book) screaming, “Heeeeeeeere’s Joooooohnyyyyy!” in a parody of The Johnny Carson Show.
This isn’t to take anything away from Stephen King, of course. It was King’s ideas…his thoughts…his original story and vision…and the way he wrote his novel to begin with that inspired Kubrick to attack the material the way he did. (Not to mention, The Shining was one of the first films to use the “steadicam” and “steadi-glide” technical aspects the way it did. Even all these decades later, those gliding shots of endlessly winding corridors still chill the viewer to the bone. And the musical selections that accompany every scene couldn’t be more perfect. Just check the opening scene out with the beautiful countryside aerial footage of Colorado…as the music emotes complete expressionistic doom.)
The novel attacks all sorts of pertinent issues within the framework of a “haunted hotel” tale: personal battles over rage and alcoholism, one’s need to contribute something “noteworthy” to society (in Jack’s case, a play…which becomes a possible book on the hotel when he discovers its tainted history in old newspaper articles in the boiler room), family relationships, the idea that children eventually become their parents whether they like it or not when they grow up, and the terror (of even the possibility) of abusing your children, intentionally or unintentionally. All of these elements and so many more end up playing into the way things work out, in both the King version and the Kubrick version.
And ultimately, in the end of all ends in all the versions, Jack dies while his wife and son “shine on.”
As for the television adaptation that King was so actively involved in, it’s not a bad movie and does follow the novel pretty much verbatim. Same story, the same things unfold, but at the end, Jack’s “possession” by the Hotel’s “Manager” is definitely more aligned with the descriptions in the book of Jack malleting his own face off, struggling to overcome the possession from within. King also added the wasp’s nest stuff, the possessed firehose in the wall coming after Danny, the topiary animals coming alive (courtesy of CGI effects), and letting Hollorann the cook survive the ordeal at the end. But as cool as it is to see all of these things realized from the book, most just don’t work cinematically. They make a much better read than a watch, especially the rather silly-looking CGI effects (which have been overdone to death by Hollywood, in my humble opinion).
No, when I think of The Shining, or even re-read the book…I can’t help but visualize Jack Torrance as being Jack Nicholson. Somehow, out of all the roles Nicholson’s played, this is the one that everyone remembers him for. He seized the part and made it his own. It’s funny that while writing this article, I can’t even remember the other actor’s name…or picture him in my mind…that played Jack Torrance in King’s television version of his novel! That says something right there, doesn’t it?
Do I dislike The Shining miniseries? I wouldn’t say that, because it does have its moments. But Kubrick’s desolate Overlook Hotel is so much more impacting than the one with all the fancy “spookhouse” bells and whistles highlighted in the miniseries. Just the desolate, winding corridors and the quick glimpses of things that have happened in the Hotel from ages past (shown through the use of quick flashes and visions by Kubrick) is much more terrifying than seeing everything in all its monstrous glory. There is definitely something to be said about “seeing less is more” in this case.
Ultimately, taking into consideration Kubrick’s “reincarnation” ideals, King’s “time loop” explanations and the “parallel universe” theory, they all fit into The Shining mythology just fine. Is it the same soul being tormented in a new body vessel each time? As it was in the 1921 July 4th Jack? As it was in the 1970’s Jack? As it was in the body of Grady the caretaker? And Watson, the original caretaker who built the Hotel and died there? Or are these all different men, living through the same incidents in a “time loop” amidst an H.P. Lovecraft universe just outside of our own?
Did the Overlook really burn down or does it “shine on” in the endless and various possible outcomes of each incident in different parallel worlds? Who is the real “caretaker” and what exactly is “the manager” of the Overlook Hotel? Can the Evil really be stopped or is it an eternal force, not bound by our sense of time and space?
As always, with The Shining universe, there are no definitive conclusions and always more questions than answers. Which is why the Kubrick movie is still so popular today (every year it is voted one of the scariest movies of all time around Halloween). And that’s why everyone’s theories, explanations, observations, mirrored realities, and more…
…make perfect sense!