THREE FILMS A DAY, THREE BOOKS A WEEK AND RECORDS OF GREAT MUSIC WOULD BE ENOUGH TO MAKE ME HAPPY TO THE DAY I DIE François Truffaut

Needless to say, this sentence would suit me perfectly, except for that small detail of not being able to live on income …

But what happens when films and books overlap?
I mean: in the case of movie transpositions, what do you think?
Generally disappointment, or not?

Of all the cases we can talk about, Doctor Sleep is perhaps the most curious.
The film attempts to mend a notable tear: an important difference of opinion that dates back to the 80s, when Stephen King attends the screening of The Shining and is indignant because the meaning of his novel has been betrayed. In fact, Stanley Kubrick with his management emphasizes some aspects that we have all come to know: the hotel, the madness.
The director has an optimistic view of ghosts “because it means surviving death” while he doesn’t believe in hell.

King obviously disagrees, as you can hear directly from his words and defines the film “a beautiful car with no engine.”

The writer cares about the psychological depth of the characters he has created and which is distorted: the film version in fact omits the tragicity with which Jack Torrance tries to resist his own demons, not to mention that Jack Nicholson is perfect in the crazy role par excellence, but viewers are already predisposed to see it as such.

In a word Stephen King finds The Shining cold and reiterates that the Overlook Hotel burns in the book.

Mike Flanagan, the director of Doctor Sleep is committed to the work of reconciliation by dedicating half of the film to a reconstruction rather faithful to the book, and at the same time setting the ending, although filled with quotes and Easter Eggs, so that the circle of shining somehow can be closed again.

For this reason the film ends differently than the book and resumes the epilogue of the novel The Shining. Flanagan makes the Overlook Hotel the meeting point of a sort of triangulation according to which, to an adult Daniel Torrance, in a certain sense happens what Stephen King had intended for his father Jack Torrance and which we have not seen in Kubrick’s version.

What do you think of the result?

Remaining on my basic level, I was very curious to see the character of Rose Cilindro, and if on the one hand I find the choice of Ewan Mc Gregor for the role of Daniel apt, I was very disappointed for the cut of the whole part of the great-grandmother by Abra: Concetta Abruzzi.

The elderly poet with the Italian given name and the absolutely American surname (Reynolds) sat with her sleeping great-granddaughter in her lap and watched the video her granddaughter’s husband had shot in the delivery room three weeks before. It began with a title card: ABRA ENTERS THE WORLD!

Of course beyond that, hers turns out to be a key role and since Mike Flanagan has stated that he finds the character of Abra Stone fantastic, I find Momma‘s omission even more incomprehensible.

Or maybe it’s the way to leave a door open: it seems that the director asked Stephen King if there is “more” about Abra… a bit of the same idea that gave birth to Doctor Sleep from Dan child in The Shining.

Other circles to close then?