The German distributor of the Stephen King film adaptation has changed the title of the “Shining” sequel, which opens in cinemas on November 21: From “Doctor Sleep”, as in the book and in American-language cinema, became “Doctor Sleep’s Awakening”.
That sounds good at first. Not so soporific, but activating: someone wakes up, that might lure people to the cinema even more. Recent film history is full of power bar titles. “The Dark Knight Rises”, “The Force Awakens”, “Age of the Resistance”, “The Rise of Skywalker” – all names that indicate movement until resurrection. If nobody should get the opportunity for puns, “Doctor Sleep” should be boring and threaten to become a flop.
Only: With “Doctor Sleep” the “awakening” makes no sense. The “awakening” apparently means that sober alcoholic and ex-junkie Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) finds meaning in life and knows how to do good with his gift of the “Shining”.
But that would be wrong thinking. The nickname “Doctor Sleep” does not refer to a man in a deep sleep who is learning to use his potential. The nurse Torrance was given the name “Doctor Sleep” because with his “Shining” he comforts old or sick people and knows how to relieve their pain, especially on their last few meters. So the “doctorate” has nothing to do with his personality, but with what others see in him because he has helped them. Nothing has to awaken in him – least of all himself. People started calling Torrance “Doctor Sleep” long after he’d beat his addiction.
This makes “Doctor Sleep’s Awakening” a wrong movie title.
Read our review of the novel by ROLLING STONE’s Doctor Sleep, voted #46 in Best King Books:
46. ”Doctor Sleep” (2013) ★★★
Has there ever been a more eagerly awaited King sequel? Has he ever published a sequel to a completed novel? And that after almost 40 years in the literary business?
The “Shining” successor appeared 36 years later and was extensively advertised. The man from Maine even went on his first reading tour in Germany, visited Hamburg, appeared in Red Sox fan clothing, cap, sneakers and lumberjack shirt, bobbing cheerfully in front of public service cameras. And he watched Lanz’s show, which of course had to be like wellness for him, as he was admired but didn’t have to worry about real questions being asked of him. There Lanz, not really gifted with a sense of clever journalistic considerations, joked as expected: “What is the master of horror afraid of himself?”
King had previously set up a voting on his website: he had a vote on whether he should write a second “Shining” book or an eighth from “The Dark Tower”. Remarkably, the Torrence saga won by a narrow margin. Perhaps many readers hoped that he would surpass or enlighten his gigantic “DT” finale from 2003, which was too open for some hardcore fans but too open (with “The Wind Through The Keyhole” there was an eighth work, but a kind of ” Mid-Quel”, that is, a story set in the middle of the saga. If the “Turm” had won the voting, would the readers have been satisfied with this book? It doesn’t matter who won the voting result: “Doctor Sleep” would probably be also appeared that way).
Here was the first opportunity to see King construct a never intended sequel. Which characters, which scenes would he take up? Does the overlook hotel feature? Danny and Wendy? Dick Halloran? Jack’s ghost? Mrs. Massey, the hedge animals? The man in the teddy bear costume? RED RUM? Tony?
The Addiction
The telepathically gifted friends Danny and Overlook cook Hallorann never meet again, and Wendy Torrance only appears at the very beginning of “Doctor Sleep”. She dies, broken, of cancer.
That might not please all “Shining” fans, but the waivers reflect King’s courageous decisions – because Danny Torrance, now an adult, is so caught up in his drug addiction that his environment has simply become unimportant. Hallorann, who once saved the boy from being murdered by his own father, dies almost unnoticed. Danny, permanently stoned, has missed even meeting the wise companion once in the last few years.
This is the hardest message King, once a junkie himself, shares with us: those who fail their addiction realize too late what they’ve been missing out on. Spoiler: At least there is a reconciliation with the father who once wanted to ax him with an ax (unfortunately, it also demonstrates how little King trusted the effect of this reunion – he actually writes down the tear-jerking pressure, “Dan knew that he would cry, but he was still holding it back.”)
In “Doctor Sleep” King describes his own recovery using the example of his alter ego Danny Torrance, who like him wants to go through the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous and, contrary to what he had hoped (you immediately have the Kubrick boy in your head) , has not become a Superman with a Prince Valiant hairstyle who could stop derailed trains. But a wreck. He finds great comparisons: “The thoughts were like a blackboard. Schnapps was the sponge.”
So the focus is entirely on Danny, whom King has given the appropriate role of those professionals who hold society together, but are poorly paid and are always the people in the background: The “Shining” talent is a nurse. He is called “Doctor Sleep” because he can calm patients down. Danny recognizes his usefulness to others, but is almost broken by the fact that he can see what others cannot.
“Doctor Sleep” also addresses the issue of child abuse, and with that, King comes full circle. The Shining’s violent, alcoholic father Jack Torrance broke his son Danny’s arm; King has repeatedly indicated that he himself has not always been peaceful towards his family. In the sequel, Danny now wants to stop a gang of undead who expect everlasting life from the “Shining” power of kidnapped children and can charge their battery even more through particularly bestial torture before murder. For centuries, followers of the True Knot have traveled the world in search of victims, remembering the days when people in Europe worshiped trees instead of condos.
POLITICS!
But the worrying development that Stephen King began to go through in the noughties does not stop at the holy “Shining”. Criticism of the conditions in America, no: the world, he transports to his villains. Like Big Jim Rennie in Under The Dome or General Kurtz in Dreamcatcher, the True Knot beings embody everything that went wrong with the Bush era and the War on Terror.
The undead outsmart the state and its Ministry of Homeland Security, which is not only characterized by the protection of citizens, but also by restricting civil rights. The fact that the members of the “True Node” disguise themselves as trailer travelers driving from campsite to campsite, i.e. as American leisure people who are not suspected of terrorism, is King’s ironic contribution to the debate – dragnets are no good here.
There is no question that these freaks, always looking for “steam”, i.e. the exhaled, last life force of the dying, had also set out for the World Trace Center when it collapsed. Political reference! POLITICS!
But the campers also fulfill those clichés of anti-intellectuals that King likes to scoff at. Framed photos of Ronald Reagan hang in their cars, and they browse the New Yorker solely for the cartoons and items that sell the world, that is, anything outside of their own American continent, that is, exotica. In addition, “food for thought” for us barbarians: “You slaughter pigs, cattle and sheep. Is what we do something different?”
It certainly doesn’t make the sequel a better novel. Shining is better. Regardless of the fact that with the creatures of the “True Knot” he has created a troupe that makes big plans, but is always easier to trick than almost all of his other devilish beings.
But Stephen King has resisted the temptation to revive many of the “Shining” elements that have also made their way into pop culture through Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation: the hotel, the snow, the axe, the twins. So “Doctor Sleep” clarified the focus that he actually wanted to direct: that the gift of the “Shining” means responsibility for those who survive and want to do good.
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