Whether or not you know much about Stanley Kubrick and his films, though you've undoubtedly heard of them even if you haven't watched them, it's likely that you know of his reputation for being a filmmaking perfectionist. While he is known throughout the film buff community as having been very loose with his acting - often having no idea about what he wanted from a performance and frequently forcing the actors play out scenes again and again until he got something that felt right - his attention to detail, be it sets, camera moves, music cues, etc., is unmatched in the world of filmmaking. Down to the particular magazine a character is casually thumbing through or the film that's playing in the background while two characters are having a conversation, no aspect of Kubrick's mise-en-scene is coincidental. Unsurprisingly, this has led many of his fans to (some might say obsessively) pour over his films, squeezing every frame to the last evidential drop for their varied and intricate theories. Perhaps no entry in the late director's catalog is has been more extensively analyzed than his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's horror classic, The Shining. And with his debut documentary, Room 237, Rodney Ascher depicts just how far Kubrick's fans have fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole.
What makes Room 237 so interesting is that it acts as both a brilliant piece of film criticism and as deeply involving critique on film criticism. The film is presented as a sort of video essay with the film's various commentators voicing their experiences discovering The Shining, their love/fanaticism for it and their in-depth thoughts and analysis on it all set over clips from The Shining and a plethora of other films, Kubrickian or otherwise. One man believes The Shining is about the persecution of the Native Americans by the European white men. Another man sees the film in connection with the German Third Reich in World War II. There are others still who see the film in connection with Kubrick's supposed involvement with the faking of the Apollo 11 moon landing and with mythology - particularly with the legend of the labyrinth and the Minotaur. Not only is the myriad of theories presented fascinating, the amount of details and evidence provided for each make them all seem strangely (and simultaneously) possible. Through the entire running time of Room 237, I found myself constantly waffling back and forth between "Oh, come on. You've got to be joking!" and "Wow, you're actually making a lot of sense, disembodied voice." And that's what makes it such a fun movie.
Because as these men and women from all walks of life are speaking, analyzing this singular work of art, we as viewers are analyzing them. Room 237 is as much about the way people interpret The Shining as it is about the way we interpret any movie. Everyone brings their various preconceptions into every film they watch and it's impossible for these ideas not to color the subsequent readings they have. One of the gentlemen interviewed had past experiences with a particular word - calumet - which caused him to concentrate on the Native American imagery in the film. Same thing with the guy who focused primarily on the Apollo 11 imagery. One man latched onto a particular line of someone else's criticism - that The Shining was a film that was supposed to be watched backwards as well as forwards - and took that to mean literally running the film backward. Although these things may seem trivial at first, especially to viewers who do not share the same backgrounds and preconceptions as the commentators, all of them illuminate a multitude of enthralling elements of Kubrick's film that might have otherwise gone completely unnoticed by the greater majority. Does it seem a little silly that a man formed an entire theory based initially on what brand of canned baking powder was on a particular shelf? Or that the basis of a woman's mythological theory might come from a strange poster that only appears in one scene? Does it seem ridiculous that someone might project a film running backwards on top of that same film running normally based solely on a line he read on the internet? Of course it does! But without these little sparks, we might have never discovered just how layered (sometimes literally!) a film Stanley Kubrick's The Shining could be.
And because The Shining is a Stanley Kubrick film, any and all of these theories seem possible. Being the mad perfectionist that he was, it's possible he could have intended one, two or all of these interpretations. Nevertheless, I found myself often questioning whether or not we all give Kubrick too much credit. Maybe he chose that particular can or poster just because he liked it. But the concept of just liking something is an interesting one. Yes, there is a lot of Native American decor in the film so it would make sense why he chose that specific can of baking powder. But thinking about the possibilities of Kubrick working subconsciously is interesting. He could have just liked it, but he just likes it for multitude of subconscious reasons. Because when everything is all said and done, who's to say what Kubrick intended? And even if we do know what he intended, what we see in a film and what a film touches within us still has meaning and worth. And that's why Room 237 is such a wonderful documentary. Not only is it about delving deeply into one particular film, it's about the power that film analysis, both causal and academic, has in people's lives. Maybe The Shining isn't about Native American suppression, Nazis or Kubrick's involvement in faking the moon landing. But that's not what matters. What matters is the relationship between a film and those that view it. What matters is how a film touches you, changes you.
And if that relationship produces some crazy, out-there theories, we're all the better for it.
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| By overlaying two copies of the film running backwards and forwards, many interesting juxtapositions occur. Here, you can see how the blood of the murdered twins creates an unnerving, bleeding clown mask on Jack Torrence's face. |
And because The Shining is a Stanley Kubrick film, any and all of these theories seem possible. Being the mad perfectionist that he was, it's possible he could have intended one, two or all of these interpretations. Nevertheless, I found myself often questioning whether or not we all give Kubrick too much credit. Maybe he chose that particular can or poster just because he liked it. But the concept of just liking something is an interesting one. Yes, there is a lot of Native American decor in the film so it would make sense why he chose that specific can of baking powder. But thinking about the possibilities of Kubrick working subconsciously is interesting. He could have just liked it, but he just likes it for multitude of subconscious reasons. Because when everything is all said and done, who's to say what Kubrick intended? And even if we do know what he intended, what we see in a film and what a film touches within us still has meaning and worth. And that's why Room 237 is such a wonderful documentary. Not only is it about delving deeply into one particular film, it's about the power that film analysis, both causal and academic, has in people's lives. Maybe The Shining isn't about Native American suppression, Nazis or Kubrick's involvement in faking the moon landing. But that's not what matters. What matters is the relationship between a film and those that view it. What matters is how a film touches you, changes you.
And if that relationship produces some crazy, out-there theories, we're all the better for it.
