Room 237 (2012): written and directed by Rodney Ascher; featuring theories about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) from Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, and Jay Weidner: To paraphrase a Jack Kirby cover blurb, "Don't ask -- just watch it!"
Rodney Ascher unpacks and illustrates nine, count them, nine 'fan' theories about the secret meaning of Stanley Kubrick's movie of Stephen King's The Shining. Oh, brother. The loopiest is that The Shining is Kubrick's coded confession that he faked the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The most wide-ranging is that The Shining is about ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY.
If you want to understand the Ourobouros of the theory, of becoming transfixed by an idea that seems objectively insane... well, this movie is for you. Asture observations occasionally surface, only to be drowned in the red flood of hermetic hermeneutics. Learn the mystery of the Impossible Window! Marvel at carefully detailed, viewer-generated maps of the floor plan of the Overlook Hotel! Realize that somewhere, Stanley Kubrick is busting a gut! An absolutely fascinating work of documentary, non-judgmental about the validity of the theories described herein.
The most astonishing moment probably comes when, prompted by one theorist's statement that The Shining must be viewed backwards and forwards to truly be understood, a film theatre screens The Shining played backwards and forwards, projected on the same screen at the same time. I've got to guess that a lot of headache medication was taken during and after that adventure. Highly recommended.
The Shining (1980) : adapted from the Stephen King novel by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson; directed by Stanley Kubrick; starring Jack Nicholson (Jack Torrance), Shelley Duvall (Wendy Torrance), Danny Lloyd (Danny Torrance), Scatman Crothers (Halloran), Barry Nelson (Ullman), Philip Stone (Grady), and Joe Turkel (Lloyd): Three times have we watched The Shining in the last seven years, as reviewed here and here. And that's not even mentioning Stephen King's novel. Or Doctor Sleep, King's sequel to The Shining.
One of the noteworthy things about The Shining is how many nutty interpretations (and even conspiracy theories) it has inspired. Many of these come from very literal-minded people who seem to be extraordinarily unfamiliar with the idea of sub-text, much less interpretations that don't rely on suppositions about what the director intentionally put there.
The best one -- that The Shining is Kubrick's subtle confession to the idea that he faked the Apollo 11 moon landing -- is all sorts of crazy. And that's leaving aside the fact that if Kubrick had been hired in 1968 to fake the 1969 moon landing, the 1969 moon landing wouldn't have occurred until at least 1973. Do you know how many retakes those shots would have needed? And do you really think Kubrick would have used the bit in which Neil Armstrong blows his first line on the Moon?
The Shining is, of course, both great and a complete departure from the Stephen King novel it's based on, which is also great (contra Kubrick, who thought the novel was weak). One view that works pretty well is that the whole thing is a satire of horror movies that also works as a horror movie. Well, whatever. The Sublime is conjured up, and even the looming, menacing Overlook Hotel finds itself dwarfed by that Sublime landscape.
Some view the surprising death of a major character who doesn't die in the novel as one of Kubrick's 'Screw you!' moments addressed to Stephen King and fans of the novel. Is it? Because it looks an awful lot like Kubrick riffing on Hitchcock's use of Janet Leigh and her character in Psycho. To me, at least.
Lots of room for interpretation here. So it goes. Highly recommended.
The Shining: written by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson, based on the novel by Stephen King; directed by Stanley Kubrick; starring Jack Nicholson (Jack Torrance), Shelley Duvall (Wendy Torrance), Danny Lloyd (Danny Torrance), Scatman Crothers (Dick Halloran), Joe Turkel (Lloyd the bartender) and Philip Stone (Delbert Grady) (1980): So much has been said and written about Kubrick's version of Stephen King's novel that there's not a lot left to say.
It's fortunate that Kubrick's original ending got cut from subsequent releases, as it rendered the rest of the movie nonsensical in a way that anticipated M. Night Shlamayan's descent into climactic shock for shock's sake. Go look it up. It's also fortunate that Kubrick's addition of a supernatural element absent from King's original (reincarnation) is also muted in the film, though still there. As with a lot of great artists, Kubrick often seems dumber than his work.
If you're watching The Shining for the umpteenth time, note how much heavy lifting sound and music do in the movie. Take away the audio and half the scares evaporate. Also note the astonishing number of symmetrical shots in the film, most but not all of them in the Overlook Hotel (I count a few in Dick Halloran's Miami apartment, but all of those occur while Danny is telepathically contacting him, and once the contact is over, Halloran's apartment becomes scrupulously asymmetrical and dominated by diagonal lines).
The symmetry comes from two elements -- the position of the characters and the mise-en-scene, which is to say the layout of the set and the props in the shot. I'll leave you to theorize what it all means, what all the mirror shots mean ('Redrum' is, of course, the movie's big 'mirror reveal'), what the static shots of Nicholson's face at various points mean, what all the Native American elements mean, and so on, and so forth.
As with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick herein also plays with a sort of metapsychology playing out inside a gigantic metaphor for the human mind. In 2001, it's the brain-and-spinal-cord spaceship Discovery, carrying an emotionless and sterile technohumanity to its ultimate rebirth and rejuvenation. In The Shining, it's the haunted mind of the Overlook Hotel, carrying Jack Torrance metaphorically backwards in time to the early moments of 2001, leaving him without language and howling, running around with a weapon he will ultimately be unable to use (or triumphantly throw into the air).
It's a fascinating film that rewards multiple viewings, if only to admire the bizarre, seemingly meaningful colour choices Kubrick makes with the various rooms in the set. Dig that red-and-white washroom! Highly recommended.
