In 1980, film director Stanley Kubrick completed his adaptation of acclaimed horror author Stephen King's novel The Shining, and it was met with a mixed response, with some declaring it a masterpiece, but others decrying it as an example of how the great artist had gone off the rails creatively. Since then, although a consensus has never really been reached, its reputation has been elevated so that it is often regarded as one of Kubrick's finest works, one of the great horror movies of its era, and perhaps of all time. But that's not enough for some people. Some people have to look a lot deeper...
A film where the rights to the footage used must have cost more than the rest of the production altogether, Room 237 was very much a documentary for the internet age. That communications invention has enabled not only likeminded fans of a variety of subjects to connect and share ideas, but it has become a breeding ground for theorising as much as it welcomes the broadcasting of opinion, and here director Rodney Ascher assembled not only a collection of clips to illustrate the themes and ideas of his work, but a selection of self-appointed experts on The Shining who were only too happy to elucidate on their pet notions on what Kubrick really meant when he made it.
No matter if Kubrick actually did not have it in mind that he was hiding messages in this about the attempted genocide of the American Indians, the Jewish Holocaust, or even that he was admitting he had faked the Apollo Moon landings, according to them he did any or all of those things. This was also a testament to technology in that without DVD, where scenes from the film could be paused, slowed down and repeated at infinitum, you cannot imagine much of the explanations here would have been achieved, and Ascher makes great play of recreating the interviewees' methods with still frames, slow motion and various graphical pointers to what we are meant to be looking at to have us exclaim, why yes! I can see what you mean now!
Of course, for most viewers of the documentary they would have a more sceptical angle to the propositions here, but an interesting aspect was that the theories and conspiracies didn't necessarily cancel each other out as the unseen experts expounded on them. If anything, the more labyrinthine it all became, the more you grew lost in the worlds within worlds delineated; make no mistake, not one person involved with the actual making of The Shining had anything to do with making Room 237, this was all strictly amateurs tapped for their opinions that Ascher wove together with a wealth of clips not only from that movie, but every other Stanley Kubrick movie too, along with many illustrative bits and pieces from efforts as diverse as Demons to Jesus Christ Superstar.
You could take this on the level intended by the interviews, but more likely you would be highly amused by what sounded like, if you were going to be rather cruel, a bunch of crackpots who could mould Kubrick's oeuvre into any shape they wanted. But as it progresses, you find yourself willing them to go further in their analysis, and they don't disappoint, from the mapping out of the Overlook Hotel to prove it takes place in no logical space to working out the significance of the titular Room 237 which can represent the ghosts of the past which must be faced such as the darkest days in mankind's history. The editing here is a marvel in itself, with many moments which will have you chuckling at its ingenuity, although some will find the omission of "Here's Johnny!" strange - couldn't Johnny Carson have been roped into this intellectual fantasmagoria? Jack Nicholson famously said of Kubrick "He gives new meaning to the word meticulous" and you would like to think the great man would appreciate the likewise efforts here.
[Metrodome's DVD has a trailer as the only extra, but the film is sort of a feature length extra to The Shining in itself.]
