Room 237 [PG]

What if someone told you that The Shining was about ‘the great terror’ of the massacres of the Native American Indians? What if another person told you it was all about the Holocaust? Or how about that it’s a secret confession from Kubrick about how he worked on the faking of the Apollo moon landing? Many Kubrick fans and aficionados have theories like these (and some even more far-fetched) about Kubrick’s classic horror movie and Room 237 endeavours to explore these theories in depth, pulling apart the movie and finding its ‘hidden secrets’. 

I’ve always said, at the end of the day, that a film is what you make of it. As far as I’m concerned there is no real right or wrong way to perceive a movie or what a certain shot means and if we can pick out details that support our theories, hey that’s clever cinema-viewing and go us. 

Rodney Ascher’s documentary is not a mere how-Kubrick-made or a dummies’ how-to-interpret guide to The Shining, it’s actually a really stunningly and cleverly put together feature that explores Kubrick’s fans. Simultaneously, it’s a film that explores contemporary relationships with images in the digital age: where we can revisit movies on DVD, rewind, pause, zoom in, etc, as well as the idea that, once we hear a theory, we can work backwards and find the clues to support it. It’s a film that looks at twisting things to make new meanings out of them and to be honest; it’s scarier than Kubrick’s original classic! 

The brilliance of this film struck me right from the opening shot, which is actually a scene from Eyes Wide Shut with posters and articles of The Shining deposited into the image. This entire film is one giant movie collage, with scenes from various Kubrick films, as well as other notable ones, being used to actually chronicle the story. The central content of the movie is entirely through voice-over narration (complete with interviewee’s kids screaming in the background) and no interviewer or interviewee is ever actually shown. It’s literally all scenes from movies depicting events that the interviewees are describing: their own experiences of watching The Shining. 

Intermingled with these are snippets of archival and historical footage to bring the seriousness and depth to the film: black and white footage of marches in Nazi Germany, the moon landing footage etc. The editing is so streamlined and seamless it’s a wonder to behold and, add to that, a montage of eerie instrumental tracks as an accompanying soundtrack (including, of course, the theme of The Shining) and you find yourself completely entranced by the whole thing! 

Some of the theories to get pretty far-fetched like Kubrick’s fascination with subliminal messages and his putting a picture of his own face in the clouds of the opening shots as his name rolls up the screen, whilst others just leave you wondering how bored these people must be to be bothered to map out the entire Overlook to determine whether the window in Ullman’s office should exist or not. But this is the fun of the film too: hearing all these theories and ideas do make you want to go back over the film again and see if you can pick out the subliminal messages and the other little details you missed. 

Featuring contributions from Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, Jay Weidner, and featuring Stephen Brophy, Ash Brophy, Buddy Black, Buffy Visick, and Sam Walton as ‘cast’, Room 237 is a stunning documentary film; both visually and in its content. As a film, it’s an incredible illustration of the digital age and what it means for images (nothing is sacred nor safe really) and as a documentary, it’s really interesting to hear all these theories and ideas from people who have spend so much time obsessing over them and thinking about them. It’s a slightly disturbing, but wholly stunning film really.