Room 237 documentary: Cracking the Shining's Code

BevVincent

Cracking the Code in ‘Heeere’s Johnny!’

BevVincent

Sundance 2012 Review: Fascinating ‘Room 237[ch8242] Will Forever Change ‘The Shining’ For Audiences

BevVincent

Room 237 on IFC



Fans of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining won’t want to miss the conspiracy thriller doc Room 237, releasing on March 29. “After the box office failure of Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick decided to embark on a project that might have more commercial appeal. The Shining, Stephen King’s biggest critical and commercial success yet, seemed like a perfect vehicle. After an arduous production, Kubrick’s film received a wide release in the summer of 1980; the reviews were mixed, but the box office, after a slow start, eventually picked up. End of story? Hardly. In the 30 years since the film’s release, a considerable cult of Shining devotees has emerged, fans who claim to have decoded the film’s secret messages addressing everything from the genocide of Native Americans to a range of government conspiracies. Rodney Ascher’s wry and provocative Room 237 fuses fact and fiction through interviews with cultists and scholars, creating a kaleidoscopic deconstruction of Kubrick’s still-controversial classic.”

BevVincent

I assume this is a legitimately shared version of the film on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/59822710

Lou_Sytsma

Watched the first 40 mins of it. It's fascinating stuff but in my opinion involves a lot of reaching by the people putting forth their theories.

BevVincent

There's a lot of that going around when it comes to The Shining!

Lou_Sytsma

Heh! Heh! True quite true.

BevVincent

I found a video on youtube last year where a guy went through the movie scene by scene and used the details to map out what the inside of the Overlook had to be -- and in the process discovered a number of impossibilities.

Lou_Sytsma

Yes, Rm 237 mentions those as well such as the impossible window in the Managers office and the hallway outside of the food locker.

BevVincent

In some scenes, the kitchen is to the left of the lobby and in others to the right. People credit Kubrick with being such a perfectionist. They make excuses for these "bloopers" -- it's a way of further disorienting the viewer, they say.

Lou_Sytsma

Yes they give Kubrick a lot of credit.



Without any interviews or quotes from Kubrick about this - and there may very well be, I'm a Kubrick admirer but not a fanatic - it all smacks of seeing holy figures on the side of buildings or in pasta dishes.

Lou_Sytsma

FYI - video is no longer up at Vimeo.

BevVincent

I think it was an unauthorized posting. I turned in my review to FEARNet yesterday.

Lou_Sytsma

Darn. I wanted to finish it off.

BevVincent

My review -- Room 237: Sometimes a cigar is a Moon rocket

Lou_Sytsma

Heheh - nice title. I still have to watch this fully.

BevVincent

Ha! The first comment on this article on FEARNet is priceless!

Bev, you're too literal thinking. You think plot is designed around dialogue and gestures. Kubrick was a visual thinker, he designed plots around spatial anomaly and paradoxical lighting. You're a writer on a horror website writing guides to other literal works (like King), he was a thinker the scale of DaVinci or Giorgione or Giotto. Visualists who invented entirely new ways of seeing. Before you knock the film's antagonists, I'd read carefully the essay of two professors, one whose analysis proves Blakemore's theories. One of them IS a mesoamerican scholar who points out some carefully hidden symbols and how they overlap. Take a harder look and you'll lose that snarky attitude in no time. http://www.mstrmnd.com/log/802

BevVincent

An interview with the director: 'The Shining': 33 Years Later, 'Room 237' Asks Why Moviegoers Can't Leave the Overlook



And then Stanley Kubrick’s longtime assistant, Leon Vitali, says various theories about hidden meanings in “The Shining,” proposed in the documentary “Room 237,” are just “balderdash.”

Lou_Sytsma

hehee!