Director: Rodney Ascher
Starring: Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns
Running time: 102 minutes
Synopsis: ROOM 237 explores the veritable smorgasbord of hidden meanings available within the layers of THE SHINING through interviews. Of course, some of these stretch the imagination a little more than others…
If you’re familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film THE SHINING, you’ll no doubt be aware of the various hidden subtexts the celebrated filmmaker dotted around the picture, including the holocaust and faked moon landing footage. No? Us neither.
But, apparently, these interpretations do exist – with plenty of ‘evidence’ to back them up – and this forms the basis for Rodney Ascher’s documentary, examining the numerous (and increasingly sketchy) theories of hidden meanings in Kubrick’s work. While a couple of these may hold a grain of truth – such as Kubrick’s subliminal messaging, learnt from marketing companies – the majority are, to put it lightly, stretching it.
That’s not to say they’re not interesting: but rather than the perhaps intended offering of alternate ways to view THE SHINING, ROOM 237 merely proffers an insight into the mind of the conspiracy theorist – and the simply mad depth of hidden meaning they can find in every frame of a film (because we ALL saw Kubrick’s face etched into that cloud in that one frame of the opening sequence. Of course).
Still, does ROOM 237 succeed as a production, even if its content is less than believable? It carries no hint of self-parody, instead leaving it up to the audience to mock it; nevertheless, its tone is light. Essentially it’s 102 minutes of narration, over the top of some choppily edited clips of THE SHINING and other films. I can’t tell you what any of those other films were, however, as the clips were disjointed and brief, with no subtitles to inform you of their source.
Elsewhere, its structure is often questionable, skirting back and forth between the various interviewees, who remain nameless – so it can be hard to get a handle at first on which theory we’re hearing about next. The audio itself raises eyebrows, purely for what’s been left in. At one point, one of the interviewees stopped talking to go calm down his son – who was crying in the background – while the image paused. This adds nothing and is baffling as to why it’s been left in the film at all.
So ROOM 237 doesn’t really succeed on the production front either. Still, while most of the ‘hidden meanings’ may have you rolling your eyes in disbelief, a couple do make sense, and you can see Kubrick intentionally placing them in his film. But most of the film reads like a poetry seminar – finding things the author never intended to have in their work. And that probably aren’t there anyway.
ROOM 237 is due for release in cinemas on 26th October 2012. See the rest of our LFF coverage here.
