Room 237
2012
***½
Director: Rodney Ascher
Cast:
The Shining is the odd one out in Stanley Kubrick's back catalogue. Why would a director known for his intellectual and artistic output make a pulpy genre film? Or did he? On the surface, his Stephen King adaptation is a story about a man who goes insane and attempts to kill his family. This captivating documentary brings together a handful of obsessives who have spent way too much time overanalysing every frame of the film to discover its hidden subtext. Is The Shining really about the Native American genocide, or about forbidden sexuality, or maybe about the Holocaust, or is it a public admission by the director that he helped to fake the Apollo 11 moon landing? Kubrick was a famous perfectionist who allowed nothing on the screen by accident. So, why does his horror film have blatant continuity errors and a set whose layout doesn't make any logical sense? Are these oversights or subliminal clues? Some of the outlandish theories presented here are fascinating, and some others are laughable. All of them cannot be true at the same time, but they create a mystery full of wonderful contradictions.
