Room 237

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Room 237

Postby Belligerent Savant » Wed Mar 27, 2013 9:22 pm

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http://www.vulture.com/2013/03/the-shin ... -maze.html

1. It’s Really About the Native American Genocide

Theorist: Bill Blakemore, television correspondent, author.
Theory: The film is about the horrible crimes perpetrated on Native Americans by whites.
Evidence: In the movie (but not the Stephen King novel on which it was based), the Overlook Hotel is said to be built on a Native American graveyard. There are Native American artifacts and designs throughout the hotel (1); the hotel’s pantry, which figures in important scenes, is well stocked with Calumet baking powder (2), whose labels prominently feature an American Indian. (Calumet means “peace pipe,” and the cans symbolize the broken peace pipe, both between white men and natives and between Jack and his family.) Blakemore posits that The Shining suggests we can only escape this “nightmare of history” by retracing our steps—just as Danny Torrance does in the hedge maze.


2. It’s Really About the Nazi Holocaust

Theorist: Geoffrey Cocks, professor of history, Albion College, Michigan.
Theory: The film is an allegory about coming to terms with Hitler’s extermination camps.
Evidence: Jack Torrance’s Adler typewriter (1) is manufactured in Germany: “a bureaucratic killing machine,” Cocks said in one interview. The number 42 is on Danny’s sweatshirt (2); Wendy Torrance swings the bat 42 times at her husband; 1942 was the year of the Final Solution, and 42 has been used as shorthand to refer to the Holocaust. The film has abundant eagle imagery, symbolizing state power. After Danny has his first vision of the elevators gushing blood, a sticker of Dopey the Dwarf (3) on his bedroom door disappears: “Before,” Cocks says, “Danny had no idea about the world. And now, he knows. He’s no longer a dope about things.” Kubrick was indeed researching a proposed Holocaust film around this time.


3. It’s Really About the Minotaur in His Maze

Theorist: Juli Kearns, playwright, novelist.
Theory: The film is based on the Greek myth of the Cretan half-bull, half-man at the center of a labyrinth, slain by Theseus.
Evidence: The hedge maze (1); the labyrinthine architecture of the hotel (2); the “impossible window” (3) in the office of Jack Torrance’s boss; several images of the Minotaur, notably the Monarch skiing poster (4) on the wall in the game room.


4. It’s Really About the Faked Apollo Moon Landing
Theorist: Jay Weidner, author, filmmaker, independent scholar.
Theory: Weidner and others believe that the moon landing witnessed on television was faked, created on a soundstage by Stanley Kubrick in collusion with the U.S. government; Weidner believes that the film is Kubrick’s attempt to come to terms with his supposed involvement.
Evidence: Danny wears an Apollo 11 sweater (1); Room 237 (2) represents the moon-landing stage where Kubrick supposedly worked—the moon is about 237,000 miles from Earth; the prevalence of Tang cans (3) (created for astronauts) in the hotel’s pantry; the pattern on the carpet (4) where Danny plays matches that of Launch Pad 39A, from which the Apollo rocket took off.


http://deadspin.com/room-237-will-make- ... -459090667

One of the saddest things about the death of a favorite filmmaker is realizing that you'll probably never see any new movie from him ever again. When popular musicians die, they always leave material lying around that their estates can spruce up and put out for the fans. (Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, and he's still releasing albums.) But when Stanley Kubrick died in March 1999, he had essentially finished his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, and his many fans knew that that there would never be another Kubrick movie ever again. You could watch his existing movies over and over again, but there would never be another chance to get enraptured and surprised by a new Kubrick work. Fourteen years after his death, I still miss the guy–and I really miss that excitement for a new Kubrick movie.

Maybe that's in part why I love Room 237 so much. Directed by Rodney Ascher, the documentary (which opens on Friday in New York and will be available on-demand) compiles some of the most popular theories about the hidden meanings within Kubrick's 1980 horror movie The Shining, based on Stephen King's book. Ascher and his interview subjects haven't uncovered a new Kubrick film, but they've done the next best thing: They've given his fans a chance to revisit a classic with fresh eyes. It's a decent consolation prize.

The people who speak in Room 237 have been sounding off about their alternate readings of The Shining for more than two decades, so Kubrick obsessives won't necessarily be surprised by the theories collected in the documentary. But by bringing these individuals together in one film–and offering little indication of which theories he personally finds more or less persuasive–Ascher has created a rich tapestry of ideas that, collectively, recalibrate your thinking about a movie that you've probably seen several times over your life. I don't necessarily buy that Kubrick intended any of these alternate readings, but the passion these people bring to their theories is such that you're at least willing to meet them halfway. In the process, the brilliance of The Shining reemerges, shaking off your familiarity with the movie.

I don't want to discuss what theories are mentioned in the movie; you should discover them yourself. (They're easy to find online, if you're curious.) But I will say that they encompass everything from mass genocide to government coverups to spatial inconsistencies within the Overlook Hotel, where most of The Shining is set. It's not as if these theorists are all kooks and weirdos: Bill Blakemore, who's been writing about his interpretation of The Shining since the '80s, has been an ABC News reporter for over 35 years. But Ascher's stroke of genius was to not show any of his subjects throughout the documentary. Instead, we get a title card that introduces each of the six people; we merely hear their voices as they explain in a calm, measured fashion why, for instance, the cans of food in the Overlook Hotel are much, much more significant than the rest of us could have possible realized.

Ascher complements his subjects' theories with scenes they're describing–or, for variety, a scene from another Kubrick movie that also ties in. So rather than looking at these people, we're looking at The Shining: sometimes slowed-down, sometimes looped, sometimes in reverse. We're looking and looking and looking at the movie. And no matter how far-fetched the theories become, the sheer conviction of the speakers matched with the arresting images start to take on their own sort of truth. (Also great is Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson's foreboding score with its through-the-looking-glass spookiness and urgency.)

Room 237 is really just the latest example of remix culture, one artist building off the work of another to create something that readjusts how we feel about the original work. In popular culture, that happens most noticeably in viral mashups–think Trent Reznor and Carly Rae Jepsen smashed together or the Toy Story 3: Inception trailer–that are clever but also sort of disposable. (You think about them for a second, and then you click on another "Harlem Shake" video.) There have, however, been larger, more ambitious film projects along these same lines, such as Rebirth of a Nation (where DJ Spooky "remixed" Birth of a Nation) and The Clock (Christian Marclay's engrossing video that consists of existing movie and TV scenes that take place chronologically over a 24-hour period). Beyond simply being clever, these projects force you to look at older work in a new light. In The Clock, for instance, you're constantly aware how time is always a factor when telling a story, and how you yourself are spending time when you watch a film. By comparison, Room 237 is something of a happy middle ground between the silly, shallow pleasures of viral mashups and the more intellectual pursuits of The Clock, which you can only see at a museum and only at certain times. Room 237 is a documentary that cuts open and examines a horror favorite, but along the way it asks lots of thoughtful questions about how we interpret movies and how a director's intention and an audience's takeaway can be very, very different.

Room 237 is also just really fun. For all its obsessive talk and odd theories, it's really about a deep love for The Shining and and its filmmaker. And in the end, that's what I respond to the most. I've seen it twice now, and both time it's made me want to watch The Shining immediately. That's weird because, really, I'd been watching it for the 100 minutes or so that the documentary was on. But Room 237 draws you in and screws with your head so much that, when it's over, you feel like you need to see the original source again to make sure that what you thought the movie was about really is accurate. (I've also seen it as a dark satire on the traditional American family.) In its own way, the documentary is as frightening as the movie it's analyzing. You get lost in Room 237, and although it can be really funny–some of the theories are just plain nuts–you start to get disoriented, with only these disembodied voices leading you through the Overlook. There will never be another Stanley Kubrick film, but Room 237 so expertly rewires your feelings about The Shining that a 33-year-old movie suddenly feels brand new.
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Re: Room 237

Postby FourthBase » Wed Mar 27, 2013 9:57 pm

For a couple seconds, I thought this thread was about:
http://lost.wikia.com/wiki/Room_23
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Unwinding the Hours in the Gold Room

Postby IanEye » Thu Mar 28, 2013 7:37 am

*

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if eye didn't care
more than words can say

*
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Re: Room 237

Postby norton ash » Thu Mar 28, 2013 9:10 am

Seeing the film as a teenager (upon its release) I was talking with an older friend about why the Wendy character seemed so weak and semi-retarded, why her radio communications-conversations-tone of voice came across so cheerfully flat and dim. Friend said it was because Kubrick didn't like Americans, and he was depicting their enforced ignorance/innocence about the evil swirling around them. I said that I liked the book better... friend said that there was much more going on in the film than the novel and that I should watch it again.

2nd reading: we are hostages to something very big and very old and very bad. 33rd reading: I really need to study the esoteric meaning of colours some more.

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Re: Room 237

Postby hanshan » Thu Mar 28, 2013 1:55 pm

...


hmmm...

norton ash:

2nd reading: we are hostages to something very big and very old and very bad. 33rd reading: I really need to study the esoteric meaning of colours some more.


Image

...
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Re: Room 237

Postby Col. Quisp » Thu Mar 28, 2013 2:38 pm

Thanks for posting about this movie - I had forgotten about it and would like to see it, since I am an avid Kubrick fan, esp. of this film and EWS.
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Re: Room 237

Postby conniption » Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:29 pm

"MAZES, MIRRORS, DECEPTION AND DENIAL"
an in-depth analysis of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING
Text © by Rob Ager 2008


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THE SHINING in-depth analysis by Rob Ager pt 1 of 3
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Re: Room 237

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Mar 28, 2013 7:48 pm

I was recently told by someone I really respect that although every theory in Room 237 was wrong, it was the most Discordian movie he had ever seen.

I am intrigued.
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Re: Room 237

Postby FourthBase » Thu Mar 28, 2013 10:34 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(film)

In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick overtly declared that Jack was a reincarnation of an earlier official at the hotel.[71] Still, this has not stopped interpreters from developing alternative readings, such as that Jack has been "absorbed" into the Overlook Hotel.


:wallhead:

Is it any wonder, then, why geniuses often wind up despising interpreters?
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that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
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Re: Room 237

Postby MinM » Fri Mar 29, 2013 4:19 pm

The critique of the characters in this documentary seem to ring a bell...
Hunting For Secrets In 'The Shining's' Room 237

by John Powers
March 29, 201312:57 PM

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Rodney Ascher, director of the experimental documentary Room 237, leads an exploration of differing interpretations of Stanley Kubrick's classic horror film The Shining.

Awhile back, I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see its show on filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. It was jammed with visitors poring over his letters, eyeing the dresses worn by the spooky twins in The Shining, and posing for photos in front of the sexy-futuristic decor of the Korova Milk Bar from A Clockwork Orange.

Although I was surprised at the crowd, I shouldn't have been. Kubrick is one of the rare dead directors — Hitchcock is another — whose work is still watched by those younger than 40. And he maintains a lofty reputation as a reclusive genius.

When fans talk about his work, you always hear one word: "perfectionism." Here was a director, the story goes, who thought about every single detail in every single frame. Legend had it that Kubrick examined every single print of his movies before he let it be released.

In fact, it's not true that Kubrick always insisted on perfection. He shot his Vietnam movie, Full Metal Jacket, in England, which didn't look remotely like Southeast Asia. Still, his obsessive attention to detail has long made him an idol of cultists who scrutinize his movies for secret messages hidden in the wallpaper.

Such fanatics are the subject of Rodney Ascher's Room 237, a very enjoyable documentary about five Kubrickians obsessed with wildly different hidden meanings in his 1980 film The Shining. Where you may think it's merely a horror story — remember that blood flooding out of the elevator? — these devotees argue that Kubrick's movie is really about more than a writer going homicidally bonkers.

For one, it's about the genocide against Native Americans; for another, it's about the Holocaust; yet another says the film is Kubrick's admission that he helped fake footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

By way of evidence, these folks point to all sorts of "clues," from the presence in several shots of the Calumet Baking Powder logo — with its distinctive tribal chief in a feathered headdress — to apparent continuity errors involving misplaced chairs that, this being Kubrick, can't possibly be mere errors. They're deliberate.

In one clip, the fake-moon-landing guy discusses an "aha" Moment. Listening to this man talk, it's hard not to think that here are obviously intelligent people with too much time on their hands. The obsessions with sweaters and moving chairs bespeak some sort of interpretive disease in which one ignores most of a movie — the plot, the characters, the setting, etc. — in order to claim that what matters is actually found in a poster hanging in the background. If Stanley Kubrick — a hugely powerful director — wanted to make a movie about the slaughter of Native Americans, why didn't he just make it rather than hide his secret meaning in baking-powder labels that almost nobody would notice?

Still, it's too simple to call such thinking deranged. Kubrick really was the kind of artist who planted echoes and allusions in his films — he wanted us to pay devout attention. Besides, a fixation on small things isn't aberrant. Since Freud and Marx, it's become habitual to look for the symptoms of the true meaning hiding beneath the obvious surface — you know, how a slip of the tongue can reveal far more than what the speaker thinks he's saying.

Of course, this brand of interpretation is an invitation to go off the deep end. In many ways, these Kubrick obsessives share a mindset with paranoiacs and conspiracy theorists, who also find patterns in details that most of us find minor if not irrelevant. Such thinking isn't wholly imaginary. It usually starts with real, teasing facts — the image on Danny's sweater, say, or the conflicting forensic evidence from the Sept. 11 attacks — then weaves them into a grand theory, usually ignoring or bending other facts so that everything clicks together in a satisfying way. A clear meaning is found in what would otherwise be the disturbing disorder of life.

Now, there's obviously far less at stake in Kubrick's film than in the Kennedy assassination. Which is one reason why Room 237 is so much fun to watch. It gives us a safe version of the paranoid search for meaning to which we're all susceptible.

And even as we laugh, some of the commentators notice details that really are quite striking, like the odd make of Nicholson's typewriter — a German model, which serves the Holocaust theory — or the skiing poster in the background that looks like a minotaur — this, in a movie that ends within a maze.

While some of their interpretations strike me as nutty, others are quite plausible. Room 237 shows us that Kubrick really does load up the The Shining with Native American imagery. And surely this has to mean something. Or does it?

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/29/175368561 ... s-room-237
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Re: Room 237

Postby 8bitagent » Sat Mar 30, 2013 12:00 am

This "documentary" has gotten baddd reviews. Which is a shame as this could have been mindblowing. I mean, no wrong way wizard or others of his ilk? Those guys are the kinds of esoteric synchro interpretations of Kubricks work.

I thought the point of The Shining was the idea of a metaphysical loop? I like interpretations of Kubrick and Lynch films, but sometimes the thrust of a film is where the film's clues lie.

Also cardinal sin: It's reported this documentary doesnt even discuss the final shot(the photograph) I mean, c'mon! Anyways, creepiest part of the movie is where the innkeeper sits the boy down and talks about how people "shine", then they both have this abrupt telepathic moment in bed later on in the film. Coolest scene and greatest cinematic scene EVER...the elevator blood scene. Holy fuck that is just the most insane shot ever in a movie.
Even more than The Cell's Damien Hirst-esque horse scene.

Speaking of Wrong Way Wizard(and Goro Adachi), I can see the 9/11-occult view of films like 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut. Wrong Way Wizard half jokingly writes how Eyes Wide Shut is a "post 9/11 Manhattan", a sort of twilight.
2001(the year), the black monolith(millennium hilton next to the towers), the mars dugout(ground zero with floodlights), the idea of rebirth and stargates...such a trip
(occult - 9/11 - 2001 A Space Oddyssey short film)
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Re: Room 237

Postby elfismiles » Mon Oct 07, 2013 1:50 pm

Coulda sworn I'd mentioned somewhere round here that I saw this doc not too long ago ... oh well.

Meanwhile:

Rodney Ascher & Andras Jones - Room 237: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (Video)
October 2, 2013
http://www.redicecreations.com/radio3fo ... 131002.php
http://rediceradio.net/radio3fourteen/2 ... sjones.mp3 (Audio)
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Re: Room 237

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Oct 07, 2013 1:55 pm

8bitagent » Fri Mar 29, 2013 11:00 pm wrote:Also cardinal sin: It's reported this documentary doesnt even discuss the final shot(the photograph) I mean, c'mon!


:thumbsup

Thank you for this vivid illustration of the importance of primary sources, especially when it comes to informed commentary on those same primary sources.

Edit: Which is to say, the documentary does discuss the final shot at several points. It's an hour and 40 minutes long, daug.
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Re: Room 237

Postby Joao » Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:02 pm

I want to find the alleged moon hoax connection dubious, but it's tough to totally discount the scene where Danny rises from the "launch pad" motif carpet in the Apollo 11 sweater and walks to room 237.

Image

That the Overlook's general manager is supposed to evoke JFK in the Oval Office also seems quite plausible, although that's not necessarily evidence of moon fakery of course.

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Re: Room 237

Postby Carol Newquist » Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:23 pm

It appears Kubrick used King's book and mutilated it to play mind-fuckery. For Kubrick, King's book was just a platform to screw with the cult following he'd created. His fans love his unsolvable riddles digging holes so deep for themselves, there's no way out. King didn't like what Kubrick did with his story and his characters....but them's the breaks. I'm sure Stephen didn't turn the money away.

http://geektyrant.com/news/2013/9/20/stephen-king-explains-why-he-still-hates-stanley-kubricks-the-shining

Stephen King explains why he still hates Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING

It's no secret that Stephen King doesn't like Stanley Kubrick's big screen adaptation of The Shining. Even 33 years after the film's release nothing has changed. King still hates the film, and in a recent interview with the BBC, the master of horror explains why.

"[It's] cold, I’m not a cold guy. I think one of the things people relate to in my books is this warmth, there’s a reaching out and saying to the reader, ‘I want you to be a part of this.’ With Kubrick’s The Shining I felt that it was very cold, very ‘We’re looking at these people, but they’re like ants in an anthill, aren’t they doing interesting things, these little insects."

He didn't really seem to care for Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Jack either:

"Jack Torrance in the movie, seems crazy from the jump. Jack Nicholson, I’d seen all his biker pictures in the ’50s and ’60s and I thought, he’s just channeling The Wild Angels here."

King got The Wild Angels movie mixed up with Hells Angels on Wheels. It's not big deal, I just wanted to point that out in case there was any confusion because Nicholson wasn't in Wild Angels. King then went on to talk about how much he disliked Kubrick’s depiction of Wendy.

"Shelley Duvall as Wendy is really one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film, she’s basically just there to scream and be stupid and that’s not the woman that I wrote about."

I personally think Kubrick's Shining is a freakin' great horror film, and even though it was different from the book, I still thought it was amazing. I liked it just as much as the book, but in different ways. I can understand why King wouldn't like it though, it was his baby, and Kubrick just did his own thing.


This is in stark contrast to what Francis Ford Coppola did with the Godfather. He treated Mario Puzo with utmost respect and had him on-set the entire time. He wanted to make it true to Mario's mind.....and he did. Not so with Kubrick's The Shining. It was distinct from the book and for the reasons I stated above. Kind of a "Fuck Off" to King, really. It shows you the difference in character between these two legendary directors.
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