By Todd Garbarini
Room 237 is the title
of the excellent new documentary by director Rodney Ascher that takes the
points of view of five off-screen individuals who do their best to unmask the
purported hidden meanings in Stanley Kubrick’s initially disappointing yet
subsequently revered 1980 film version of Stephen King’s The Shining. In doing so,
they are keeping in line with a motif derived straight from the novel in a
sequence wherein Horace Derwent, a former owner of the Overlook Hotel, urges
his costumed party-goers to unmask at a lavish celebration, thereby revealing
their identities. The human face as a
mask is also a common theme throughout all of Mr. Kubrick’s filmography, so it
is only fitting that Room 237 takes the approach of removing layers to reveal
what might be hidden beneath the surface in order to get at The Shining’s essence.
As a fan of
Mr. Kubrick’s film for the past thirty years, I can honestly say that even
though I have seen it easily more than fifty times I never noticed the props,
visual references or subtexts that these five narrators diligently point out
(granted this was difficult to do on archaic home video systems such as CED or VHS due to their significantly reduced image quality,
to say nothing of the substandard televisions they were played back on,
although the technically superior Blu-ray is a much better medium due to its high definition
quality and lends itself ideal for this examination). Nor did I see the various continuity errors,
judged as deliberate by Mr. Kubrick from the narrators’ perspectives, such as
the carpet that changes direction in the hallway or the chair against the wall
disappearing during Jack Torrance’s (Jack Nicholson) emotional outburst after
his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) interrupts his writing. An argument can be made that Room 237 is less about the hidden
meanings in The Shining than it is an
explanation of five different people’s interpretations and experiences of
seeing The Shining. There were times wherein the person speaking
discussed in great length the strange layout of the Overlook Hotel and I must
admit I could not see what they were getting at, however this is just one point
that is made and there are numerous theories to go around on other subtexts of
the film: the purported significance of the number 42; the architectural
impossibility of the window in Mr. Ullman’s office; the ludicrous sexual
reference in Mr. Ullman’s first handshake with Jack (this is a bit of a stretch
– no pun intended, of course!); the Minotaur motif; the strange layout itself
of the Overlook Hotel; the references to the genocide of Native Americans and
even the Holocaust, the subject of which Mr. Kubrick later attempted to make a
film about but eventually abandoned as he felt he could not do justice to the
horror of this bleak period in history.
Director
Ascher makes the interesting choice of not showing the faces of the narrators,
and this maneuver works to the film’s advantage since so much of it is about
pointing out what the narrators see. Cross-cutting between the narrators and the points they want to make
would have either reduced the film’s running time (102 minutes, roughly the
same as The French Connection (1970),
my favorite film) or would have left most of the cogent points on the cutting
room floor. I can only hope that the
forthcoming DVD will offer up some nice extras in the way of deleted scenes. I am certain that there must have been some
discussion about the significance of Jack telling Mr. Ullman that Wendy is a
“confirmed ghost story and horror film addict,†yet her artistic escapes
consist of reading The Catcher in the Rye
and watching Summer of ’42 (there’s
that number again!), two classics about the coming-of-age of a young male.
I especially
liked Room 237’s framing device of
using Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985)
and Demons 2: The Nightmare Continues
(1986) as footage of an audience viewing The
Shining in a theater and on television, respectively, to make certain
points. Ideally, The Shining should be viewed in a movie theater, although
realistically that is unfortunately not an option for most of us. The home video revolution saved many a film
from inevitable obscurity and this is where the majority of Shining enthusiasts (myself included)
had the opportunity to see it and thrill to it to our heart’s content.
The
prerequisites for enjoying Room 237
include more than a passing interest in The
Shining (it certainly helps to be a rabid fan of the film, thus having
tremendous familiarity of it), patience, and certainly a sense of humor. Room
237 succeeds in imparting to the audience just how compelling and
frightening The Shining can be to a
first-time viewer. It is also a
testament to the notion that film viewing is a solitary experience as no two
people will see any one film with the same set of eyes. Perhaps, as is the case with The Shining, and many other Kubrick
films, multiple viewings of Room 237
will clear up and even reveal more of what the narrators say they see. Whether you consider the film to be
completely true or complete bollocks, one thing that can be said is that Room 237 is entertaining,
thought-provoking, fascinating and enlightening. It’s my choice for Best Documentary at the
2014 Oscars.
Click here for the film’s official site.