Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Film Room 237 Cracks the Kubrick Code
Posted by Jim Ridley on Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 7:06 AM
I've been envious of Belcourt program director Toby Leonard ever since he got back from Sundance last week and told me he got to see the documentary I want to see most in 2012, Room 237. Turns out there are cults of people who see hidden messages threaded throughout Stanley Kubrick's movie version of The Shining, and director Rodney Ascher's film consists of various interview subjects laying out their theories over clips from the movie. (Check out Robert Ito's article from last Sunday's Times.)
One subject sees an allegory of genocide against American Indians (keep your eye out for those Calumet baking-powder cans). Another sees a coded statement about the Holocaust. Still another — Leonard's favorite — makes an elaborate case for the movie as Kubrick's mea culpa to his wife for having helped to stage ... the faked NASA moon landing! (Which makes some sense — you wouldn't entrust a cover-up on that scale to the dude who made Moon Zero Two.)
The clipreel-as-essay-film is one of my favorite movie subgenres, exemplified by Thom Andersen's revelatory Los Angeles Plays Itself. (The long-awaited DVD of Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema looms on payday.)
Alas, the very thing that makes these films so appealing — their use of recontextualized film clips — makes them all but unreleasable, as their rights clearances are a logistical nightmare. (Bye-bye, Joe Dante's legendary four-and-a-half-hour The Movie Orgy.) But hope springs that we'll get to see Room 237 in Nashville, preferably in combination with The Shining. Oh, and while we're wishing — we love the idea (not ours) of a film series built around this monster.
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The errata on the Times piece is pretty great: "An earlier version of this article incorrectly described imagery from 'The Shining.' The gentleman seen with the weird guy in the bear suit is wearing a tuxedo, but not a top hat."
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Thanks, Jim — This is the first I've heard of Room 237, and I cannot wait. It's a much better way to satisfy my Shining jones than reading Wikipedia articles. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_%… is seriously enthralling.)
The Shining Code is a one-hour documentary which deciphers and explains the meaning behind Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Due to its mysterious nature, the movie left most viewers confused and unable to understand what the events that took place were all about. The Shining Code documentary unlocks more than 50 codes within the film, codes that finally shed some light on the mysteries that left so many scratching their head and wondering what possessed Kubrick to release such a film. http://theshiningcode.com/
