Room 237 (2012) Primer

I was waiting for a trailer before potentially bringing this to your attention, as one doesn’t seem to be forthcoming let’s go with a clip from the movie;

As you can imagine, the prospect of a documentary on The Shining  was warmly welcomed around these parts, I was however a little disappointed to see it would focus on some of the wilder translations and readings that have coalesced around the masterpiece over the past thirty-two years. The Native Americans metaphor is perfectly valid and correct, and has been mused upon and considered in light of the original references in the source novel and the fairly obvious littering of indigenous American symbols, icons and portraits throughout the films mise-en-scene, heck the fact that the Overlook repelled a few attacks during its construction is mentioned by Ullman in an early scene. It’s most of the other psuedo-conspiracy theories which  are clearly absurdly mentalist, such as the numerology stuff (e.g. today is the 30th January 2012 , 30+1+2012 = 2043, 2 times 3 times 7=42 and OMG 42 minus 2043 is 2001, we’ve matched A Space Odyssey!! Get with the programme sheeple!!) and the truly insane Moon landing hoax stuff which really doesn’t warrant a single second of serious speculation. Then again, maybe that’s the documentaries main point, to look at the crazies and loonies that gravitate to the deeply embedded symbols and designs in Stan’s work, all of which were intended but seem to be translated or absorbed in quite different ways – the eye of the beholder and all that eh? As mentioned before Stan loathed ever explaining ‘what he meant’ in a film and that’s because he never meant his work to be that obvious, he just used every conceivable aspect of a film’s production and technique to craft a piece of art, then the onus was on the viewer to make of it what they would, or indeed could – send in the clowns;

It’s always the same with these theories, they take fragments of the truth – in this case a NASA sourced lens which he did utilise for Barry Lyndon and some pioneering special effects, and then leap into the abyss of total paranoid insanity. Here’s some more meanderings, here’s one of the more amusing deconstructions which I imagine emerged from a lonely apartment which is choked with notebooks akin to John Doe’s charming domicile in Se7en, and I thought I was obsessed with the great mans work – I was particularly amused at the counting of 21 pieces of mail in the hotel lobby and this being numerically significant, ‘all work and no play’ indeed….obligitory meme here;

My original 2009 review here, slightly amended but some of the links will probably be borked. So that’s another Kubrick fix out of the way, I’ll move on to some slightly more heartwarming fare tomorrow – Eraserhead.