Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining is often cited as one the following: The scariest movie ever made, one of the best horror movies of the 1980s, a masterpiece of fear and subtlety, a dark and twisted and convoluted maze of a film, a movie that scared the heck out of me when I was 9 or 11 or 12.
Never has The Shining‘s hypnotic power been so wholly explored than in Rodney Ascher’s documentary film Room 237, which combines footage of the film with audio interviews of six Shining devotees (Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, Jay Weidner) to reveal not only the subtle critical subtexts of the movie (as in a film school lecture) – some of which are fascinating and perhaps intellectually adroit – but also many of the admittedly out-there conspiracy theories about the film. For instance: Did you know that Kubrick was using The Shining as a means to reveal his secret involvement in faking the Apollo moon landing?
As a critic, it’s hard not to enjoy the cognitive calisthenics on display. I love to look at movies and analyze them – sometimes to within an inch of their lives – to unlock what the filmmakers were really getting at. I have written extended film essays just for fun. Peeling back layer after layer of subtext can provide a minor cathartic thrill, even if one is just contemplating their own navel. Hearing the filmmaking theories that Kubrick was actually subtly making fun of horror movies is fascinating (is the vanishing chair a continuity error, a legitimately scary moment, or a farce of haunted house pictures?). The claim that Jack Torrance may be a minotaur stalking his victims in a spiritual and historical labyrinth may actually hold water. One online critic named “mstrmnd” (who declined to be interviewed for the film, but agreed to record an insightful commentary for the Blu-ray) posited that the film is so stringently symmetrical in its visuals and scenes, that it led another Shining fan to run the film twice simultaneously using two projectors, one running forward and one running backward. Some of the superimposed images of the duel projection are more uncanny than playing “Dark Side of the Moon” alongside The Wizard of Oz.
But then there are some of the more bonkers conspiracy theories. Yes, one of the critics declares openly that the film of the Apollo 11 moon landing was a fake made by Kubrick, and that he was using symbols and numerology in The Shining to reveal that to people on the right wavelength. I have heard before the theories that The Shining is actually an exposé of the genocide of the American Indians, seeing as the film’s central hotel was built on an Indian burial ground. But new to me was that it was also a symbol for the Holocaust of WWII. The number “42” appears several times throughout, for instance. 237. 2 x 3 x 7 = 42. As in 1942.
While Room 237 may offer up some grand and fun critical theories, its real agenda has less to do with the veracity of the conspiracy theories, and more the way audiences tend to lose themselves in their favorite movies. You can see this not only with The Shining, but with other famous pop movies like The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, or even more recent objects of worship like Lord of the Rings. Audiences review, dissect, analyze, and, as a result, begin to see their object of analysis as the tentpole of all politics, all religion, all sociology, all history. The ultimate truth of Room 237 is that, very profoundly, everyone’s a critic.
The thesis of this film, then, may be obsession as criticism. I may not agree with too many of the bonkers analyses on display in Room 237, but I recognize the mad passion to delve. And, at the end of the day, The Shining is a pretty rewarding and excellent film to delve into. Come play with it. Forever. And ever. And ever.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
