Thursday, April 4, 2013

Room 237


Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining is exhaustively examined in this eccentric documentary. Using unrelated, plot-forwarding clips from other films such as Hitchcock's Spellbound, An American Werewolf In London, The Brain From Planet Arous, and All The President's Men; various obsessive theories are tossed about. Apparently, Kubrick's atmospheric, creepy horror film is crammed full of subtexts as varied as the Native American Genocide, the Holocaust, the Apollo Moon Landing, and minotaurs. Sorry, but none of these theories are especially believable. Ok, there is a labyrinth, but I didn't see a minotaur in the poster of a skier, I just saw a skier. Maybe I should have squinted.


Sure, there are lots of head-scratching enigmas in The Shining, and I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but sometimes a continuity error is just that. Room 237 is dry and analytical, but I couldn't avoid looking down to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.


No comments:

Post a Comment