OK, I have to put this out here. There seems to be a shockingly large amount of viewers commenting on this board as if they were watching a documentary which was supposed to sway you one way or the other, or answer your lingering questions regarding loose-ends, continuity, plot, and etc. I see why you would have approached the film that way, given the press/trailer/your past experiences with documentaries, but let me be clear:
NO. If thats the case then you are looking for something only you can answer for yourself.
This is a documentary that explores the practice of Critical Theory applied to one of the most mysterious, most perfect films in American cinema history and arguably ever made. If you were to enroll in an English Literature Critical Theory seminar at your local University you would learn the theory
Apologies - I am on mobile and submitted my post prematurely.
Critical Theory / Theorists take a piece of artwork and extract overarching meaning based on the content and structure of the work in question. These aren't facts; there's no one meaning to be taken from the film; and the documentary is certainly NOT a feature on how the film was made. Instead it explores human beings analyzing the film through a lense of Critical Theory in order to extract meaning. You don't have to sit there and be convinced - you can apply your own filters to the fim and come up with something completely original yourself.
Having said this, I do understand that the film is being promoted as if you will walk away with some new meaning, maybe that's true, but its really not up the director to decide how it is marketed - this would certainly make sense given how long it took from its premiere to reach us.
If you hate critical theory in general and think no meaning not explicitly present in the original work should be extracted, then you'll hate this movie and that's totally fine. If you hate it because you didn't like what you heard, then IMO, you were watching it wrong.
Hahaha nice one!! I too think that the best way to make a counter-argument is by broadly mocking education, making personal [read: childish] generalizations, and by behaving defensively. You must be a hit at parties, lol.
Please note I never said I agreed with any theorist/theory presented in the film. I merely hoped to change viewer expectations as there is a VAST discrepancy between the films intent and the critcism hurled at it. ::goes back to flipping burgers for a community college:: lolol.
I agree. It is silly to say anybody who didn't like this film therefor must not have understood it. This is something Inception fanboys do all the time, and it makes me chuckle.
I liked this movie btw, and I liked it specifically because it was so ridiculous. Me and my friends actually burst out laughing when they started the whole moon landing conspiracy thing, pure comedy.
Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right.
You know I'm wondering I don't see this 'theory' applied to Dr Strangelove, Spartacus, Barry Lyndon, Paths of Glory, 2001, Full Metal Jacket etc etc etc. Looks like the 'theorists' aren't working hard...;-)...
Just because something isn't covered by a documentary, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Do a little research and you'll find Room 237 is just the tip of the iceberg...
Well, since Critical Theorists tend to think and write as one, great, unified mass, finding their collective viewpoint is fairly easy ... I recommend hanging around outside the coffeshops and bars near your local higher educational facility. If you turn your ears just right, you can hear them inside whispering low to each other, "I am Spartacus. "No, I AM Spartacus." "Sorry, dear fellow, but I think you will realize that it is I who am really Spartacus" And so and so forth, mote it be.
aha! "LHEF's"...I always suspected that lately they have been simply places to go to for lunch. Now I can see that they truly are idea houses that seek to decipher important truths of ancient history!
There's plenty of critical theory being applied to Kubrick's other films. In fact, scholars have been chipping away at his work for decades. The thing about The Shining is that it's so popular and it can be attributed to a genre (however hard one might have to work to shoehorn it in there). Barry Lyndon, Dr. Strangelove, Lolita, etc etc are typically NOT viewed by casual filmgoers (unless they happen to accidentally stumble upon them), so there's little talk of them amongst non film-buffs. The Shining is ubiquitous on most viewers' (both casual and film geek) lists of "best horror films." It's not necessarily more layered or meaningful than anything else Kubrick ever did. It's just so damn popular and, consequently, misunderstood.
While I haven't yet seen this film, I've read much of Cocks's book "The Wolf at the Door: Kubrick, History, and the Holocaust." Some of his ideas seem like pretty huge reaches to me, but I think, generally, he's onto something. The Shining, as Pauline Kael said, seems to be a film about time itself (although I take issue with many of her contentions about the film). I would add to this that it appears to be a film dealing with the history of the western world. Some might find that pretentious, but those accusations are pretty lazy. There are plenty of references in this film to the subjugation of women, Native Americans, and African Americans. Moreover, the whole notion of somebody repeating the errors of the past despite having full knowledge of those past mistakes could be argued to neatly sum up human history-at the very least, the history of Anglo Americans.
To me Room 237 works the same way that Grizzly Man worked. In Herzog's Grizzly Man, Tim Treadwell spends the whole movie living with the bears, identifying with the bears... using the bears to bare his own soul.
In the end, we see how naive Treadwell was when he gets eaten by the bears he loved. He didn't have the slightest clue about the bears.
Room 237 is the same thing. All these folks have their own naive, self-obsessed vision of the film. In the end, The Shining eats them all.
cbartal said: "To me Room 237 works the same way that Grizzly Man worked. In Herzog's Grizzly Man, Tim Treadwell spends the whole movie living with the bears, identifying with the bears... using the bears to bare his own soul.
In the end, we see how naive Treadwell was when he gets eaten by the bears he loved. He didn't have the slightest clue about the bears.
Room 237 is the same thing. All these folks have their own naive, self-obsessed vision of the film. In the end, The Shining eats them all."
I have just sat through Room 237, and I would like to award you one internet for this summarizing comment.
In the end, we see how naive Treadwell was when he gets eaten by the bears he loved. He didn't have the slightest clue about the bears.
Sorry, but this last bit is not true. People with experience of bears and their habits have pieced together why the bear attacked at all, why it appeared to back off only to return and how the actions of Treadwell's girlfriend, who was not a bear expert, led to both their deaths. Herzog's film does not present these thoughts so one might leave the film with a judgement like yours but in fact the film is a departure point for looking further, as is any good film.
In the midst of winter I found there was, within me, an invincible summer
And now I've starting to get scared that so many people seem upset that 70% of the "expert" testimony in this film is nonsense -- as if they are unaware that that was intentional on the part of the filmmakers, or unaware that this is often the case, or haven't learned anything by being shown that this is sometimes the case, or feel threatened by learning that this is sometimes the case.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.
To me Room 237 works the same way that Grizzly Man worked. In Herzog's Grizzly Man, Tim Treadwell spends the whole movie living with the bears, identifying with the bears... using the bears to bare his own soul.
In the end, we see how naive Treadwell was when he gets eaten by the bears he loved. He didn't have the slightest clue about the bears.
Room 237 is the same thing. All these folks have their own naive, self-obsessed vision of the film. In the end, The Shining eats them all.
How can you compare Grizzly Man to this schlock? Sacrilege!
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This is a brilliant observation, and the definitive word on this movie IMO. I watched this movie last night, and I am not sure it was me being overly critical, or the film makers reaching for things to match their "theories". But it certainly is subjective. Not a waste of time necessarily, but I did not find that the movie shed any additional light on what Mr. Kubrick was thinking. Seems very similar to conspiracy theories where you have your conclusion and work backward to match it to what you see.
I am watching this film right now, and it does mention that Kubrick started getting into subliminal messaging after he read books on the subject after having made Barry Lyndon. So, this would explain why The Shining is specifically receiving all the attentions. It was the first film he made after Lyndon.
Not saying I agree with any of the theories, per se, but I did want to at least address that criticism. :)
"I wanna mean it from the back of my broken hand..." -The Killers
"I liked this movie btw, and I liked it specifically because it was so ridiculous. Me and my friends actually burst out laughing when they started the whole moon landing conspiracy thing, pure comedy."
Absolutely. And I think it's pretty clear that the Room 237 filmmakers intended for you to laugh out loud at that. The manner of the intercuts between reaction shots and the voiceover of some of the more far-fetched theories makes this pretty clear.
There are a lot of people who took something like, say, The DaVinci Code, deathly seriously. Dan Brown is kind of a blockhead so maybe that was his intention but, in the case of Room 237, Ascher clearly intends for the overreach in many of these theories to be a source of humor.
Amazing. The dude explains something... and you think he said completely the opposite!
The point the original poster was making was NOT that there was value in the theories the people put out, but that the movie's not really about theories about The Shining -- it's about the way people interpret things. This documentary could just as easily have been about a bunch of whackjobs finding all sorts of ridiculous b.s. in Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" or whatever. There's no merit in their theories and the documentary isn't saying there is -- it's just showing that, the human mind being the crazy thing that it is, people can take anything, impose all sorts of "meanings" upon it, and convince themselves that their lunatic theories are supported.
It's like Charles Manson claiming the Book of Revelations was about the Beatles, and the White Album was full of songs about him. It's all ridiculous, but he backed up his crazy ideas with things that almost seem plausible, just because he's imposed plausibility on them.
Hilarious... the guy says people here aren't understanding the movie, and then you pop up and prove him right! :D
I didn't realize there is a 'thing' called Critical Theory, but i understand your definition, and i understand that this film isn't (necessarily) taking the position of anyone in this film...
But, if this documentary IS indeed not about the interviewees's theories themselves, but instead about the fact that the interviewees are coming up with theories, then i don't think the film-maker did a good job...
A documentary should have a 'voice'. If the story of this film is that The Shining lends itself to be interpreted in many hair-brained ways, then this film did NOT present that voice very well.... All it did, was give the microphone to the interviewees, and they told their crazy stories. If the film was to point out how crazy it all was, then it should have mentioned that somehow, along the way...
It could have had a narrator, or it could have also interviewed a doctor who talks about conspiracy theorists.... The documentary gave NO voice to any opposing viewpoint....
In fact, the film would play ominous music while someone was saying one of their important theories, or it would rewind and play the scene they were talking about in slow motion.... The film, in other words, appeared to give credence to the crazyness, because the editorial tried to match what they people were saying.
So, no... nice try... but i don't buy what you're saying, original poster.... The film works BETTER as NOT a critical documentary (and thats not saying much).
Believe it or not, I almost completely agree with your post tyrexden. I think the films true failure is that it doesn't specifically hammer home any one idea and its kind of a conglomeration of disjointed theories presented as facts. I also totally agree that a documentary (in general) should have a voice and a direction, lol.
But I do strongly believe that this documentaries "voice" (loosley put) is that you can use a work of art and extract personal meaning from it; it's a shame that it wasn't more clear. I honestly can't think of an alternative as to what the point would be if not for this, as there was no one theory presented as the ultimate truth.
In sum, I thought it was a fun watch. But for the subject matter, I thought it was extremely poorly executed and definitely seemed crazy, as you say, especially during those unrelentingly ominous scenes. At first I thought the foreboding choice of music was to mirror the tone of the Shining, but since there was no break in this tone whatsoever, I (as a viewer) was left mostly confused and put off. I want to stress that my first post was directed at people complaining about the theories themselves and trying to illustrate that those people were complaining about the wrong aspects of the film, IMO.
There still seems to be general confusion as to what people expected. Again, this is a directorial flaw or a flaw of the marketing or both.
At this point, I'm thinking its both. Thank you btw to all for actually responding thoughtfully.
You know I don't mind "critical theory" as such....if it 's a way to find out something about the world and creations within it. Now if it's any good I want to see this extended then to other work. But I don't see it. Am I missing something? As I noted, I thought the analysis on the Shining was 'easy'. I'm always suspicious of stuff that's 'easy'..Where is Monolith 2001 or whatever???? .;-)...
i agree with you too, apaskevi, that critical theory is likely what the director intended. Surely, he can logically conclude that not ALL of those crazy theories can be concurrently accurate. He was just presenting them all, in one big conglomeration.
In a way, i find the film unfinished.... The director did a good job in assembling diverse interview subjects, and did a good job in editing in appropriate footage of various Kubrick movies to play underneath corresponding sound bytes from the interviewees.
What he is lacking here is placing everything presented into one all-encompassing framework. Its was probably easier to just present the interviewees and their respective topics as the primary subject matter, rather than take it a step further, and lend a voice, or counterpoint, or reflection upon these various theories.
I do commend the film-maker... Its more detailed than anything i've ever put out, and he clearly worked hard on it. My constructive criticism would be that for his next project, to continue to include similarly interesting subject matter, but also to inflect a part of his own perspective somehow within the final work.
Good points Apaskevi-1. It's is astonishing how anyone who posts intelligent or thoughtful commentary is immediately labeled "arrogant" by the infantile, sub-mental, Fox-News fueled fools that infest IMDB. The Anti-Intellectualism currently running rampant in the US is both frightening and sad. The irony is that Kubrick was arguably the MOST intellectually oriented Filmmaker to ever release a film through a major studio.
I also totally agree that a documentary (in general) should have a voice and a direction
The whole point of documentary as a genre is that it isn't supposed to have a voice or a direction. You've been taken in by the whole Michael Moore / Errol Morris type films which have become synonymous with "documentary" and have popularized documentaries in the mainstream. They're actually not true documentaries precisely because they have a voice, an overarching point or theme. Anyone familiar with cinema verite would understand where I'm coming from.
Some of the best documentaries are the ones just like Room 237, which asks nothing of the viewer but to consider its content from its many given perspectives. Someone said that because the imagery corresponds to the narration it's the director giving credence to what's being said. I have to disagree, I think it's simply a matter of trying to make sense of what these people have to say to take the burden of the viewer from having to simply imagine it.
Basically, in my view, the OP is right to criticize the naysayers who can't appreciate this film for what it is. But he or she is also incorrect in suggesting that this film suffers certain directorial flaws just because the content is so "hair-brained" as one commenter put it.
Please name a good documentary that doesn't have a viewpoint.
Even a doc that interviews lots of people with different viewpoints, can indicate that doc's viewpoint is pointing out how different people in the same situation will come to their own conclusions about what happened... That, in and of itself, is a viewpoint.
It's just not a viewpoint that is expressed through a narrator. It's conveyed by using the people's own voices, by editing, and by the clips from other Kubrick films and other films in general it chooses.
And the point that nobody seems to want to discuss, which is weird because I think it's a major point of the movie, is the incredibly forceful way it expresses its view point. The fact that there are five different people who see intended hidden subtext in the same movie, but each of them sees a DIFFERENT and mutually exclusive hidden subtext, tells you everything you need to know about room 237 director's viewpoint.
I guess I'm not sure what anyone would need a narrator to say. A lady is talking about a picture of a skier, that everyone can see is a skier, and starts explaining how it has a tail and actually is a Minotaur. Another guy is explaining how, after he had already come to the conclusion that the moon landings were faked, he saw evidence in a horror movie. One guy is theorizing about how obvious it is that the movie is about the holocaust because the number 42 appears on a sweater and in a Kubrick movie 15 years earlier there was a room 242. What exactly do you need a narrator for? To tell come onto screen with a booming voice to say, "umm, obviously it's not a freaking Minotaur?"
I think the problem people have with the movie is that some of the obsessives support their theories with interesting observations about the movie that very likely were intentional by the director. For example, I could be convinced the Kubrick was deliberate about wanting to change the geometry of the hotel, and to make it like an Escher puzzle, in order to add a sense of disorientation. And I could also be convinced that some of the things that appear to be continuity errors were deliberate, perhaps to add a sense of unease or for other symbolic reasons. One that jumps out at me is how the hexagonal carpet changes from being open to closing in Danny after the ball rolls to him. That seems perhaps deliberate. These are not dramatically different from techniques other directors use. I guess if you're watching the movie passively, you could be confused by this and conclude the movie is trying to put this on equal footing with the crackpot theories. Of course, the funny part is that one person jumps from a chair disappearing to a Minotaur theory and another jumps to the notion that is all a subliminal Freudian sex fantasy. That's the point.
One guy plays the movie backwards and forwards and picks out various places where heads overlap. (Not exactly surprising since the framing in the movie is extremely consistent throughout.) What do you want a narrator to tell you? "This guy is clearly whacked?" The technique of using people's own words to make the point is what makes this movie, to me, one of the best docs of last year.
Ugh, I hated those classes. Bunch of made up nonsense. Or like Woody Allen's phrase in Annie Hall: mental m*sturbation.
Or as said by the Roarschach character from the comic version of The Watchmen, "Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose."
I would rephrase that as 'stare at something long enough and you can find patterns in anything.' to describe this stuff.
It's an observational documentary. It's merely presenting viewers with information they might not have seen otherwise. Often times this form is used for past events like murders, disasters, etc. There's no over arching point to it, the film maker isn't offering an opinion, their merely giving you some information to make of what you will.
I personally think this is one of the best, most interesting documentaries I've ever seen. Maybe I love Kubrick, maybe I just love abstract, non conventional film making. Either way, this documentary isn't supposed to offer a way of looking at it. OP, you started with that idea but got swayed by the demand of hand holding. This film wasn't made to give answer and a mental upgrade in a box, it's just a situation involving subjects. This is what an observational documentary means.
I think you are giving the interviewees for this film (and the film itself, but that is more subjective) far too much credit. The film is mostly the aimless ramblings of people whose theories are fairly ridiculous. It is obvious that most of them are grasping at straws to try to find some deeper meaning in a fairly mediocre film.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the documentary, but as others have said, mostly because it was comical to hear people try to argue for their wacky theories, not because any of them were even slightly convincing.
Just watched this movie and I have to say I didn't like it. That is not to say that I didn't understand it. It may very well be that I've been sucked in by the 'mainstream' 'clichéd' dynamic of a documentary having the support of some underlying structure, but ho-hum that's life. I can appreciate that this movie is an exercise in theory building, I can appreciate that it expresses a collection of subjective interpretations, what I don't fully appreciate is the point of the whole exercise. If the message is to suggest that Kubrick was an intelligent, thoughtful and well-read man whose influences and concerns are revealed through his work then I say well done to the filmmakers... here are your honorary degrees in rocket science. One could apply the same logic to any artistic medium (a Michael Bay film for example); we are what we make and we make what we are and all that jazz. If, as some of the commenters above have suggested, there is no inherent point to the film and that it amounts to nothing more than a sound-board for the construction of ideas, then I would argue that it represents all the very worst excesses of the postmodern age. If you look hard enough you can find an imagined causal link between any two phenomena, it doesn't mean that a link exists in actuality. Anyone who has read 'Foucault's Pendulum' by Umberto Ecco will know what I mean. I get critical theory, I get postmodernism, I just don't, personally (you will note I said personally), find that either make for particularly entertaining viewing.
"If you look hard enough you can find an imagined causal link between any two phenomena, it doesn't mean that a link exists in actuality. "
Yes, and that is *exactly" the point of the movie. I think what you expressed here is exactly the point the filmmakers of 237 are trying to make as well.
Sorry to the OP for being instantly attacked. Maybe people were offended by the all caps. Who knows. I agree, though. This movie is not really about Kubrick, but about how meaning can be inscribed once something belongs to the public, regardless of source and intention. The Shining has a kooky enough fanbase and a household name behind it... break Lolita down like this for 1h47m and see if you get a distribution deal. Doubt it.
I sort of liked the documentary but some of it is rubbish to be sure. Interesting you mention Foucalt's Pendulum, a book Kubrick considered filming at one point.