MovieChat Forums > Room 237 (2012) Discussion > Interviewer with crying baby

Interviewer with crying baby

posted 12 years ago by stuman201
29 replies | jump to latest

I can see the various annoyances/frustrations/etc viewers might have with the far-fetched, eye-rolling theories brought up in the film.

However, what made this documentary fail for me were the interviewers with sloppy and unfocused delivery. Some were fine. The woman focusing on the Minotaur and the man who played the movie backward and forwards I recall sounded well thought out. But several others seems to keep losing their train of thought, filling space with "uh uh uh." I'm not expecting professional narrators, but couldn't these people sound a little more prepared to be interviewed for a film? AND, as per my subject, what was with the one interviewee stopping to check on his crying baby?? When that happened all I could think for the next ten minutes was "why did that make the cut? Why didn't they just rerecord the interview or cut the crying baby out?"

[–] eg4190 12 years ago

The crying baby was left in to emphasize that the filmmakers are presenting the subjects' theories unfiltered, without distorting their viewpoints by taking comments out of context. This makes the audience feel that the documentary isn't just a cheap attempt to exploit the rubes who hold these theories.

Obviously they could have just edited the crying baby out, just like they could have edited out some of the sillier minotaur comments. The primary challenge in assembling a documentary is choosing how visible the hand of the narrator should be -- the choice between storytelling and accurate reporting. In this case, the filmmakers made a conscious choice to leave some of the asides and tangents in, to sell the honesty of their approach (they probably edited out a ton of similar moments so as not to belabor the point). It's fair to disagree with the effectiveness of this choice, but there's no way it didn't occur to anyone in the editing room to say, "Should we cut out the crying baby?"

[–] EtienneZizka-676-890046 12 years ago

Sorry man but I think you've watched Room 237 one time too many.

Have you watched the whole thing? How can you give them sooo much credit? Kubrick's face in the clouds, heeeeeellooooo?

Please don't excuse their mediocrity by some deep hidden, philosophical meaning. Sometimes crap is just crap.

By the way, if you take room 237 and you add all the numbers you get 12. 1912 just so happens to be the year when Kubrick's sister janitor's grandfather was born... in Germany. Coincidence? I don't think so.

[–] eg4190 12 years ago

The interview subjects provided very silly theories that are not properly supported by Kubrick's film. They all have one thing in common: their theories say much more about the theorist than they do about The Shining. That's why this documentary was made -- to demonstrate just how full of sh!t critical analysis can be when the analyst brings something to a film and claims to find it, and more broadly, to explore the pattern-seeking nature of humans and our susceptibility to confirmation bias.

You were supposed to think the theorists were stupid or crazy! I'm not convinced the documentarians bought into any of these theories for a second. They weren't tryIng to convince you that Kubrick faked the moon landing, they were trying to convince you that audiences often interpret art in ways that the artist could not possibly have intended.

[–] EtienneZizka-676-890046 12 years ago

Well, I certainly hope you're right.

[–] Just_Alex 11 years ago

I agree with you.

When someone watches Room 237 for the first time, it's easy to assume that it's going to be about some film experts dissecting The Shining, but when the filmmakers left things like the crying baby, or the giggling guy, it's their way to say "look how an Average Joe can take an art form -in this case, a movie- and project their own beliefs, ideas and information, and create ALL KINDS of theories, no matter how far-fetched they are".

My ratings:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur5531916/ratings

[–] amsyco13 11 years ago

The giggling guy drove me nuts.
Too many punk/metal shows have left me a little hard of hearing, so I watched with the subtitles on in case I miss anything and it was so annoying to see (laughs) after every third word with that guy. It was worse than a 12 year old girl talking about Bieber.

**************************
Are you a bug Bill Murray?

[–] horrorful 11 years ago

yeh, credibility is lost when your commentator sounds high as a kite. The child screaming in the background confused me... had to pause it several times to make sure no-one kid has wandered into my house.

[–] usafa93 11 years ago

I thought the same thing, "This guy is stoned."

[–] keetsh 11 years ago

Kubrick's face in the clouds was the point of no return for me. Plus, I don't know whether I was the only one out there to whom all these interviewees were mostly unknown. I think the documentary would've greatly benefited from being narrated through by a single person.

"Is your handwriting legible? -Except at weekends."

[–] mikelock 12 years ago

He was by far the hardest to listen to. Constantly saying um and starting new ideas with "You know, um, so." Almost shut it off at that point.

Besides, all he talked about was what the people were carrying. "And the guy walking behind him is carrying a coffee table." I was completely taken out of the movie and had no idea what his point was. If anyone knows it, please let me know and excuse my ignorance.

P.S. I couldn't finish the film. I got about 2/3 of the way through and realized I had better things to do. Maybe someday I'll go back to it.

[–] zwolf 11 years ago

You're expecting this thing to be a documentary about The Shining. It's not. It's a documentary about crackpots who convince themselves of things and then find "evidence" that they claim supports their theories. The Shining is just the thing they focused on -- a similar documentary could be about ANYTHING. People seem to be getting mad at this documentary because they were expected to learn legitimate "secrets" about The Shining... but that's not what the documentary is about. It's amazing to me that people aren't seeing that, because it's painfully f'n obvious.

The crying baby left in was not out of sloppiness... it was just reminding you that these are real people, with real lives, believing these ridiculous things. The documentary is hilarious - and it's supposed to be - and this guy having to go deal with his yelling son in the middle of spieling off whackjob theories is funny as hell. It's not sloppy filmmaking to leave that in.

It's like listening to somebody saying, "You know, the first transcontinental railroad was built buy aliens from Alpha Centauri. America at the time didn't have the technology to build completely straight iron rails; those were all forged in the mother ship, hidden behind the moon. Then the aliens would beam them down using the gravity-drive of their saucers, and... hold on a second, I have to get my pot pie out of the oven..."

[–] EtienneZizka-676-890046 11 years ago

I literally burst out laughing when I read the comment about the pot pie, barely avoiding covering my keyboard with the subway I was chewing on. Good one, thanks.

[–] inlovewithwords 9 years ago

I have to agree with zwolf. It crossed my mind at some point, near the end of the documentary, that the director wasn't selling those crackpot ideas, but playing with them and subtly exposing and criticizing modern day Conspiracy Theorists as the wackos that they are.

What if my problem isn't that I don't understand people but that I don't like them?

[–] Ppink_Flamingo 11 years ago

That was just bizarre.

[–] aedt89 11 years ago

I could have sworn he hit the kid and yelled "Shut up!" to him...did anyone else hear that? I'm being serious...and it seemed like a weird joke of some kind.

-Are these the Nazis, Walter?
-No, Donny, these men are nihilists, theres nothing to be afraid of.

[–] chus07 11 years ago

It may be a joke. It seems like the father goes to the kid´s room, hits him and shuts the door. Think of Jack Nicholson´s character and his kid.

[–] sdwilson79 11 years ago

I took it as a somewhat veiled dig at the interviewees obsession and how it is blocking out their real lives.

"Oh sorry, can you hear my baby crying? Let me just go close the door so it doesn't interrupt me talking about my nonsensical theories..."

[–] acidbenvolio 11 years ago

"I took it as a somewhat veiled dig at the interviewees obsession and how it is blocking out their real lives."

Bingo.

You can bet that documentarians, even amateur ones, have a million decisions about what to leave in, cut, present one way or another. Editing one of them is like a nightmare, because you have to be so deliberate.

[–] mylesdunhill 11 years ago

Why did the "crying kid" make the cut? It wasn't sloppy, it was intentional. Why?

Well it has to do with what John Fell Ryan (the father) was saying about The Shining.

Think about that whole instance.

The director himself is only heard once in the film, asking John Fell Ryan (as you’d assume he asked all the interviewees), “But… why would he make the movie so complicated?” Ryan concedes that, for him, it’s oddly personal: he has a young son (the film pauses at one point so Ryan can calm him), he’s out of work, he and his wife are thinking of moving somewhere remote. Ryan’s tempted by what he sees of himself in The Shining, worried that he might be the kind of person Ullman is talking about at the start of the film. Ascher has put together an engrossing and vivid document of isolated, creative minds each at work on their own project of tainted analysis; he uses their misplaced passion to document a type of worship that serves only the worshipper

[–] Gwasgray 11 years ago

"DAAAAADD! WIPE MY BOTTOM! STOP WATCHING THE SHINING!"