Room 237
Director: Rodney Ascher
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 2.5
Ascher brings together various fans and academics to give their view on the 'hidden meanings' in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, claiming there are references to the 'faked' Apollo 11 moon landing, the Holocaust and the massacre of American Indians in the movie. Of course, as Kubrick's longtime assistant Leon Vitali said, it's all "balderdash," and the theories range from the ludicrous to the downright insane (a handshake accompanied by an erection? a minotaur?) - even Ascher himself doesn't buy the ideas though he does play along - but accepting the musings and outlandish interpretations is probably besides the point. The real treat of this experimental "documentary" is about the love of film in general, of taking a work and re-watching it and picking it apart, of separating the work from the author (bonjour, Barthes) and trying to find new interpretations: cinema as a Rorschach test. Kubrick himself would have gotten a hearty chuckle or three out of it.
