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Room 237 (2012)
Zooming…zooming…middle photograph, second row. There’s Jack Torrance, beaming, fronting his new (old?) family. July 4th Ball, 1921.
For most, the iconic final frames of The Shining are more than enough. For the select few who need a galaxy-brain digestif, there’s Room 237. Rodney Ascher’s documentary is a fascinating, admirable, baffling microphone for five Shining obsessives who see Stanley Kubrick’s classic ghost story as a portal into psychoanalysis, historical revelations and conspiracies.
Ascher acts as a portal himself, assuming the pose of the neutral, reverent video essayist, weaving clips to explore his interviewees’ passionate narration that The Shining is actually about the genocide of Native Americans, the Holocaust, faked moon landing footage, the advertising industry, and minotaurs.
Some observations, like fan maps of the literal and subliminal architecture of the Overlook Hotel, beautifully add to the film’s mystique. Some observations almost dismiss the movie as a Trojan horse that the obsessives barely seem to like.
Your mileage may vary as to whether the documentary is some of the most committed amateur film criticism you’ve ever heard or total crackpottery. (Most likely it’s both.) Either way, the sway of The Shining holds. The voices of Room 237 are part of this story now, this family now, this hotel now—propagating its aura into eternity.
Room 237 plays Dec. 8 and 9 at PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater. Immediately afterward, at 9 pm, you can test one of the documentary’s most famous takeaways—that hidden meanings arise when The Shining is played forward and backward at the same time. Corey J. Brewer will provide a live score for that experimental projection.
ALSO PLAYING:
Cinema 21: Tokyo Godfathers (2003), Dec. 11. Clinton: The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), Dec. 12. Hollywood: Ran (1985), Dec. 11. Dragon Princess (1976), Dec. 12. Tomorrow Theater: Short Term 12 (2013), Dec. 7. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (2023), Dec. 10.