Film Review: Room 237

Director: Rodney Ascher

A documentary film made in 2012 which discusses the film The Shining which was directed by Stanley Kubrick (review here). The film speaks to 5 different people who have spent years analysing the film and looking for hidden meanings based on what they have seen within the film. They all display their case for the film being about the slaughter of Native Americans, the Holocaust and Kubrick being involved in a cover-up regarding the early moon landings. Another critic discusses his thoughts on the film being played forwards and backwards simultaneously to see what can be drawn from that.

Danny playing with his trucks in the famous patterned carpet

Some incredibly interesting theories are raised and the link with the native Americans is something I had read about before and seems quite plausible due to them being mentioned in the film and prominently displayed throughout the hotel. In other cases you are required to take a giant leap of logic to draw some of the conclusions that are drawn by other fans, the idea that Kubrick used this film to secretly admit he helped film faked moon landing shots was extremely far-fetched in its ideology (Saying that capital letters ROOM N for Room No helped spell it out as only Room and Moon can be spelt with those letters).

Other critics had actually watched the film in the hope of drawing up plans for the layout of the hotel based on Danny's rides around the hotel on his big wheel and where characters go when they move from room to room. Naturally with Kubrick, rooms dont always lead where they should and as the film progresses it shows that Danny's rides don't always end where you believe they should as he moves up a floor in the final ride without ever taking the stairs. A shot of the exterior shows that the re-creation of the hotel made at Elstree studios isn't the same but is this deliberate? It's clear that the hotel seems to shift in shape throughout the movie somehow. Some of the effort to put these ideas together must have been incredibly painstaking to analyse but in many cases throughout this film they are misplaced.

2/4 Interesting ideas but many were tenuous at best