Fixin' for Netflixin': Room 23

Recently, we sat down for Room 237, a documentary from Rodney Ascher about the impressive amount of outrageous theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Some theories covered include the film being a critique of the American government's systematic war on Native Americans to a confession by Kubrick for having taken part in the staging of the moon landing. Some of what's presented is not entirely far-fetched, but the way some presenters explain their interpretations feels disjointed and ultimately subverts the credence of their work.

Full disclosure: I still haven't seen all of The Shining in one sitting. Like many movies on TV, I've seen it piecemeal as I flip to it halfway through or ten minutes from the end. Never did I see the beginning of the movie on TV. I believe it was on Netflix for a while but that dead lady that Jack macks on still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

In the same way that The Shining is an unconventional horror movie, Ascher's documentary feels unorthodox. The film simultaneously is and isn't a talking head documentary: on the whole, its a series of disembodied voices. Occasionally, we get a credit at the bottom of the screen when a new voice takes over but beyond that we don't know who these people are. They all sound like they're film critics or literary critics, but for all we know they're just die-hard fans of Kubrick. They appear educated enough and credible enough, but due to Ascher's choice of footage, they're just voices leaking from the ether.

Most of the footage is pulled from not only The Shining, but some of Kubrick's other work like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange, and Eyes Wide Shut. There are other clips of teenagers in a movie theater that appears like it's from some 1980's flick, but its source is unclear. I'm not sure why clips from other Kubrick films were chosen as most of them are just incidental. There are times when non-Shining clips are brought in for comparative analysis, and those illustrate the elements that make a film distinctly Kubrick. But others leave you scratching your head, like a clip of Tom Cruise's character walking past a movie theater. It's purpose just apparently mimics an anecdote from one the speakers.

In a way, however, it fully immerses us into Kubrick's universe. We're not given a chance to surface from the flood of his work, so it forces us to see through that lens. It might be so you can make the connections easier. Or it could be to give a sense of cohesion where so many theories take away such a sense.

Given that so many of the theories are visually based, it's logical that the director chose to eschew standard talking head footage for clips from the movie. It's one thing to see a bearded man with glasses tell the audience about the significance of the Calumet baking powder can, but it's quite another to see all of the can's appearances while the significance is explained. That being said, it was hard to separate theories from their parents, and at times I wasn't sure if multiple interpretations were coming from the same authors. But in the end, the focus isn't on those who interpret but the interpretations themselves. They are the cast of this movie.