It is a truth universally acknowledged that pop culture fan theories are a wondrous, beautiful black hole to obsessively get sucked into (usually via the Internet) when you're having a boring day. Certainly, you all know that Neville Longbottom was meant to be the "Chosen One" rather than Harry Potter? That the black briefcase in Pulp Fiction contains Marcellus Wallace's soul? That Ferris Bueller is nothing more than a fictitious fever dream in Cameron's head?
Fan theories are to pop culture fanatics what Illuminati bankers and presidential birth certificates are to your slightly tetched in the head uncle who TYPES EMAILS IN ALL CAPS: we look for hidden meanings where there probably aren't any, but we can't stop and we have a hell of good time doing it (and possibly annoying others in the process).
So Room 237 is an especially fun film for a cinephile: it's a documentary where a group of cultural and film critics deconstruct the possible "true" meanings behind The Shining. The Dissolve has been doing a series of articles on The Shining this week, and it's apparent that this film in particular lends itself very easily to fan theories. As Matt Singer points out in "The many ghosts of the Overlook", the fact that director Stanley Kubrick was a noted genius and perfectionist has led fan theorists to assume that any image in the frame, continuity error, or prop can and should be seen as a purposeful message to the audience. Indeed, in Room 237, one narrator makes reference to Kubrick's IQ of 200 (is this true? Because whoa) as if it is hard evidence that The Shining is meant to be a complex puzzle for the audience to solve.
On some level, I agree that The Shining is, in fact, way more than a horror film about a guy who goes nuts and tries to kill his family. The Stephen King novel The Shining--which is equally atmospheric and scary as the movie--is about addiction, writer's block, isolation, and how the three converge to drive otherwise on-the-wagon Jack Torrance to insanity.
The film certainly keeps these elements as plot points, but they decrease in importance when compared to the creepiness and overall wrongness of The Overlook hotel. The film The Shining is less about addiction than it is about freakin' ghosts and labyrinths, man! This is one reason why Stephen King has been so strongly critical of Kubrick's adaptation. Kubrick put Jack Torrance's alcoholism and writer's block on the back burner and instead made the hotel itself insane--and it's clear that there's something wrong with both Jack (played by wild-eyed Jack Nicholson) and the Overlook itself from the first few scenes. There is no "slow decent into insanity" at the Overlook. There is just insanity.
The best interpretations in Room 237 touch on the giant sense of dread that hovers over The Shining like a fog. One narrator argues (in what is probably my favorite reading of the movie) that it's a film about "pastness"--about The Past and History as concepts. He points out that Danny escapes his father in the hedge maze by retracing his steps, much as we can only escape repeating mistakes by retracing our own steps--personal and collective--and learning from them.
Other interpretations range from unlikely yet intriguing (that The Shining is "really" about Native American genocide or The Holocaust) to downright laughable (The Shining is Kubrick's confession that he helped fake the moon landing footage). In some cases, there is just enough "proof" (for example: abundant Native American imagery and a reference to the Overlook being built on an Indian burial ground) to make you think "yeah, I can see that". But some of the "clues" provided by the critics are so silly, they can hardly be taken seriously (one commenter points out that a paper tray on desk of the Overlook's manager looks like a protruding erection in one frame. I am not kidding).
But my favorite scene in Room 237 is when they play The Shining backwards and forwards at the same time--not side by side, but with one image overtop the other like a transparency sheet. The result is super creepy and mesmerizing--kind of like "Dark Side of Oz", but scarier.
I think this is why Room 237 is so enjoyable: even if you think all the fan theories are completely bogus, the film itself is so aesthetically interesting and so complex that it's fascinating to inspect it closely. Kubrick was known for his unique cinematography: clinical, color-saturated, each shot framed perfectly (now that I think about it, he's like a sinister Wes Anderson. Or perhaps I should say that Wes Anderson is a gentle Stanley Kubrick). Symbolically and thematically, his films are stuffed full. So even if some of the fan theories are silly and "out there", it's a pleasure to dig deeply into one of the greatest horror films of all time.
4 out of 5 stars
(and for the record--I give The Shining 5 out of 5 stars)
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