ROOM 237 (Rodney Ascher/2012)

ROOM 237


I missed this film during it's initial (limited) run but I bought the 2-DVD set to see what kind of insights into Kubrick's The Shining were on offer.
It is purely for film buffs and serious Kubrick fans. It's not a "film" to me as more of an in-depth special feature that could've been included as supplements to the Kubrick movie. You have talking heads in voiceover waxing about their ideas on what the film means while images from various Kubrick films and stock footage from other sources is played.

What I liked the most about it is the passion with which the speakers discuss Stanley Kubrick and what his films mean to them.
I don't know many people in my life who can talk at length about Kubrick with any authority.
One speaker (I forget his name) says that at the time Kubrick was making Barry Lyndon the great director was bored.
He had basically achieved everything he could achieve in the filmmaking medium up to that point, and he was bored.
He needed something new to do.
Something that hadn't been done in filmmaking before.
He had heard about TV ads where executives would put subliminal messages into TV commercials to sell things.
Kubrick, being the inquisitive, all-consuming consumer of information, met with those executives and asked them how they did it.
They told him, and he set to putting hundreds of subliminal messages (of varying types, jokes and styles) into THE SHINING.
Everything from atonement for massacring Native Indians, sex, Nazi German propaganda, Eagle/USA machinery, etc etc etc...


I'll post more about it when I've seen it a few more times. Lots to mine and consider. Totally worth buying if you are a Kubrick fan or if you just love movie history in general.