Digital Video magazine — May 2013
Cinema History and Mystery: Seeing ‘The Shining’ From Every Angle in ‘Room 237’

A monument to complexity, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece The Shining has so many layers and cultural points of reference that it practically invites the viewer to read his own subconscious directly into the film. In the decades since its release, a cult of devotees has emerged, fans who claim to have decoded the movie’s secret messages addressing everything from the genocide of Native Americans to a range of government plots, including a cover-up of the purportedly faked 1969 Apollo Moon landing.

In a deconstruction of Kubrick’s still-controversial Stephen King adaptation, director Rodney Ascher’s conspiracy documentary, Room 237, explores five of the most widely-addressed theories via interviews with cultists and scholars alike juxtaposed with footage from The Shining and other Kubrick classics along with maps, diagrams and floorplans. The results distinctly evoke the Kuleshov Effect, a film editing effect famously demonstrated by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s by which he established montage as the basic tool of the art of cinema.

Following its debut at Sundance, Room 237 made festival headlines at Cannes, Toronto, New York, Chicago, AFI and Fantastic Fest, and won the IDA Documentary Award for Best Editing. The film began its limited theatrical release under the IFC Midnight banner in March, followed by a national rollout that included Cable VOD, iTunes and other digital outlets.

The poster art, designed by CalArts graduate Carlos Ramos, who also created the animations seen in the film, echoes the eye-catching Saul Bass design for The Shining with a yellow sheet that remains a landmark of simple, effective design. The disclaimer alone is worth the price of admission. (Read full story…)