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Before I saw Room 237, the documentary about fantastically weird interpreters of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which is being released Friday in theaters and video on-demand, I thought I was obsessed with the movie. I've seen it at least two dozen times. I've read more books about The Shining than I've read about any other movie. I already knew that the television set in the Overlook Hotel has no cord. I knew that the movie holds the record for the most number of takes for a single scene, too. Kubrick made Shelley Duvall back away from Jack Nicholson 127 times, a brilliant directorial strategy: To get actors to portray people losing their minds, simply drive them insane for real. It worked (watch below). Kubrick also succeeded in driving a significant chunk of his audience insane, as Room 237 so lovingly demonstrates.
Nine different theories of the film are outlined in Room 237. These range from the somewhat obvious, like the uncovering of Native American themes and images, to outright conspiracy theories, like hidden proofs that Kubrick faked the moon landing. Even that crazy idea has some evidence to support it. Danny is wearing an Apollo 11 sweater during key scenes. Also, Kubrick changed the room number from the book. It was 217. He changed it to 237. The moon is 237 hundred thousand miles from the earth. Spooky, right?
The other theories of the film are less lunatic, but every commentator feels that he or she alone knows what The Shining "is about." Often these theories are drawn from amazingly small details. For example, the typewriter on which Jack types is an Adler model. (The typewriter changes color throughout the film.) That's a German typewriter and "Adler" means eagle. There are several other references to eagles in the film, on t-shirts, in posters on the kitchen walls. The number 42 also appears in various guises. The movie playing on the television is Summer of '42. If you multiply 2 by 3 by 7 (as in room 237) the number is 42. The Germans decided on the "final solution" to European Jewry in 1942. Therefore The Shining is about the Holocaust.
The impossible path Danny takes through the Overlook Hotel.
The close reading that The Shining has inspired is truly magnificent, and I must say certain details the interpreters gather are truly revelatory. Given how fastidious a director Kubrick was, the continuity errors cannot be explained away as accidents. A chair disappears in the middle of a confrontation between Jack and Wendy. Strange references to skiing fill a hotel where skiing isn't allowed. The paths through the hotel that Danny takes in his famous scenes with the three-wheeler are physically impossible. When Jack first arrives at the Overlook Hotel for the first day on the job, he is seen reading a magazine as his boss arrives. If you look closely, that magazine turns out to be an issue of Playgirl with a story about incest on the cover. What does that mean? Maybe it means something and maybe it doesn't mean anything. But there's no question that Kubrick intended that issue of
Playgirl to be there.
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The magazine in The Shining featuring a story about parent-child incest.
The people behind the theories in Room 237 all share an intense capacity to infer connections. What is so maddening is that those connections are clearly there, though their significance is ultimately hidden. This frustration was, beyond a doubt, part of Kubrick's genius plan, and no doubt the obsession he has inspired would please him. After seeing Room 237, The Shining seems less like a horror movie than a movie designed to inspire vertigo. Like the characters themselves, the viewers of The Shining never entirely escape the Overlook, either.
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