A handful of obsessed theorists share their rather unique takes on THE SHINING in fun and fascinating ROOM 237 documentary
ROOM 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2012)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at Third St., 212-924-7771
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway, 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, March 29
www.room237movie.com
The next time you watch Stanley Kubrick’s cult classic horror flick, The Shining, you’re gonna want to put on a tinfoil hat while drinking your soda and munching on popcorn after seeing Rodney Ascher’s Room 237, an extremely entertaining study of obsession, the love of movies, and people with a little too much time on their hands. A marvelous exploration of how we watch and individually interpret movies, Room 237 allows a handful of wild theorists to deconstruct and reconstruct Kubrick’s widely examined film, based on Stephen King’s 1975 bestselling novel. From the sweeping opening helicopter shot to the final zoom on a black-and-white photograph, four men and one woman share their deeply researched insight into what virtually every moment of Kubrick’s frightening tale of a writer (Jack Nicholson) and his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd) taking care of a Colorado mountain hotel during the off-season is really about. But these are not just plain nuts; among them is an award-winning journalist, an accomplished historian, a published playwright, and a musician and WFMU deejay. Ascher (The S from Hell) never shows the commentators, instead allowing them to verbally describe their theories while he plays the relevant clips, accompanied by brief shots from all of Kubrick’s films (Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket, Paths of Glory, A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc.) and other movies and television programs that cleverly relate to the storytelling. Jay Weidner believes that The Shining is Kubrick’s apology for having directed the faked Apollo 11 moon landing, Bill Blakemore thinks it’s about the genocide of the American Indians, Geoffrey Cocks is sure it’s about the Holocaust, and Juli Kearns finds it to be about the mythical Minotaur; Kearns also has generated a three-dimensional map of the Overlook Hotel to delve into the impossible spatial relationships perpetrated by Kubrick, always, she claims, with a very specific reason. Perhaps the most creative of the subjects is John Fell Ryan, who insists that the film was meant to be seen both forward and backward — at the same time. One of the “leading” Shining explorers, Kevin McLeod, aka “mstrmnd,” declined to appear in the film, but some of his views are included as well. While many of the theories will leave you scratching your head or laughing hysterically, you’re almost sure to start giving credence to a few, so beware; it’s a natural tendency of the human brain to try to detect patterns in things, and in this case the work has already been done for you. But one thing is certainly true: After watching Room 237, you’ll never be able to look at The Shining the same way again. Room 237 opens March 29 at the IFC Center and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, with Ascher and producer Tim Kirk going back and forth between the two venues on Friday and Saturday for various Q&As and introductions.
Australian writer-director PJ Hogan’s latest film, Mental, seems, well, a bit mental itself, but it gets even crazier when you learn that much of it is based on Hogan’s own childhood. A wild romp through the very serious world of mental illness, Mental opens with Shirley Moochmoore (Rebecca Gibney) wandering outside her suburban home belting out “The Sound of Music,” but her obsession with that movie — and her desire for her family to be like the Von Trapps — embarrasses her five daughters, annoys the snooty neighbors, and soon lands her in an institution. Not knowing how to take care of his girls, each of whom has her own psychological issues, Shirley’s philandering husband, Barry (Anthony LaPaglia), the mayor of Dolphin Heads, picks up a stray hitchhiker, Shaz (Toni Collette), and hires her to take care of his family while he continues to live elsewhere. The boozing, smoking, knife-wielding, straight-shooting Shaz, who has some very deep problems of her own, sets out to whip the girls into shape via unusual methods, which initially troubles and frightens them, but soon the sisters, led by the oldest, Coral (Lily Sullivan in her splendid acting debut), develop a rather unique relationship with their newfound caretaker. With Mental, Hogan (Muriel’s Wedding, My Best Friend’s Wedding) walks the fine line between dysfunctional family drama and wacko surreal fantasy, particularly in such characters as neat-freak next-door-neighbor Nancy (Kerry Fox) and doll-obsessed relative Doris (Caroline Goodall). The subplot involving shark hunter Trevor Blundell (Liev Schreiber) never quite works, ending up literally and figuratively going overboard. The final scenes are a mess and a major letdown, but much of the rest of the film is a whole lot of loony, absurdist fun as Hogan takes on suburbia, local politics, marriage, parenthood, and conventionality in general.
When I was a kid in school, one of the first movies I ever reviewed was Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino’s brazenly overbudget famous Hollywood disaster. Incensed that professional film critics were obsessed with the meta surrounding the making of the epic Western instead of simply taking it for what it was, I was determined to treat it like any other movie, forgetting about all the behind-the-scenes gossip and tales of financial gluttony. And what I found back then was that it was a noble failure, a bold exercise in genre that had its share of strong moments but ultimately fell apart, leaving me dissatisfied and disappointed but glad I had seen it; I did not want my three-plus hours back. In fact, I probably would have checked out the rumored five-hour version if it had been shown, hoping it would fill in the many gaps that plagued the official theatrical release. More than thirty years later, Cimino’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning sophomore effort, The Deer Hunter, has returned in a 216-minute digital restoration supervised by Cimino, playing March 22-28 at Film Forum, and it does indeed shed new light on the unfairly ridiculed work, which is still, after all this time, a noble failure. Inspired by the 1882 Johnson County War in Wyoming, the film stars Kris Kristofferson as Jim Averill, a Harvard-educated lawman hired by a group of immigrants, called “citizens,” whose livelihood — and lives — are being threatened by a wealthy cattlemen’s association run by the elitist Frank Canton (Sam Waterston). The association has come up with a kill list of 125 citizens, offering fifty dollars for each murder, a plan that has been authorized all the way up to the president of the United States. Leading the way for the cattlemen is hired killer Nate Champion (Christopher Walken), who has a particularly fierce aversion to the foreign-speaking immigrants. With a major battle on the horizon, Averill and Champion also fight for the love of the same woman, the luminous Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert), a successful madam who soon finds herself in the middle of the controversy.
Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb is one of the grandest satires ever made, the blackest of black comedies. With the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over the United States and the Soviet Union, General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has a meltdown, becoming obsessed with protecting the country’s “precious bodily fluids” and threatening to launch the bombs. While President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) tries to make nice with the Soviets, General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) gets caught up in all the military excitement, Colonel Bat Guano (Keenan Wynn) defends the Coca-Cola Company, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers) can’t get anyone to listen to him, and Major T. J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) prepares for the ride of his life. Based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert and written by George, Kubrick, and Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove is hysterically funny and wickedly prescient, an absolute hoot from start to finish, featuring razor-sharp dialogue, inspired slapstick, and just enough truth to scare the hell out of you. (Be sure to watch for Peter Bull not being able to stop laughing as Sellers goes crazy in a wheelchair at the end.) A DCP projection of the film is screening March 21-28 as part of the IFC Center series “The Films of Stanley Kubrick,” which includes every one of the director’s feature works as well as A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a collaboration with Steven Spielberg, all shown in advance of the March 29 theatrical release of Rodney Ascher’s Room 237, a documentary that delves into the many metamysteries surrounding The Shining.