Compelling Films: The Shining & Room 237

You know a film is compelling when you find other people’s strong interest for the same film compelling.  Indeed, The Shining (1980) may be one of the most compelling films ever.

The Shining is not a cult film the way, say, another Stanley Kubrick film, A Clockwork Orange (1971) became.  I can think of two films that have stirred strong reactions from audiences: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and The Big Lebowski (1997).  Fans of these films have bonded over the experience of watching these films. 

The Shining, on the other hand, has wrought interpretations.  Many divergent interpretations.  The people doing the interpreting are isolated and have little interest in having a convention.  Appropriately, the experience of watching and re-watching The Shining is obsessive and isolating.

Chronicling five specific views of The Shining is a film that debuted a year and a half ago at the Sundance Film Festival, Room 237 (2012).  It played in theaters intermittently around the country but was difficult to track down.  It never appeared in the Philadelphia area.  However, finally, a few months ago, I found it On Demand.  I watched it twice and will watch it many more times. 

The interpretations are:

1. The Shining’s larger content is the destruction of the American Indians.

2. The film is primarily about the Jewish Holocaust.

3. Stanley Kubrick is furtively confessing to his participation in the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing hoax.

4. The film is about the Minotaur in the Labyrinth.

5. Kubrick has created an impossible puzzle in which the pieces don’t quite match.

One might dismiss Room 237 based on the Moon Landing hoax.  Strangely, this theory most attracts me, mostly because of its absolute belief that the 1969 moon landing didn’t happen.  The interpretation doesn’t even bother to explain the whys and whats of the hoax.  All we hear about is how The Shining became the vehicle for Kubrick to confess his part in the hoax.

All of the theories have a common quality: an absolute commitment to the hidden meaning of a film that already has had audiences and critic twisted and turned as to the meaning of the story.  Contributing to this critical delirium are, to start, the recurring image of blood flowing from an elevator, a picture of Jack Torrence dated July 4, 1921, Jack being able to get out of the food locker when its locked from the outside, and the very act of “shining” itself. 

There’s also a host of conflicting information that are either continuity errors or have been deliberately made.  In the forefront of these “goofs” are the two times Jack goes to the bar in the Gold Room.  Each time he pulls out his wallet to pay for his drink.  The first time he has nothing in the wallet.  A short time later, he sits at the bar, gets a drink, and pulls out two twenty dollar bills.  What do we make of this? 

Another in plain sight error occurs when Jack takes the paper from his typewriter and rips it up when Wendy disrupts his routine.  At the end of the scene, when he resumes typing, a fresh sheet of paper is in place in the machine.

These continuity problems, to a great extent, have fueled a great amount of speculation.  Several of the theorists, believing Kubrick a genius who would not let such errors be there, find reasons for the mistakes.  One theorist, in particular, is obsessed with the design of the hotel interior and the way that the corridors and stairs do not jibe with the Overlook Hotel’s design (which is never shown entirely in the film, by the way).  Thus, when in Stuart Ullman’s office during Jack’s interview, we see sunlight and the exterior of the hotel.  Except that it appears, from other scenes later in the film, that a stairway actually lies behind Ullman’s office.

The interesting thing about Room 237, directed by Rodney Ascher, is that while it doesn’t judge the interpretations, neither does it endorse.  Room 237 itself interprets The Shining by allowing these five theorists to explain The Shining but also comments directly on the changing ways we relate to films in the digital age.  Ascher could have used other interpretations, some more solid and not eccentric as the ones chosen.  As one critic noted, all of the theorists tell us that they begin noticing more things in The Shining when they saw it on DVD.  The ability to stop frames and explore seemingly innocuous objects in the background and on the sides of a frame has established the foundation for more and more eccentric views of movies.

The first theory is propounded by ex-ABC newsman Bill Blakemore.  It is the least obsessive of the theories but still manages to be single-minded in taking background elements of The Shining and making them the primary concern.  His explication of the Indian motif has the greatest legitimacy, perhaps, because there’s dialogue and images to back it up. 

The Overlook Hotel, Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) tells the Torrences, may have been built on an Indian burial ground, and they may have had to repel a few Indian attacks while building the hotel in 1907.  When Jack Torrence is throwing a tennis ball against the wall in the Colorado Lounge, the ball is hitting several Hopi Indian designs.  But the trigger for Blakemore is an early scene when Bill Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) is enumerating what can be found in the food locker and above his head is a can of Calumet baking powder and its prominent Indian Head logo.

I don’t think Blakemore will get an argument that the film’s themes include the destruction of the Indian peoples, if only because the Overlook Hotel itself represents America.  It is an America in which “many bad things happened,” to quote Hallorann again, and not just to the Indians.  Significantly, the only person killed by Jack Torrence is a black man, Hallorohan, who is significantly referred to by Charles Grady (Philip Stone) as “a nigger cook” when talking to Jack in the men’s room. 

Going from the American Indian to the Jewish Holocaust is a big jump.  Geoffrey Cocks wrote a book, The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, History, & the Holocaust, and details how Kubrick, a Jew, stayed clear of directly dealing with Holocaust themes in all of his films except in indirect ways.  Yet,, it should be said, Kubrick worked for several years on a project called The Aryan Papers, which he abandoned in 1994 when Schindler’s List came out.

Like Blakemore, Cocks’s interpretation is triggered by a single object, Jack’s typewriter, an Adler model, that is, a German brand.  The significance of the typewriter is in its typing the list of names of Jews to be sent to the death camps – the typewriter plays the opposite role in Schindler’s List, as the thousand names typed out would be sent to Schindler’s factory and not Auschwitz. More, the name 'Adler' means ‘eagle’, the symbol of absolute state power throughout history, most significantly for Nazi Germany.  The eagle is also a potent symbol for America and, in The Shining, a small statue of an eagle shows up in the window behind Mr. Ullman’s desk, and in one scene Jack wears a sweatshirt with a large eagle on the front.

Cocks’s then sustains his argument by focusing on the number 42.  It appears in several places: Wendy and Danny watch the film The Summer of 42; Danny wears a shirt with the number 42 on the back; and a news reporter mentions a project costing $42 million (when Hallorann is watching his television in Florida).  The significance of 42 is that 1942 is the year when the Nazis, at the Wannsee Conference chaired by Heydrich,drew up plans for the Final Solution for the Jews.

What intrigues me especially about Cocks is his willingness to believe in a hidden grand design.  I like his jumping on 42, if only because I noticed these references myself and could only refer to past Kubrick numerology; namely, that 42 is divisible by 21 and 21 – 2 and 1 – inundate 2001: Space Odyssey (1968) and Dr. Strangelove (1964).  And if you multiple the number 237, you get 42.

I’m surprised that Cocks didn’t mention that actor who plays Bill Watson.  Barry Dennab had previously starred as Adolf Hitler two years before (but is best know for playing Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar 1973).  The character Bill Watson appears twice in the film with very little dialogue.  He sits next to Jack Torrence during the job interview.  Bill Watson presents little demeanor.  He’s a functionary employee as well as character.  Why else would he be there but as a near invisible reminder of the dictator who authored the Holocaust.

I should also note that Blakemore sees Bill Watson representing the American Indian on the basis of the color tone of Watson’s skin.

Such is the nature of Room 237.  Four men and one woman have devoted an extraordinary amount of time to finding ultimate meaning of The Shining and believe they have.  I once devoted similar time and energy for 2001: A Space Odyssey.  I still spend much time thinking and writing about.  Only now I have to share that time with The Shining.