N.Y. Film Festival: Check into "Room 237"

"Come and play with us, Danny. Forever ... and ever ... and ever": The spectral twins of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining." / Warner Brothers

NEW YORK Some pundits scratched their heads when filmmaker Stanley Kubrick - whose resume boasted such innovative and ahead-of-the-curve classics as "Dr. Strangelove," "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange" - announced he would direct a film version of the Stephen King horror novel "The Shining." Kubrick? A horror movie?

Of course it was more than that: A story of a devolving marriage, isolation, domestic abuse and maybe even reincarnation, as a caretaker and his family spend an eventful winter holed up at an isolated hotel high in the Rocky Mountains. Technically, it was a floating dream of unsettling cinematic precision.

In the years since its 1980 release, "The Shining" has not only haunted moviegoers - it has inspired viewers to look for hidden meanings within the film's labyrinthine plot and sets.

Redrum: Danny Lloyd channels a decidedly unfriendly influence in "The Shining."

/ Warner Brothers

Unlike other films that might be burdened by continuity errors - changes in set dressings or costumes between shots, shifted furniture, awkward edits - a Kubrick film carries the weight of the director's reputation for leaving no detail untouched. They can't possibly be mistakes! And so a cottage industry has arisen of "Shining" enthusiasts who seek answers to tantalizing "clues" or "discrepancies" within the film, especially those that were added to the source novel by Kubrick and co-writer Diane Johnson.

"Room 237" - named for ground zero of the Overlook Hotel's creepy history - captures not only a fan's love for the Kubrick classic but also an obsessive's love for solving riddles, even if those riddles are imparted onto the film by a viewer's own reading of it. The film, which debuted at Sundance, is screening at the New York Film Festival in advance of its March 2013 theatrical release by IFC Films.

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New York Film Festival 2012

For example, do the many references to Indians (including a burial ground, wall hangings and cans of baking powder) convey the genocide of Native Americans? And what about those props that may refer to the Wannsee Conference and the Nazis' "final solution" against European Jews? What are they doing in a Colorado hotel?

And those who question whether Man really made it to the Moon ask: Had Kubrick been hired by NASA to clandestinely "film" the lunar landing, only to drop hints of his collaboration into a little boy's sweater?

As they say in "The X Files," the truth is out there!

For director Rodney Ascher (who snuck into a screening of "The Shining" when he was a kid and fled in terror after 20 minutes), a lifetime's obsession has been tamed only after corralling the penetrating thoughts of several "Shining" devotees: journalist Bill Blakemore; historian Geoffrey Cocks; playwright-novelist Juli Kearns; musician John Fell Ryan; and author Jay Weidner.

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[micmac666]

I checked out the "backward and forward" image matchups from one of the linked sites - meaningless. There is no way Kubrick would have made a frivolous effort to make the backward/forward play worthwhile for two hours. A waste of time. Don't ruin your stylus playing the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" backward, either.

[pwgrant]

A Clockwork orange? Cutting edge? I find it ranks up there with a $90,000 pile of yellow square metal tubing called the French Fries at the University of Florida. Intellectually I understand what the artists are intending. However, they are still junk with no social redeeming value. A Clockwork Orange is an awful movie with little more direction than portraying an unimaginable number of ways thugs can beat the mess of people.