The Rubber Room

ROOM 237 (B) - Can a film be pointless and fascinating at the same time? This celebration of obsessive fans/analysts of Stanley Kubrick's horror classic "The Shining" is definitely non-essential viewing, but it has a subtle way of drawing you in.

Director Rodney Ascher lets five talking heads (headless, i.e., never seen, while scenes from the movie play exclusively) blather on about the messages and symbols they have gleaned (or read into) Kubrick's 1980 masterpiece after repeated viewings. He gives them wide berth, with limited editing; at one point Ascher pauses a scene from the movie while one of the speakers, mid-point, goes off to quiet his child and then returns to finish his thought.

The first 20 minutes are awkward, because it seems that these crazy conspiracy theorists are way more into the movie than you (or anyone you know) could possibly be. But Ascher's technique grows on you. You realize that this isn't a film for "Shining" fanatics; this documentary is aimed at the rest of us who are entertained by such ardent cryptologists. This is a movie about watching movies to the point of obsession. You don't even need to have seen "The Shining" to appreciate this whole exercise.

Some of the points made by the four men and one woman are quite interesting -- the numerology; the revelation of camera tricks; the theory that the movie is about the Holocaust or perhaps about the slaughter of the American Indians, or maybe a combination of both. At the halfway point, one observer launches his grand idea that the movie is somehow Kubrick's explanation of how he was behind the camera for the faking of the footage of the moon landing. At that point, it's time to buckle in for the ride.

Rarely are any of these folks deterred by what seem like mere continuity errors or basic coincidences. Their devotion before the altar of Kubrick is unshakeable. One is allowed to toss out, unchallenged, the claim that the reclusive director had an IQ of 200. Ascher's philosophy of Anything Goes  makes you wonder whether he's taking any of this at all seriously or whether he's maybe exposing his subjects as blathering goofballs.

The most cogent theories suggest that Kubrick's loose adaptation of the Stephen King novel is about duality of the mind and how we deal with horror by convincing ourselves that it's either all in the past or that it never really happened, that it's just a story we've been told. Like "The Wizard of Oz," it's all make-believe. One sophisticated observation suggests that the film, like our dream worlds, incorporates everything that infiltrated our subconscious before it (in cinema and in history), adding just a dollop of perspective that tries to make sense of that toxic stew.

All the while, Ascher hypnotizes us with footage from the film (and from others by Kubrick, revealing patterns) and you can't help but get caught up in the wonders of cinema. In the end, this film is about having fun at the movies and getting lost in a world inside a world.