BEFORE: I could continue with the other Robert Altman film, and at least five actors from the cast of "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" would carry over that way, but I left this documentary from my Netflix list out of the "Geek Week" chain because it simply didn't link to any of those films. I also considered saving it for October, since it's about a horror film, but it doesn't seem to link to anything there, either, despite the large number of actors who appear in film clips. But since there must be footage from the original film in here, then I can sandwich it between two other films with Shelley Duvall in them, and that seems like the perfect place to deal with it.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Shining" (Movie #640)
THE PLOT: An exploration of various interpretations of Stanley Kubrick's horror film "The Shining".
AFTER: So it turns out you can find experts on just about any film - it makes sense, movie reviewers are a dime a dozen, and they all think they've got a unique take on important films, plus then you've got college students taking film criticism courses, plus their professors telling them what to look for, etc. But if I've learned anything from 15 years attending Comic-Cons, I've also learned that EVERY film has a select few hardcore fans (which is of course short for fanatics) that take it upon themselves to re-watch, memorize and catalog everything they see (or imagine) in a film that they really like. I mean, we're talking about people who will slow it down and watch it frame by frame, and that's the whole film, not just the nude scenes.
"The Shining" is one of those films that has now achieved cult status, partially because it's so filled with symbolism and potential curiosities that it's become the stuff of legend, and we can't ask Kubrick to confirm any of the weird theories surrounding its production - at least, not without a ouija board. People have analyzed everything from the floor plan of the Overlook Hotel (which was really the Timberline Lodge near Mount Hood in Oregon) to the true meaning of that enigmatic ending, where Nicholson's character somehow appeared in a photograph from 1921, so either he got sucked back in time, or he always was the caretaker, or something else entirely was taking place. But since Kubrick never got around to telling us explicitly what it all MEANS, then other people's brains have stepped in to fill that void.
The film gives voice to 5 interview subjects, each of which has a different theory about what Kubrick was trying to say with his enigmatic symbolism. One is convinced that the film is really about the genocide of the Native American people, and cites evidence both obvious (the hotel manager mentions the old Indian burial ground, a classic horror film trope) and not so much - namely the can of "Calumet" baking powder seen in the hotel's store room, with an Indian head logo, and the fact that "Calumet" is a type of peace pipe. Other symbols of Native American culture are seen around the hotel, but this seems only natural for any hotel in the American West, if I'm being honest. Another interviewed subject thinks that the whole film is a metaphor for the Nazi holocaust, from the blood pouring out of the hotel elevators to the stacks of suitcases seen in the lobby in the film's early scenes (because, you know, there were piles of suitcases seen in photos after the Nazis took the Jews away to camps - this seems like a bit of a stretch.). Plus, in the film the older character with psychic powers tells Danny Torrance that the past is like photos from an old book, and what else could he possibly be referring to but the Holocaust, which is a past event that we have books of photos from? (Umm, no.)
But wait, the crazy conspiracy theories are just getting started. Since Danny Torrance is seen wearing an "Apollo 11" sweater in one scene, and since that famous hexagonal carpet sort of looks like the landing pads from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey", another theory given here is that the whole film is Kubrick's subtle way of telling the audience that he helped fake the moon landing - or more accurately, he shot the footage that was shown on TV. This particular apologetic conspiracy nut believe that the U.S. astronauts still went to the moon, but since they couldn't film it for some reason (either because of a technical glitch, or due to national security concerns), it's clear that NASA used rear-screen projection on a soundstage, right? And therefore Jack Torrance's tirade about how hard it is to be a writer and him going crazy is just a metaphor for Kubrick being unable to tell everyone the truth about the moon landing, and how THAT was driving HIM crazy, right? Again, this seems like a stretch.
What's clear from an analysis of the film footage from "The Shining" are two things: 1) some people have WAY WAY too much time on their hands, and 2) there's definitely something wacky going on with the geography of the hotel. Danny's ride on his Big Wheel through the corridors of the hotel doesn't seem to follow a logical path (umm, it's called "film editing"), and furthermore, the exterior shots of the hotel at the start of the film don't show the famous hedge maze, and there's a pyramid formation in the middle of the hotel that doesn't appear in the later shots. But all of this is easily explained, because according to Wikipedia, the main exterior of the hotel was shot in Oregon, and the interiors were shot in Elstree Studios in London. So trying to match them up, or creating a map to explain the paths that characters take from room to room would be a fruitless endeavor - directors have been known to flip shots, or move set pieces around to get the perfectly composed shot, figuring that casual audience members won't even notice. So what if Mrs. Torrance enters the freezer from the left, and then when she exits, she's in a completely different hallway, as long as the director got the shot composed the way he wanted on that day?
(You can see this same phenomenon on most sitcoms - if you try to figure out the layout of a house or apartment seen on a TV show, you might go mad, because they don't exist in real space, they're just sets. Try to match the interior of say, the house seen on "The Brady Bunch" with the exterior shot, and you'll realize quickly that they couldn't possibly be the same house, based on the rooms' relation to the front door. It doesn't mean that the Bradys live in a space vortex, it's just that the interior set had to be designed a certain way, and someone else picked stock footage of a nice-looking house, and no one bothered to see if they matched. As a kid I realized that the interior of my toy Millennium Falcon didn't match what I saw in the film, but that didn't mean that George Lucas was making a film about the Holocaust.)
Similarly, with the disappearing pyramid shape on the hotel, once you realize that a mock-up of the Timberline's exterior (with the added hedge maze) was built in the U.K, it's much easier to imagine that some British set designer either neglected to build the pyramid, or was told not to, in order to cut costs. (Because what idiot would watch the film frame by frame, looking for these inconsistencies? In those days there weren't even VCRs to do that with.) Isn't the simplest explanation the best one? I say Kubrick wasn't making a statement about the plight of vanishing Native American teepees, which are also triangular, he was just trying to get the shot he needed, in the quickest and cheapest possible way. And that shot where Danny is seen playing on the carpet, and then when he gets up in the next shot, the pattern on the carpet is different? The easiest answer is that this was a continuity mistake, or perhaps they shot the scene from both angles, as proper coverage might demand, and then edited between the two takes, without thinking about the carpet. All I'm willing to concede on this point is that carpet designs in the 1970's were absolutely terrible.
See, unlike most reviewers, I've got the benefit of having worked on films, and even someone like Kubrick, with the reputation of being a perfectionist, wouldn't be immune to simple little mistakes creeping in to his film. I've worked closely with a director/animator for many years, and I've learned that if I happen to notice a mistake (as I did recently, I spotted an improperly drawn treble clef) it's better that I not point it out, because even though he could easily re-draw it, I know that his first reaction will be, "Hey, what's the big deal, it's not like anyone's going to notice..." Well, I did. And then his second reaction will be, "You know, I kind of like the mistake. Nothing's ever going to be perfect." In other words, many directors are ego-centric, and it takes a lot to get them to admit that they made a mistake, and even more to convince them to fix one.
So tell me, what's easier to believe, that Kubrick went out of his way to design impossibly complicated sets, or make it appear that furniture changed or disappeared from shot to shot, JUST to mess with the audience's heads, or reach them on some subconscious level - or that the interior scenes were filmed in the easiest, most convenient way to get whatever shot he wanted on that particular day, and nobody on the set worried a bit about minute continuity errors? I really can't take these people's theories seriously when they don't take the time to properly spell or pronounce "Kubrick", after all.
Some people also believe that extra meaning can be gained by watching the film backwards and forwards at the same time, with the two images superimposed upon each other - right, because that's the way our brain assembles images in order to interpret them... These are the same people who believe that Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" was designed to go with the filmed images from "The Wizard of Oz", even though the film is 2 1/2 times longer than the album. (Why didn't Pink Floyd make it a double album, to match the length of the film?) I'll admit that the famous image of the prism turning white light to color sort of matches a theme in the film (the film turns to Technicolor when Dorothy lands in Oz) but that's about it - all other concurrences are just coincidence.
For the most part, I think that focusing on these little inconsistencies, and their perceived meanings, suggests that these people who have seen the film again and again are now unable to see the forest for the trees. I know that I'm that way with the first three "Star Wars" films, I've seen them hundreds of times, and my brain is so full of "Star Wars" trivia and minutia that I have to allow a few years to pass between viewings, just so I can see them as stories again, and not get bogged down in all the extra details that I know. I'm also very disappointed that this documentary mentioned Room 237 several times (this was the room where Jack Torrance encountered the dead woman in the bathtub) but NOTHING AT ALL about the room down the hall, where we saw that man in a tuxedo about to get oral sex from the guy in the bear costume? Really? Nobody wants to mention that little image, because it doesn't fit in with their theories about genocide or the moon landing?
There's a whole theory online about how this image suggests that Danny (symbolized by the bear) has been sexually abused by his father (symbolized by the man in the tux) which is an interesting thing to suggest, but this documentary just didn't come anywhere near that. Jeez, it's only the weirdest shot in a film full of weird things... Bottom line, if Kubrick changed elements of King's story to make his own film, it doesn't necessarily mean that he was sending the audience coded messages, it just means he was being an asshole.
Also starring (interview subjects) Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, Jay Weidner, (seen on screen) Stephen Brophy, Ash Brophy, Buddy Black, Buffy Visick, Sam Walton, (archive footage) Jack Nicholson (last seen in "Reds"), Scatman Crothers (last seen in "The Cheap Detective"), Barry Nelson (last seen in "Rio Rita"), Danny Lloyd (last seen in "The Shining"), Joe Turkel (last seen in "The Prisoner of Second Avenue"), Barry Dennen, Tom Cruise (last seen in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Keir Dullea (last seen in "The Good Shepherd"), Kirk Douglas (last seen in "Lust for Life"), Stanley Kubrick, Stephen King (last seen in "Pet Sematary"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "Australia"), Ben Kingsley (last heard in "The Jungle Book"), Thomas Gibson, Ryan O'Neal (last seen in "The Main Event"), Patrick Magee, James Mason (last seen in "Julius Caesar"), Roddy McDowall (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Malcolm McDowell (last seen in "I Am Your Father"), Liam Neeson (last seen in "Ted 2"), Robert Redford (last seen in "Truth"), Peter Sellers (last seen in "What's New Pussycat"), Clive Revill, Matthew Modine (last heard in "The Brainwashing of My Dad"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "Mystic Pizza"), Steven Weber (last seen in "The Big Year"), Martin Potter, Philip Stone, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin.
RATING: 4 out of 10 containers of Tang (hey, the astronauts drank that!)
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