Coral

Watched this last night and it's pretty laughable.

It's amateurishly put together - which I really wasn't expecting.

The only theories I can agree with and think there's enough evidence for it to be purposely done and not a coincidence is that the Shining is referencing the American Indian in some instances, and to a lesser extent - the Jewish holocaust.

Everything else is just ridiculous. They're so desperate to come up with theories that they wind up reaching into absurd territory.

Not everything has meaning. The Shining is just a film... and not a very good one either.

dex14

I turned this off after 20 minutes. Did not want to waste my time.

boredsilly

Yeah, if you go into this movie expecting some serious dissection of The Shining, you're going to be disappointed. If you enjoy listening to some really out there theories about what the movie could mean? It's a good time.

I don't even want to say I was laughing at the theorists, because I'm a big believer in death of the author (while also believing in author intent -- figure that out). I just enjoy listening in how deep these people have dived into this movie, convincing themselves that things are there -- whether they are or not.

musick

having recently seen this I can say you wasted 20 minutes

Toddarino

I'm about 10 minutes in and I'm really tempted to turn this off.

Ash Ketchum

I just wasted half-a-minute thinking about watching this--and then typing this post!

gp1086

I found a lot of the stuff to be really far stretches, but the bit about the Moon landing was pretty intriguing.

hanshotfirst1138

It is pretty obvious that all of evil stuff haunting the hotel is taken in a more political direction by Kubrick, dealing with genocide, etc. So I guess it that sense, you could use that as a springboard, but they take it into pretty far-our places.

Given that we're talking about Kubrick, one never knows, he was known for putting up little details and stuff in the back so people could endlessly reinterpret his movies and stuff.

Hang around the Kubrick boards at the IMDb, you'll find all kinds of weird stuff. Some of those people are pretty out there.

Hiro11

I just watched this on Netflix. I think a lot of you totally misinterpreted the filmaker's intention here. This is not a film about plausible interpretations of 'The Shining", this is a film about obsessive film-fandom and the conspiracy-prone mind. None of the theories are intended to be taken seriously and none are meant to provoke thought. The intent here is to show how rewatching a film endlessly makes people a bit crazy. Watch it again in that light.

I do think the impossible geometry of the hotel and the continuing maze motif is fascinating and expertly handled in the movie, but that's evident right on the screen and is hardly a "conspiracy theory". The Apollo 11 and Holocaust stuff is ludicrous.

I'd love to see someone tear apart "Eyes Wide Shut" which I believe to be both hugely underrated and pack full of double meanings.

boredsilly

I can't speak for intentions, but this is exactly how I understood the purpose of the movie.

islandclaws

Watched it the other night and, yes, it is wildly ridiculous. 2001 was just "collecting research" so he could help fake the moon landing footage? And I thought I knew how to get high; these guys are operating in another galaxy.

The way it was shot annoyed the hell out of me, too. Documentaries do not require a large amount of style, generally. Show me the interviewee, give me a name, and show film footage or whatever else when it's relevant to the discussion. All this inserting of The Shining into others works was stupid. Amusingly, it also confused my girlfriend into thinking all of these other movies were constantly referencing The Shining.

But the film's score is superb. I'm gonna have to buy that vinyl Death Waltz is putting out.

dex14

TheBang

I totally got that. I just didn't find it very interesting at all.

Gunde

Probably the most boring documentary I've ever attampted to watch. I made it 40 min. in.

CRM114

Agree with everything here especially about Eyes Wide Shut.

I kept waiting for one plausible interpretation and ended up turning it off after 45 minutes. I'll watch the rest at some point. I knew it was going to be comical after waiting for Kubrick's head to appear in the clouds ... which never happened.

I love how they construed continuity errors into intent. Dopey.

Loved the guy who had to quiet his kid down during his thoughtful, dead serious analysis.

Best of all was the imagined "hard on".

Supermallet

I finally got around to this one. It's actually a little brilliant in that each theorist argues that Kubrick created a masterpiece because he made a movie that's a horror movie on the surface but is REALLY about something else. However, while none of the theories (except the way the hotel layout keeps changing, which is the closest this gets to actual film analysis) feel credible, they do show the genius of Kubrick in making open ended films that allow for so many different interpretations.

Still, it's funny to hear someone who says he's an expert on the Holocaust reveal that the film is really about the Holocaust. But that's what good art does, it allows people to find themselves in the art.

Most of the theories are a waste of time, but the movie itself isn't.

It also goes to show how perception of an artist affects how people see the art. Everyone in the film assumes that any discrepancy, every tiny detail, must have been done deliberately by Kubrick to further his secret agenda. None of them even consider that Kubrick didn't intend every last placement of every single object, or that he was capable of making mistakes.

hanshotfirst1138

Stanley Kubrick? Make mistakes? You shut your whore mouth !

Yes, I know even his films have continuity errors, I'm just kidding.

Although knowing Kubrick, I wouldn't be surprised if he DID consider the placement of every prop and bit of minutia in the film.

Dan

embed doesn't seem to work, so I put it in spoiler tags...
LINK: This Will Change The Way You Watch ‘The Shining’
http://www.clickhole.com/video/will-...source=twitter


(this was better than anything in ROOM 237)

Mabuse

link doesn't work. So went to the trouble of hunting it down. It's a stupid Onion joke video. Don't waste time.

dhmac

That wild "NASA hired Kubrick to fake the Moon landings which he later coded a confession about it within The Shining" Conspiracy Theory is explained in this 79-minute-long YouTube video titled "The Shining Code 2.0"

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b0hOiasRsrA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It's amusing how this totally bonkers video just assumes that the Moon landings were faked as a starting point - no need to prove that! - and then just races on to link Kubrick as being the mastermind behind it.

(And it's funny how it uses the same analytical methods as any other film analysis, showing that film interpretations are more in the viewer's head than the intent of the original filmmakers.)

Mabuse

It seems that in conspiracy circles these days the "Moon landing was faked" conspiracy is completely linked with "Stanley Kubrick was hired to fake the Moon landings". It's hard to find a "fake Moon landing" site or video that doesn't attribute Kubrick as the creator as a matter of course.

Didn't it used to be Howard Hughes? I guess he's too old for today's wackos, so they are going with Kubrick.

jdslater1

I quite like watching docs about films but I nearly rolled my eyes out my head over this one.

I like you never saw the faces of these people making these claims. In case you saw them in real life and punched them.

The one that made me laugh because they seem to forget about real life, was the Tv being on in the hotel foyer. It is next to a few sofas and is on showing the news. And the guy says its weird that there is no power cord.
As opposed to all those hotels who have cables everywhere so their guests have something to trip over.

TomOpus

Noticed this was on Netflix so I started to watch. I stopped at the 30 min mark. I may finish it but it's too inane. I was prepared after reading this thread but it was worse than I imagined.

hanshotfirst1138

And people say I need to get laid. Some of the theories in this movie kind of made me wonder what makes people come up with this stuff. Some days, I think I'm missing things by not doing drugs . I realize that taking a film at face value is doing it a disservice, but some of this stuff is wildly bizarre. My favorite moment though is when someone talks about a chair and the movie circles it and creates an arrow pointing to it which says "chair." As if I've somehow never sat down. I have read all kinds of interesting analysis of films and such online which has given me perspectives I'd never have guess about films (though I am proud to say that I picked up on Inception as an allegory for filmmaking on first viewing), but most of this seemed weird for the sake of being weird.

Mabuse

Watched first half on Netflix. Still have to finish it. But the ideas in this are so fucking off the wall.

What's especially annoying is how evident it is that many of these people have no film education. Best example is the guy who claims the typewriter changes colors. His argument about it being a German typewriter is fairly sound, especially when you consider that attention to detail about something like a typewriter WOULD very much be something Kubrick would heap his obsessive attention upon, and the choice of a German manufactured machine could be an indication of something by the director. But then the dummy goes one step too far and claims the typewriter changes color. It's just a color timing issue. But he knows nothing about film so he is hoisted by his own petard.

This kind of thing happens repeatedly in the film.

Also, it's worth noting that the "moon landing was fake" guy also takes a moment to explain that WWII was a hoax and he believes all the news footage from that war was faked in New Mexico.