[YMS] So there's this movie out there
called "Room 237". A documentary completely
comprised of discussions of the interpretive symbolism of
Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining". Sounds promising, right? [Clip] Nope! [YMS] The film interviews several
different people, and they each kind of give their own spin on what they
think the film means. Now there are plenty of thought-
provoking and interesting points to be made about the film, but
that only makes up about 20 minutes of this documentary.
The rest of it is just bull-shit. And the documentary treats all of these
points as on an equal playing field, so the few valid points that are being
made are washed out by lunatics. [Clip] You'd have to be able to be a
complete fanatic, like I am, in order to find all this, but, you know,
I'll give you my favorite. I'm only gonna give you one,
but I'll give you my favorite. When Jack meets Stewart Ullman in the
office at the very beginning of the movie, and he reaches over to shake
Jack Nicholson's hand. And so, step through that scene,
frame by frame, and the minute, the moment, the frame
that he and Jack Nicholson touch hands and right after the line that Barry
Nelson says, which is, "nice to see you," you can see that there's a paper...
a paper tray, on the desk. And as soon as they touch hands, the
paper tray turns into a very large straight-on hard-on
coming out of Barry Nelson. [YMS] Did you hear how he said he
was only gonna tell you one? Yeah, this guy's got another one for ya. [Clip] And you have to know what Stanley
Kubrick looked like during the making of The Shining
to know this one. But if you go to the opening credits,
and you pan the frame... You go through the frames, right after it
says "Directed by Stanley Kubrick," as soon as his name passes off the frame,
stop, and you will see that the clouds have Stanley Kubrick airbrushed into them. His face. With the beard, and the
wild hair, and the whole thing. I know this one's a little harder to
find. And I will have to Photoshop this one to show people it, but
there is definitely the photograph of Stanley Kubrick, in one frame,
airbrushed into the clouds. [YMS] Really? You're just gonna allow this
crazy man to make claims and stick it into your shitty little movie without
doing any fucking checking yourself? Are we supposed to see it in the footage
that you're showing while he's saying it? It seems like you couldn't find it
yourself while you were editing this, so why the fuck is it in the movie? You don't think it would be smart
to get him to send you, like, an outline of where it should
be in the clouds? Or send you, like, a picture of
the frame, or something? You'd think that I'd be able to
find a fucking example of it on Google Image Search... Oh, here is the only picture featuring
such a thing on the entire internet! Except, what a surprise! It's
obviously fabricated! The documentary itself goes frame-
by-frame and it shows the exact same frame that this Phoshopped
picture was taken from. Hmm! I wonder why it's not showing up
in the actual film footage! Some people in this documentary have
intelligent things to say, but you're drowning them out
with crazy people! When someone says something in your
documentary that you can't even back up yourself, then you should
cut them from the movie! [Clip] We're supposed to be focused
on the two girls there. And then I saw, over on the left...
I see this skiing poster. And the thing is that you already have
Jack. He's already asked about skiing. But why isn't, you know,
"What about skiing? Isn't the skiing good here in the hotel?"
And he's already given the story of why it isn't good,
why they can't do that. But you got the skiing poster,
and my eye is drawn to it. And I realize that's not a skier.
That's a... that's a minotaur. It just leaped out at me.
And so that was something that I was able to look at later on VHS,
and say, "yes, I had actually seen a minotaur there," where the upper body,
you've got this really, you know, overblown physique,
very physical physique. And then you've got the suggestion...
you have a suggestion of a skiing pole there, but it's not really
there. It's just a suggestion of one. And the lower body is positioned, the
way the legs are, it's like a minotaur, the build is. And you've actually got
the tail there. And so, it is a minotaur. And this is in... on the opposite side
of the door, you have a cowboy on a bucking bronco, so... and so you got
a kind of echo there, where you got the minotaur on one side, the bull-man,
and on the other side you got the cowboy, the man on the bucking bronco. You have Wendy and Danny outside playing.
And Jack is inside the Colorado Lounge, and he's looking out at them.
His head is tilted down, and his eyes are somewhat... his eyes are elevated.
They're pointing up. And his eyebrows are drawn up.
But he has this expression on his face that he gets progressively throughout
the film, that is very bull-like. It has a very minotaur-like expression. [YMS] Who are these fucking people? The documentary is not even remotely
well-made on a technical level, either. When I first noticed they didn't have
any video footage of the people being interviewed, I thought it was a
stylistic choice, like Senna. But after a while it became increasingly
apparent that each person recorded their own interviews at home.
I'm sure that saved lots of money! [Clip] He's like, leaning back,
and eating a sandwich. Two women... and just as he's
in the corner of the screen... You just see it for a second.
You see one of the women is wearing, like, a 13, a
number 13 jersey. [child yells in the background] Can you hear that? My boy, yelling?
Hold on one second. I'm gonna see if I can... I can see
if I can calm him down. [YMS] Oh, that's so cute and quirky!
I'm sure everyone watching this documentary is really interested in
the personal life of some fucking Randy! Oh, could you talk a little
slower, please? [Clip] Entrap him both... physically, but
also, like... that will be the last straw for him... Last straw for
the... management of the hotel. It's in the store room that he finally
is like, "Okay... Now I'm gonna do it..." And, you know, the opening of that
door is the... famous, like... only thing that's supernatural that happens
in the movie that can't be explained any other way...
Yeah... [giggles] But except that it can be explained
another way... in that Danny lets him out. [YMS] Like... Um... Yeah... Uh-huh... Do you know how easy it would be
to edit all of that shit out, considering it's only audio? Here's the actual useful information
that I was left with. The constant theme that Stanley Kubrick
wanted to portray in this film was that of denial and acceptance of
great horrors throughout society. The arguments made that have
actual weight and substance are those pointing towards symbolism
of the Holocaust and the genocide of the American-Indian. Iconic symbols of the Holocaust would
be those of eagles being shown throughout the film, and a German
typewriter that even changes color throughout the
course of the movie. And as for Native Americans, they even
say in the movie that the hotel's built on an Indian burial ground. And we can see Native-themed images
hidden throughout the movie, as well. Although those concepts are somewhat
vague, they're definitively interesting and add to the experience
of the film overall. It's cool to think of a horror movie
that's realizing and coming to terms with the great atrocities
committed by mankind. And it provides a really interesting
statement on how we're able to cope with those things
in present time. It would be cool if most of the
documentary was like this, but it's filled with idiots! [Clip] And there's a key in the lock.
And on the key are... is the words "room", and then the word "n-o",
which is an old acronym for "number". So "room number 237," except that
the only capital letters on the key are r-o-o-m and then the "n" from
the acronym n-o. And there's only two words that
you can come up with that have those letters in them. And that's "moon" and "room." [YMS] Only two words?
You know what else I can spell? "Moron"! "Hey, if you play the movie backwards
and forwards at the same time, some of the things match up,
at certain times. But only sometimes." [Clip] There's a really cool part where,
like... you know, the helicopters are following his car, and his name...
his name scrolls up in the credits and, like, meets the car, right...
right in the same position where the grid of photographs... right
in that photograph that he's trapped in... So his car, his name, and his photograph
all line up for one second... Pretty cool... [giggles awkwardly] [YMS] Wow, three things lined up in
the exact center of the shot? Well, the name and the car are from
the forwards version of the movie being played, so those were
already in the exact center. So how are you impressed by the
pictures being in the center? They're in the center while it's being
zoomed out for fucking 30 seconds! It's really not that unlikely! If the scene happened 5 seconds
sooner or later, the exact same thing would've happened! Things lining up in the exact
center of the frame? Could it be that symmetry
is commonly used in movies because it's appealing to
the fucking eye? This movie is such a fucking
waste of concept. With the decent points being
made about The Shining, this could've worked as a short film. But not only are the rest of
the points utterly ridiculous, some of them don't have
shit to do with anything! [Clip] His movies are... they create
synchronous situations in themselves. There's this man who says, you know,
"Quite a party, isn't it?" Why did Kubrick put him there,
with the split down his head? Why did he put him there?
And I was contemplating that. And in comes my son. And he was
nine years old at the time. And he didn't know what
I was working on. And he came in, and he began
to tell me a story. And he said, "I've just thought this up."
And his character's head was split open with a chaos bolt. And the character says, "Talk about
a splitting headache!" And out of the contents of his head leaps
a small person, who is his real self. And it goes running off, saying
in a high, squeaky voice, "Forget this! I'm going home!" And, yeah, I thought that was
really stunning synchronicity, I mean, because you've got
all the elements there. You've got the ax, you've got the
whole idea of the lightning bolt, the chaos bolt, striking the person's
head, the splitting headache. You've got Tony...
Tony's squeaky voice, yeah. I thought that was
quite a synchronicity. [YMS] Why is some irrelevant story
your stupid kid made up getting any screen time
in this documentary? This movie gets a 42 out of 237. [Subtitles by Jokerine]
"M.O.R.O.N." classic Adam!
93% on RottenTomatoes... At least some of the critic reviews were funny when insulting the film:
"The theories proposed in the doc "Room 237" aren't eye-opening. They're laughable."
"Listening to fanatics go on and on about their fixations can be kind of fun. For a while, at least."
"The wave of hype about this movie has already started. To which I'd offer this thought: Bullshit."
Makes me wonder why someone would look at some of this footage and give the ok
That Minotaur thing was the weirdest shit I've heard in awhile. Even if it had been a picture of a Minotaur and not a silhouette of a person skiing with the caption "SKI", it still wouldn't have meant anything.
Dat subliminal Cage