my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Room 237
Director:   Rodney Ascher
Year:   2012
Genre:   Documentary
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   09.26.12

Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
09.26.12Alamo South LamarThis Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2012
A documentary catalogging various insane theories by people who have seen the movie a shitload of times. This seemed to be pretty divisive at the fest. To those that thought it was just crazy people talking and got bored with it, I see you're point. It's my motherfucking kind of crazy though so I loved the shit out of this.

The film is really well constructed, using footage from the film (and many many others, surprisingly deep cuts) to illustrate the interviewee's points very well. They never actually show the interview subjects on screen which I liked very much. It reminded me of the old Alamo features that Kier-La and Lars used to edit together from found and archival footage (this was helped by me sitting with Kier-La and her saying this was just like the old stuff she used to do). Furthermore every obtuse reference and minor detail is queued up and displayed for you so you can actually follow the crazy machinations as they unfold. There's one great scene though where someone notes that you can see Stanley Kubrick's face in the clouds of a certain external shot in the film and the doc lets you look for it on your own without the box highlights or arrows that help you out troughout the rest of the film. All of a sudden I found myself frantically searching for this image of Kubrick in these clouds and realized the entire theater was doing the same. It's a really nice subtle touch that I loved and had fun talking to people about afterward (I didn't see him. I thought I saw a huge pair of eyes but other people claimed to have found a full portrait of him)

Also, kudos to the fest for screening The Shining backward and forward like they talk about in this doc. In kind of a dark side of the moon touch, if you watch them superimposed several cool overlays happen. Unfortunately, both screenings of this experiment were against can't-miss screenings so i didn't get to see all of it but the doc helpfully shows us the specific scenes that are mentioned so I don't feel like I completely missed out.