The Shining

per promo email for Room 237

Opens in New York on March 29 at IFC Center and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center

National Expansion Begins April 5 in Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Seattle and Miami

i saw room 237 tnite. it's very compelling to watch - i was never bored and at times it was as frightening as watching the shining itself. both bc it is scored and edited so well and the scenes are gripping even when slowed down and decontextualized. also bc some of the theories are so outlandish and still so compelling (failing on an intellectual level while eliciting such a kind of interpretative ecstasy) that there's a real sense of insanity + untetheredness.

one thing that a lot of the theories of the film share is that they're about elisions of trauma. i don't remember how much the movie goes into this, but the book is pretty clearly dramatizing the abuse of danny by his father - in this kinda freudian analysis everything emerges from the broken arm incident (or sexual abuse i've heard argued) and the horrific phenomena are a manifestation of this sublimated wound. but other theories make a similar move. the film is about the holocaust, but kubrick can't look it head-on (room 237 notes that he abandoned his own holocaust film after struggling unsuccessfully w/ it), or the film is about the genocide of the native americans that slowly slips back into consciousness (the blood oozing from the sides of the elevator) - but can never be acknowledged directly.

when i first watched lolita i was struck first by how formal it was compared to the other - far more stylized - kubrick films i had seen (at the time the shining, full metal jacket, eyes wide shut). also (and i haven't read the original nabokov so i can't speak to how it compares) that kubrick so intentionally elides the central crime of the film - the 'murder' of charlotte and the ongoing rape of her daughter. instead the most explicit narrative of the film for me was this kind of doubled paranoia. like in the shining these supernatural events emerge from an internal psychological neurosis - in humbert's case the repressed guilt over his actions manifests as his being tracked and stalked throughout their trip together. it's a kind of interesting freudian procedure bc humbert's internal state is so overwhelming, so total and crushing that it eliminates dolores's narrative almost entirely (she becomes this subject/nymphet lolita character) and then actually redraws the contours of reality as well so that everything is humbert and his sado-paranoid psychosis (the strange phone calls, the inspector, etc).

(this is room 237's dominant mode of interpretation i think - this obliteration of subjectivity along the shape of the readers' own psychological topography. these interpretative fantasies are so potent that the shining seems to bend to accommodate them.)

also i don't know if kubrick faked the moon landing and i very much doubt that he did but i am also convinced that the shining is a film about him faking the moon landing. however you can tie those two assertions together idk.

room 237 notes that he abandoned his own holocaust film after struggling unsuccessfully w/ it

This was afterward, I think, The Aryan Papers (Julia Roberts)?

kubrick so intentionally elides the central crime of the film - the 'murder' of charlotte and the ongoing rape of her daughter.

well, 1962 censorship.

Johanna ter Steege was cast as the lead ultimately. The installation of her screen tests is one of the highlights of the LACMA exhibit.

nice post, mordy. I am intensely excited for Room 237.

Regarding "elision of trauma": I've been thinking about that a lot lately and I've been wondering if the rather obtrusive music in the movie isn't in some sense motivated along those line. It's funny how often the most seemingly banal things are imbued by Kubrick with such intense inchoate horror by the score and camera staging.

oh yeah i also wanted to mention re doubled paranoia that humbert humbert's name reflects this - this reflected projection of self + doubling, the self in subjective experience and the self silkscreened onto the supposed objective reality. and of course he's a literary scholar.

http://i.imgur.com/ZpN6Lda.jpg

kubrick so intentionally elides the central crime of the film - the 'murder' of charlotte and the ongoing rape of her daughter.

well, 1962 censorship.

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, February 13, 2013 10:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not really... that is pretty faithful to the book's aims

http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5ee/t/51107bb1e4b060f86e759b5f/1360034738849/DSCF4948.jpg?format=1500w

From this blog entry of exhibit photos: Kubrick at LACMA.

but s1ocki, SK subsequently said a filmed Lolita doesnt work w/out eros, which would surely make eliding rape harder, yeah?

I don't know if its filmable at all tbh considering how unreliable HH is...

http://newkidsonmycock11.tumblr.com/post/43512771318

http://newkidsonmycock11.tumblr.com/post/43512771318

just realized the link may scare. it's a lolgif.

Just realized that tumblr has a goddamned swastika at the top of it.

I just saw the US cut for the first time. The UK version - which is always on tv - cuts out the bit with the doctor at the start which means you have no idea about the abuse incident from a few months earlier. Strangely tho Jack makes a reference to it later in the film which is kept in. Also much of Halloran's journey back to the Overlook is cut so you dont really know he came from Florida.

heh ITV in the UK showed the US version a few times when they screened The Shining on TV in the 1980s

i seem to remember reading, somewhere on the web, that kubrick preferred the European cut - think the best edit wld prob be the Euro version WITH the scene w/ the doctor reinserted (Halloran's journey really slows the movie down in the US cut, think it works fine much shorter in the Euro version)

can't imagine the movie without the doctor scene but yeah i guess you could cut halloran's journey, altho it would diminish the sadistic ratio of time spent watching him travel to the hotel : time he survives once at the hotel, and i still think that's a good joke

Somewhere on some "Shining" ephemera website I saw a thing with Kubrick's meticulously detailed handwritten timeline of Halloran's travels vs. what was happening at the hotel at the same time, to make sure the timing made logical sense with the travel times and time zone changes. It was hilarious.

http://www.stephenking.com/images/books/doctor_sleep/doctor_sleep_full.jpg

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.

The pic didn't embed, but you can see the cover here: http://www.stephenking.com/promo/doctor_sleep/

thank god because i had so many unanswered questions

The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

quote marks killing me

he's been on a pretty good run lately so i'm not writing it off just yet. room 237 lived up to the hype btw, total trip.

"Aided by a prescient cat" has me side-eyeing this whole deal just a little bit.

They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester

The prescient cat?

"Aided by a prescient cat" has me side-eyeing this whole deal just a little bit.

― ARE YOU HIRING A NANNY OR A SHAMAN (Phil D.), Saturday, March 2, 2013 3:34 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was the thing that excited me the most!

Room 237 is a terrific watch. It reminded me, in a funny way, of the Rotten Apple youtube series "demonstrating" the Pal McCan'tBe conspiracy. It's an insight into a tangled thought process that makes some kind of internal sense but is utterly improbable.

nice Atkinson piece (R237 opens in NY Friday, LA too?):

http://blog.sundancenow.com/new-releases/viva-mabuse-30-bash-your-head-right-fucking-in

opens in LA on the 5th

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/128033/kubricks-lost-holocaust-film
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/127899/kubrick-room-237

i wanna go see room 237 sometime.

Seeing it today

Just saw Cuckoo's Nest today and was happy to see Scatman Crothers

lol, 237 is hysterical
such a good call not to show the conspiracy theorists

predictably, I loved Room 237. Just a lot of fun. I could have watched it forever.

Loved how moments of really penetrating insight are juxtaposed to the most extravagant reaching. Thought the guy who talked about the "pastness" and escaping from the horrors of history was really persuasive and even makes the film kind of moving. It's jives with what I've felt about it, anyway.

Loved the bit about the carpet. Never noticed it before and totally captivated by that idea. Also buy that many of the continuity errors are so obvious that they seem deliberate. I mean, a whole chair missing? Pants changing?

The main point against the Apollo guy isn't so much anything he says but his own paranoia and just how improbable and crazy what he's saying sounds.

also this movie brings up a feeling I wish had a name: when credulity turns to incredulity. you want to believe and agree, your fascinated and open to what is being said, and then the revelation comes and it doesn't connect with your experience and there's an urge to laugh and an even deeper feeling of disappointment or frustration, "no that's not it."

yeah i loved it, i think i laughed hardest at the women seeing the minotaur in the damn skiing pic. main takeaway i got was i really really want to see the shining again soon (and i'm not even that huge on kubrick compared to most of ilx and the shining esp doesn't rank that highly but just seeing it here was enough).

Oh man, I really want to see 237. And I don't even like the Shining all that much (I think it's good, just not... revelatory).

yeah i was like "I DON'T SEE A MINOTAUR!" but really does work with the maze theme?

and Kubrick's face in the clouds, and the really bizarre "phallus" that one guy sees.

yeah was so disappointed to not see kubrick's face in the clouds, I WANT TO BELIEVE

haha. also there's still SO MUCH weird shit that they don't even get to! dudes, no one has a clue what the blow-jobbing bear costume thing is about? and the one lady totally punts on the guy with the drink and split head.

must check imdb for other continuity errors

i cd swear the bear costume guy is straight from the book?

yeah but.....???

anyway other than the carpet thing my favorite part was the bill watson stuff, since that's always intrigued me as well. he's up to no good, that guy.

Bear guy is regularly used to suggest danny being abused by his dad, it seemed weird no one mentioned it?

The bear (actually dog costume) guy is from the book. There's actually a pretty detailed backstory for it that ties into the hotel's history. Kubrick presumably thought it was way freakier sans explanation. And he was right!