Room 237

ROOM 237 is a brilliant work of alternative film criticism – and cri-tique of criticism – exploring conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING – not the production so much as the final product, in which a handful of self-proclaimed experts see allusions to the Nazi Holocaust, the genocide of the American Indians and Kubrick’s implicit admission that he “directed” the Apollo 11 moon landing. These pundits are heard but not seen; filmmaker Rodney Ascher has created an illustrative montage to complement their expli-cation of their theories. The director refrains from his own verbal commentary, or from pushing toward a single interpretive conclusion. He merely collages imagery from the film (and from other films, most notably Kubrick’s EYES WIDE SHUT) against the litany of inter-pretations offered on the soundtrack, allowing the viewer to sort out the reasonable from the crackpot with help from his or her own experience of movie. (Karina Longsworth)

In the presence of Rodney Ascher.