Review: Room 237 (2012)

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2012, Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, Rodney Ascher, Room 237

Director: Rodney Ascher
Stars: Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns
Plot: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is analysed by fans of the film, who espouse both the popular theories and their own takes as to the meanings behind this cinematic masterpiece.

If ever there was a film that had so many layers, meanings and theories behind it, then it is The Shining. On the one hand, you could view it as being a straightforward horror movie, where a man goes completely mad through isolation and tries to kill his wife and son. Then there is the belief that the house itself represents much more than just being alone in the mountains, cut off from civilisation; it is essentially alive with the dead, with an element of time-travel. An incredible amount has been written about what The Shining is actually about, that many of the more (and lesser) popular perceptions of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film are presented here for us to consider.

Room 237 is a collection of fan interviews, each with their own methods of analysing the intricacies of The Shining. These vary from stopping the film at various points and zooming in on cans of food which bear a picture of a Native American as part of a wider and arguably the most popular view that the film is about the cultural cleansing of America during the period 1790 to 1920. Certain scenes of dialogue are rewound as we are reminded that the Overlook Hotel was “built on an Indian burial ground”; this and many other hints and more obvious signs of the significance of Red Indians such as pictures on the wall, are depicted. The Holocaust is apparently represented within the movie, as piles of suitcases are seen early on, while the Torrances are moving in and the staff retreat for the winter – Kubrick apparently took great interest in the fate of the Jews during World War II and their forced displacement and mass execution, much like the Native Americans.

Throughout the documentary, there is a large segment devoted to a theory that Stanley Kubrick helped to stage the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Various moments in the film, such as the jumper that Danny is shown wearing when a ball mysteriously rolls towards him in the corridor, to the key fob to room 237 itself are both explored as being Kubrick hinting that he helped to set the whole thing up, but couldn’t tell anyone except his wife, his conversation with whom is apparently included in the film’s dialogue. Aside from the more obvious themes and ideas scattered around the hotel, there are also more of the obsessive details that would be extremely difficult for the average film audience to spot. There’s a suggestion that Jack’s interviewer Stuart Ullman is somehow sexually aroused when they meet, minor characters are timed by the director to walk past the screen at exact moments in perfect choreography and Kubrick himself can be seen in a cloud formation, during the famous opening driving scenes.

Room 237 sounds like an absolute dream, not just for fans of The Shining, but for film students and movie geeks in general. Being able to see a ready-made documentary about a film that has fascinated for many years gives us a great opportunity to stop and think about the weird and macabre events that we associate with the Overlook Hotel. The room number itself represents one of the most puzzling of cinematic enigmas that is open to interpretation and just the mention of it to your average film-goer tends to spark a very intriguing debate – choosing this as the title is therefore a masterstroke in marketing. The increasingly common documentary style of doing away with the traditional talking heads and replacing them with voiceovers serves the film well. Because there are so many clips, not just of The Shining, but also many of Kubrick’s other films throughout which there are many repeating references, it is relief that we are able to focus on what is actually being talked about, instead of going back and forth from footage to a random person and back again. Many of the theories put forward are consequently given plenty of coverage and, even though we might disagree with them wholeheartedly, there is the chance to at least hear what each fan has to say.

The ideas addressed in the film range from the absolutely fascinating to the downright ridiculous. The most interesting and gripping theories involve the allegories and very subtle background hints about the Native American genocide and Kubrick’s directorial style which incorporates the deliberate placing of objects in your field of view that you probably wouldn’t notice on a first showing, but when it is pointed out to you, it really makes you think about how clever Kubrick really was. Riding along behind Danny’s tricycle via the famous Steadicam is one of the most iconic and unsettling scenes (of which there are three) in the entire film. One of the segments takes us on a virtual journey, mapping each ride around the spooky hallways, so that we can actually see the impossible geography involved in the route he takes; this is Kubrick once again being the master of mind manipulation. Aside from the more thought-provoking aspects, there are a few frustrating and hokum claims about Kubrick’s involvement in faking the Apollo 11 moon landing, which might be true (let’s not rule it out entirely), but the way that it is justified is poorly constructed and presented as fact by a fan, just because ‘he knows’. There are also one or two hypotheses that you can see the director’s face in the clouds, a character stands in front of a paper tray which allegedly represents a euphemism and playing the film forwards and reverse simultaneously and overlaying the two proves something amazing, apparently.

Room 237 is slightly annoying and pedantic at times and feels like some of the people involved have way too much time on their hands. However, the subject matter is nonetheless spellbinding to anyone who has seen The Shining. While Kubrick’s film might not be everyone’s cup of tea, this is still a very welcome look at the director’s work in general and a terrific study in filmmaking.

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Review: Senna (2010)

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2010, Alain Prost, Asif Kapadia, Ayrton Senna, Frank Williams, Senna

Director: Asif Kapadia
Stars: Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Frank Williams
Plot: The career of Brazilian Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna is traced to his untimely death in 1994 at the age of 34.

“Live fast and die young” as the saying goes. Arguably the life of Ayrton Senna is summed up both perfectly yet tragically by this apparent ideal of those who wish to remain ‘immortal’ (which in itself is dreadfully ironic). Senna’s career as a racing driver was cut short during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, where his car left the track on his seventh lap with devastating consequences. Senna charts the politics, egos and media frenzy that surrounded the sport (and still largely do) during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when intensely fierce rivalries were not only confined between teams, but also team-mates.

The documentary begins with the dawning of Senna’s career in the go-kart competitions of his native Brazil. His parents are shown to be financially comfortable enough to be able to afford for him to enter Formula Three and subsequently Formula One, where he tested cars for British-based Williams, McLaren, Toleman and Brabham teams. He makes his debut with Toleman during the 1984 season, before moving onto Lotus. Having built up a reputation for having a great deal of potential due to his intelligent and daring racing style, Senna is signed up by McLaren who, with the approval of then-double world champion and number one driver Alain Prost, is installed as the team’s number two and so starts the most tempestuous and successful part of his career.

Ayrton Senna’s arrival at McLaren hailed a period of almost complete domination of motor racing. However, this also meant that Senna and Prost were now vying for the World Championship as team-mates and rivals, consequently having a number of run-ins on the track which led to relations between the two to become increasingly fractious. Senna’s fame, especially back home, became stratospheric and he had the pressure of an entire nation willing him to overcome his ‘nemesis’ Prost and be the best driver in the world. Various incidents cause Senna and Prost to gradually fall out, such as Monaco in 1988 and in the same year in Portugal. The following year Prost won the championship in controversial circumstances after colliding with Senna during the deciding race of the season at Suzuka in Japan. Senna eventually becomes the triple-champion before leaving for Williams, in whose car he would suffer a fatal crash in 1994.

Senna goes against the grain of the standard documentary formula. We expect footage and voiceovers but more often than not, talking heads interrupt the story and they tend to ruin the momentum of the fascinating world which is being portrayed. Here there are absolutely no cuts to anyone – this works extremely well, as the footage makes up the entire running time and therefore the immersion in the story is total. Such a vast amount of archive material has been assembled, that it is a racing fan’s dream, with not only just Ayrton Senna being featured, but also some of the greats, including Alain Prost. Everything is placed together chronologically, but there is never a dull moment as this incredibly gripping documentary details the various aspects of Senna’s rise to fame. Also featured are the troubles he encountered with not only the politics of the-then governing body Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) and its president Jean-Marie Balestre who is shows a similar managerial style to FIFAs Sepp Blatter, but also the pit lane pain suffered with his McLaren team-mate Prost.

If there’s one major criticism you would level at director Kapadia, it would be that the story is very much one-sided, placing Ayrton Senna upon some kind of Messiah-like pedestal. Despite the fact that Senna’s ego slips out on a couple of occasions, showing him to be a petulant child when pushed too far (much like his fellow drivers then and now), there is a recurring theme that Senna believes he is somehow anointed by God and has a destiny to win the World Championship – something that grates after a while. Senna himself plays down this suggestion later on, but there is still a sense that the film is essentially geared towards his exultation. The depiction of Alain Prost as some kind of pantomime villain is also difficult to take – we don’t even get a glimpse of the pressures facing Prost as the expectation on his shoulders had catapulted him into a similar stratosphere that Senna experienced later. Prost himself denounced Senna for this portrayal, saying that it did not address the fact that he and his great rival actually reconciled with one another and became firm friends in the last year or so of Senna’s life. An end credit note does say that Prost is a trustee of the Ayrton Senna Foundation, which begs the question why Kapadia has left this gaping fact out completely.

Senna has been said to be the kind of film that you don’t need any prior interest in the subject matter to enjoy it – this is inaccurate, as much of the archive footage goes very deep into the world of Formula One for much of its running time. Most likely those with even a passing interest in the sport from the most common participating countries such as Brazil, Great Britain, France and Spain will find this a rewarding experience and a largely inspiring look at a short life of a remarkable, ambitious man, filled with success but ultimate tragedy.

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Review: Project Nim (2011)

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2011, Bern Cohen, Bob Angelini, James Marsh, Nim Chimpsky, Project Nim

Director: James Marsh
Stars: Bob Angelini, Nim Chimpsky, Bern Cohen
Plot: Documentary about a chimpanzee that was raised as a child by a family in the 1970s.

Humans tend to be rather arrogant when it comes to respecting other species. Our ever-advancing technologies, roads and cities encroach onto the habitats of wild animals, as they are forced to move or worse, driven towards extinction. We have zoos and animal testing research facilities which, although they may benefit us for many reasons in the long-run, don’t really consider that to maximise the health and well-being of their subjects, captivity isn’t always the answer. Project Nim took this one step further, by assessing the ability of a chimpanzee to learn sign language whilst living with a family in the middle of New York.

The subject of the film, Nim Chimpsky (loosely named after Noam Chomsky who believed that only humans could learn language as we know it), was a chimpanzee taken away from his mother shortly after birth and given to the family of Stephanie LaFarge to raise as a human baby. Alongside Nim’s unusual upbringing, he was taken to Columbia University where a team of scientists taught him American Sign Language as part of a study to see if apes can learn to develop language skills. At home, Nim wore clothes, was even breastfed by Stephanie and encouraged to use the sign language he had learnt to ask for food, drink, express the need to go to the toilet and even smoke marijuana. Concerns were raised however, when Nim started to display increasing characteristics of his kind, biting into the cheek of one of his teachers quite horrifically.

Nim was subsequently removed from the family home and eventually ended up at a medical research laboratory on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. This was the first time Nim had really any interaction with other chimps. Bob Ingersoll, a research graduate at the university, used sign language to comfort him in his new, alien surroundings. This particular facility was the kind we see at the beginning of ‘don’t mess with nature films’ which turns out to be an appropriate verdict on the whole enterprise, but here it marks more the beginning of the end of the project and Nim’s cushy life. He was rescued and taken to a quiet retirement ranch for small animals, where he lived out the rest of his days before dying of a heart attack at the age of 26.

Project Nim has to be reviewed on two counts. Is this an affecting subject matter for a documentary and do the filmmakers do this subject justice? This answer is yes and not really, in that order. Nim’s life story is deeply moving and it is difficult watching the film without being bewildered at how naive and reckless the people who conceived this idea must have been. It is easy to say that looking back, but even so, the way in which Nim was taken from his mother (who, by the way we are told, knew what was coming as her previous offspring had been whisked off just as cruelly), without a thought for either of them, is hard to take in. Despite there being a certain goal to the whole exercise, was there enough research done to ensure that Nim’s welfare was the top priority and not that it was to prove people wrong or gain publicity? There is a great deal of uncertainty as to whether this was the case – a vain project this looks to have been.

As a stand-alone documentary, Project Nim feels too cobbled together. What is essentially a mish-mash of home footage, diagrams and talking heads makes the whole experience feel like you’re watching one of those old educational films you’d see at school. The result is a detachment from a story which should really grip you from start to finish, but instead becomes strangely tedious – much like James Marsh’s overrated documentary of Philippe Petit’s daring World Trade Center stunt in Man on Wire (2008). However, while you root for Nim and those who care for him (not really that many as it turns out), Marsh does manage to let those who had first-hand access to the chimp to have their say and not let bias get in the way of a good story.

Project Nim has received too much praise, mainly based on sentimentality for Nim and his tragic fate. As first and foremost a documentary, this is certainly one that is worth watching but not for its structure or style, that’s for sure.

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Review: Life in a Day (2011)

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2011, Kevin MacDonald, Life in a Day, Ridley Scott

Directors: Kevin MacDonald, Natalia Andreadis et al.
Stars: Cindy Baer, Moica, Caryn Waechter
Plot: A snapshot of life on Earth, shot by filmmakers around the world on 24th July 2010

YouTube has made millions of people filmmakers in their own right. From the imaginative to mundane and the surreal, all you need to create a video for people around the world to see is a simple idea and a webcam. So it’s perhaps inevitable that a coordinated project to see what life is like around the world on a particular day would be made. Up to now, there have been synchronised – usually musical – contributions, but never on the scale of Life in a Day.

This is a documentary on a grand scale. But where most films of the same ilk feature a voice-over, there is no such thing here – the various videos are left to speak for themselves. Moving chronologically throughout the day, we follow the stars of the show performing their waking up rituals, going to work, interacting with others and the world around them. Affecting stories about life and death – the effect that illnesses have on people and their families crops up time and again. There are also some disturbing images – a cow is slaughtered (shown rather graphically) and footage of the stampede that ensued at the Love Parade festival in Duisburg, Germany which resulted in the deaths of 21 people.

As far as nature is concerned, sunsets feature heavily, as do cloud formations, city skylines and mountain ranges – many of these images were captured by cameras that were sent into the most remote and poorer areas of the world, where YouTube is practically or actually non-existent. Questions were set for the DIY filmmakers upon which to base their videos. What do you love? What do you fear? What’s in your pocket? Many of the answers given are very random yet others are predictable (and some downright illegal).

With cinematic heavyweights Ridley and Tony Scott involved, this should have been a lot more coherent than it is. The questions posed to contributors really don’t mean a great deal, as the vast majority of the film has nothing to do with them. With the only common theme being on which day everything was shot, the result is a mish-mash of the dull, occasional beautiful scenery and the obligatory controversial themes. The vast amount of material amassed and edited is a commendable achievement, but with a little more thought this could have been a much more interesting proposition.

Life in a Day is a thought-provoking look at life in different cultures around the world, but it is too fractured to be considered a classic piece of ground-breaking filmmaking.

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