[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]