There's only so much you can say when talking about a documentary, particularly one that is about film itself, but the sheer range of emotions one experiences while watching Room 237 is as wild as many of the theories being espoused on the screen.
This is a delightfully mad view into the world of just some obsessive nerds (three out of the five who contribute to this have identical voices) who feel they have unlocked an elusive film by an even more elusive filmmaker.
It makes sense given Kubrick's own obsessive level of detail in his films that there can feasibly exist a sub-cult of obsessive pouring over the meaning of these details, and here we really get the full range of interpretation.
Some of the claims (the holocaust or fake moon landings apologies for instance) are downright bizarre and at times infuriating (something about faces in clouds) but never to a point where you stop being interested in what these misfits have to say.
Other theories are actually a lot more self-evident than their orators claim.
Of course the hotel is as just a disorientating maze as the literal hedge one outside, the film is supposed to be disorientating and of course this film is about the past and highlights the white-man's burden, the bloodshed of the native Americans haunts the film, and Colorado, throughout.
But some fascinating results still come from the experiments these interpretations require to give any kind of legitimacy.
The particular highlight is the idea of the film being played forwards and backwards simultaneously, which creates some incredible coincidences.
So in the end, this is a particularly enjoyable exercise in how interpretations can shape-shift, in any great art form, once boiled down to the sum of its parts, something Vladimir Nabokov (whose classic Lolita was directed by Kubrick) takes much pleasure beyond the grave in letting people get lost in the labyrinth references he created within his art.
This film provides the idea that Kubrick is probably up there laughing with him. www.ravechild.co.uk
