NYFF: "Room 237" Cult of the Overlook Hotel

Michael C. here with a look at one of the under-the-radar festival hits appearing the NYFF.

One of the subjects of Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 is convinced that Kubrick’s The Shining is the director’s thinly veiled confession that he helped NASA fake the moon landing. He admits at one point to wondering if his idea stretched plausibility, but he adds that any doubt went out the window when he spotted the image of the Apollo 11 rocket on young Danny Torrence’s sweater in a pivotal scene. What other explanation could there possibly be for Kubrick the perfectionist including such a thing?

This is the refrain all the subjects of Ascher’s documentary return to as they unspool their elaborate theories about the supposed hidden meanings of the horror masterpiece: Stanley Kubrick was a master, a control freak, a genius. Nothing ever found its way into his films by accident. To hear them speak, every detail, no matter how incidental, was one more ingredient in the filmmaker’s complex web of symbolism. Theories range from The Shining as a commentary on the genocide of the Native American, to a reading of the story as an allegory for the Holocaust.

By opting not to show any talking heads Ascher grants all the speakers equal footing, combining their words into an aural labyrinth of competing evidence. Some of their analysis is compelling. An attempt to map the floor plan of the Overlook Hotel reveals how rooms appear to shift and disappear from scene to scene. Other digressions are straight up kooky, as with the moon landing theorist’s proposition that the capital letters on a key chain marked “ROOM No. 237” are a subliminal attempt on Kubrick’s part to plant the words MOON and ROOM in the mind’s of audiences. (The film is too kind to point out they can also be arranged to spell MORON)

What keeps Room 237 from merely being an overblown DVD bonus feature is the cleverness with which Ascher uses the minutiae of the theories to explore the way our minds hunger to find meaning wherever we look. Our brains our designed to find connections, Room 237 says, and The Shining with its bottomless subtext, inexplicable imagery, and seemingly deliberate continuity errors provide a playground where such impulses can run amok.

At the center of the doc’s hedge maze of theories is Kubrick himself, still mysterious, still elusive as ever. Room 237 works broadly as a meditation on the relationship between artist and audience, but more specifically as a demonstration on the continued hold Kubrick has over audiences. Room 237 is a smart, engaging, often funny film. Should Ascher ever decided to apply the technique to other films I would be interested to see the results, even if another attempt may not work as well without Kubrick on hand to toy with our minds. B 

More on The Shining

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The Bay An Eco Conscious Slither
The Paperboy & the Power of Nicole Kidman's Crotch  
Bwakaw is a Film Festival's Best Friend
Frances Ha, Dazzling Brooklyn Snapshot
Barbara Cold War Slow Burn
Our Children's Death March 
Hyde Park on Hudson Historical Fluff 

NYFF: "The Bay" An Eco-conscious 'Slither'

Michael C. here, returned from having my skin properly crawled at the NYFF’s Midnight Movie series.

Barry Levinson's The Bay is the type of movie you would get if Al Gore decided to forget the whole PowerPoint documentary thing and made a movie where global warming boils everyone’s brain and brings on a zombie apocalypse. Levinson says he was first approached to make a documentary about industrial pollution killing Chesapeake Bay, but opted to direct The Bay instead. The premise involves a breed of sea lice - which look like those bed bugs you always see magnified in pest control ads - mutating into a creepy crawly menace after they find their way into the toxic chemical soup that is currently the Chesapeake.

Levinson says he and screenwriter Michael Wallach worked hard to keep the story grounded in reality. “85% based on fact” is the figure he used. Considering the majority of the film concerns itself with mutated ocean parasites eating Marylanders from the inside out that is not a comforting figure. At one point during the film a CDC official is presented with the image of one of these isopods grown to the size of a Doberman Pinscher. The CDC official can’t believe his eyes. “Tell me that’s Photoshopped!” It was found “trying to chew its way through the side of a submarine,” he is informed.  

“That’s a real picture,” Levinson helpfully explained during the Q & A following the movie. The story about the sub? Also true. It was as if Danny Boyle came out on stage following a screening of 28 Days Later and said, “Oh, yeah. Scientists are totally working on a rage virus,” and then produced on stage an infected monkey, straining on its leash trying to bite audience members.

So, yeah. Disturbing.

Beyond its unsettling basis in fact, The Bay is a modest, well-crafted creature feature that breathes new life into the found footage device. Levinson describes his technique as “an archeological dig” which culls video from every available source to reconstruct the timeline of the outbreak. In classic disaster movie fashion we follow the stories of several characters over the course of the day, and Levinson and the cast of unknowns do a first-rate job simulating amateur footage without calling attention to the gimmick.

The Bay may disappoint casual viewers who wander in looking for the usual horror movie thrills. The trailer sells it as a sort of zombie movie, but the infected do little more than moan and beg for medical attention. The sea lice could potentially make for terrific movie monsters, but Levinson refuses to crank up the gross-out moments to Fangoria levels. By keeping it all on a more plausible scale The Bay prevents us retreating behind the comfort of familiar movie beats to avoid the story's implications. As a horror film The Bay is a solid entry. A scrappy low budget Contagion with sea lice instead of germs. As a piece of subversive environmental agitprop, on the other hand, it is scary effective. B

More NYFF
Lincoln's Noisy "Secret" Debut
The Paperboy & the Power of Nicole Kidman's Crotch 
Room 237 The Cult of The Shining's Overlook Hotel  
Bwakaw is a Film Festival's Best Friend
Frances Ha, Dazzling Brooklyn Snapshot
Barbara Cold War Slow Burn
Our Children's Death March 
Hyde Park on Hudson Historical Fluff 

NYFF: "Bwakaw" is a Film Festival's Best Friend

Seventy year-old Rene (Eddie Garcia) is an elderly gay man who fits quite neatly into the crowded movie trope of "Grumpy Old Man." He doesn't have a lawn but he'd clearly want his neighbors to get off of it if he did. He doesn't seem to love anyone or anything other than his dog Bwakaw.

Eddie Garcia and Princess star in "Bwakaw", an Oscar contender from The Philippines

They say that a dog is a man's best friend but I don't think that it's usually meant quite so literally.  Rene is so grumpy that you aren't always sure he loves his faithful canine shadow. In one stinging heartbreakmidway through the film a veterinarian asks him "don't you ever touch your dog?" and it occurs to you that you've rarely seen him do so.

But Bwakaw isn't a demanding girl. She follows Rene everywhere he goes… except inside his house. She's been banned for making a mess the last time she was there and one imagines that was long ago; Rene doesn't let things go easily. He still sleeps, for example, in his boyhood home and he's still quite attached to all of his mother's things including her devout Catholicism though he isn't religious himself (This dichotomy informs several of the film's sharpest comic beats but that's a topic for a much longer piece.) So each night Bwakaw curls up sadly in the dirt at the bottom of the stairs leading to the sad man's bedroom and waits until morning to see her master again.

It's important to note here that Bwakaw the dog is a sandy girl. She'd be barely perceptible from Bwakaw the movie, with its terminally washed out light, colorless rooms, and graying characters, were it not for her happy trot and zest for life. Her name translates to "Voracious" though she's curiously slim and bony for a dog that likes to eat. 

Initially it's not at all clear why this film, a true gem from director Jun Lana and an absolutely worthy Oscar submission, is titled as it is. Bwakaw is not so much an active participant as a shadow, or a sidekick if you're feeling generous. For a good hour the film is little more than a perceptive character study -- not that those aren't welcome -- of a lonely gay man who's angry that he missed out on a full life.  In many ways Rene is a shadow in his own movie. Most of the colorful subplots, broad comedic bits, and vibrant personalities belong to other members of the cast.  Rene's "friends" (I use the term loosely given that he's consistently at odds with most of them) are two flamboyant gay men, a co-worker planning a trip to Canada, a rough taxi driver, a local priest who hears his confessions, and a woman losing her memory in a nearby old folk's home.

But when Bwakaw becomes ill Rene is finally shaken out of his ornery complacency and gradually begins to feel his life again instead of just planning for his death. The film beautifully and fluidly shifts to compliment his journey, letting more light and color and vibrancy into the images.

Many "feel good" inspirational movies boost the spirit synthetically by glossing over life's darkest moments or wishing them away with tunnel vision on the triumphant stuff. Rene's story, however harsh and lonely in its particulars, contains far richer inspiration at its core. Rene is so focused on mortality that he keeps forgetting to live but there's no point in climbing in the coffin before your time. Embrace whatever tiny happiness comes your way. Live. B+/A-

Related Pages
2012 Foreign Film Oscar Submissions Pt. 1: Albania to Italy
2012 Foreign Film Oscar Submissions Pt. 2: Japan to Vietnam
Foreign Film Finalist Prediction List just a little guesswork 

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Lincoln's Noisy "Secret" Debut
The Paperboy & the Power of Nicole Kidman's Crotch 
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Barbara Cold War Slow Burn
Our Children's Death March 
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NYFF: "Frances Ha" Dazzling Brooklyn Snapshot

Michael C. here to report on the first home run I've seen at the New York Film Festival. Frances Ha is the type movie experience I’m hoping for every time I plunk down my ticket money. It knows exactly what it wants to do and how it wants to do it and as a result it grabs you by the sleeve and pulls you right in. It is Noah Baumbach’s finest film to date and the big breakout due for Greta Gerwig for some time now. 

Frances (Gerwig) is a dancer who shares a Brooklyn apartment with her bestest buddy Sophie (Mickey Sumner). Pushing thirty and stalled professionally and personally, she is right at the age when spending her nights flitting around the city getting wasted with her girlfriend stops being cute and starts being a cause for concern. When events transpire to threaten Frances' holding pattern the wheels quickly come off her cushy existence.

With this film Baumbach has not expanded his style so much as smashed it into a thousand pieces and arranged them into a collage. [More...]

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NYFF: "Barbara" Cold War Slow Burn

Michael C. here with another dispatch from the New York Film Festival. This time it’s Barbara, Germany’s submission to the Foreign Language Oscar race. 

When you read as many movie reviews as I do you begin to pick up on certain code words critics will occasionally use, not unlike the way a real estate agent will describe an apartment as “cozy” instead of  “so small you have to open a window to use the microwave.” The reviews for Christian Petzold’s Barbara, for example, will no doubt refer to its “deliberate pacing” or its “slow-burning tension”. They will praise the admirable “subtlety” of the storytelling. All of these descriptors are accurate, no question, but they also dance around a simple blunt truth, which is that for long stretches Barbara is more than a bit boring.

Critics are forbidden to come right out and say this. First, because it makes the writer sound like he or she has zero attention span and wishes the film had more car chases and velociraptor attacks, and second, because the word is so damning it essentially negates the rest of the review. Might as well post the words DON’T SEE THIS in “Man Walks On Moon” sized letters if you are going to bring the word boring into the discussion.

In point of fact, Barbara is quite a good film...

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