2015 Off Topic Thread

[SPX]

I'll have to check it out. I'm usually not one for "fan theories", though. I usually just chalk the obscure shit up to artistic license. Half the time the director doesn't even know why he does certain things, it just "feels" right to them.

Well with Room 237, I don't think the director even wants you to take most of the theories seriously, he just wants you to be dumbfounded by the fact that there are even people out there who think like that. But like I said, some of them ARE pretty interesting and thought-provoking.

I actually have been meaning to go back and watch The Shining and Room 237 back to back.

Also, that's an interesting note about directors and what "feels" right to them. I'm reading a book right now called "Looking at Movies," which is about formal criticism of film. The authors always stress how the directors are constantly making decisions about elements in their films that are supposed to mean something -- the angle of a shot, the proliferation of a color, the speed of the editing, etc. It has really made me wonder how much of what we see on the screen really is THAT deliberate and how much is not.

[Ludo]

Well with Room 237, I don't think the director even wants you to take most of the theories seriously, he just wants you to be dumbfounded by the fact that there are even people out there who think like that. But like I said, some of them ARE pretty interesting and thought-provoking.

I actually have been meaning to go back and watch The Shining and Room 237 back to back.

Also, that's an interesting note about directors and what "feels" right to them. I'm reading a book right now called "Looking at Movies," which is about formal criticism of film. The authors always stress how the directors are constantly making decisions about elements in the film that are supposed to mean something -- the angle of a shot, the proliferation of a color, the speed of the editing, etc. It has really made me wonder how much of what we see on the screen really is THAT deliberate and how much is not.

I've seen enough "behind the scenes" interviews where directors have just been like "oh, that? That means nothing, I just thought it looked cool." I'm sure plenty of things are very deliberate, but take things like the elevator filled with blood in the Shining, for instance. I don't personally feel that it "means" much of anything, so much as it seemed like a great shot for the overall feel of the movie and the progression of Jack's psychosis. Or a lot of the imagery in Tim Burton's films. Much of that is just superfluous, even for ambiance and the atmosphere of things, but that's his thing, and it works for him.

I feel like a lot of directors get caught up in these kinds of theories because so many well known directors love to draw on motif, and inject themes all throughout a film, as if to somehow keep it grounded, or on track. Kind of like authors, to be honest. They can't always tell you what a particular passage or line means. It just felt right, so they kept it in there, and trying to endlessly interpret every bit and piece is a sort of fruitless exercise in redundancy. Some people just need to take things for what they are in the most literal sense, but many times you get these psuedo-intellectuals who have to find the deeper meaning in everything. Sometimes a hole in the ground is just a hole in the ground, you know?.