The documentary Room 237 outlines various interpretations of The Shining – that the film is about the slaughter of Native Americans, the Holocaust, or is Kubrick’s apology for faking the footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing:
Kubrick’s longtime assistant and collaborator Leon Vitali (who played Lord Bullingdon in “Barry Lyndon”) recently said that “Room 237” had him “falling about laughing most of the time” because he knows these ideas are “absolute balderdash.”
Billy Wyman enjoyed the film nonetheless:
What “The Shining” is really about will remain opaque. Beyond child abuse, writer’s block, and insanity is the history of the hotel, which seems to weigh Nicholson down more than anything. One commenter in “Room 237” makes this point: “This is a movie about the past. Not just our past, but ‘pastness’.” This, interestingly, parallels something Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker in her original, appreciative but skeptical review: “I hate to say it, but I think the central character of this movie is time itself, or, rather, timelessness.”
Noah Millman points to more underlying themes:
The resort to esoteric, secret meanings behind reality is a psychological comfort when the capriciousness of that reality is too threatening. When we badly need reality to make sense – to be sending us a message – secret codes and vast conspiracy theories provide that sense. So in a way, the existence of “Room 237″ is a testament to the success of “The Shining” in capturing the unassimilable horror of reality. If it weren’t so terrifying, nobody would see the need to tame it by explaining what it’s really about.
The Dish 