Movie of My Week: The Doors (1991)
Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 12:01AM 
Oliver Stone movies are definitely an acquired taste, and many don’t age well, but this one does. To me, it is the closest you can come to feeling stoned without smoking pot; Stone just does that good of a job of making it trippy throughout, increasingly hallucinatory, and totally intertwined with the music.
As a rule, Stone’s use of existing music is pretty weak, but here he’s masterful—almost like he’s putting on a masters class (he appears in a cameo as a UCLA film school prof, with pretty fake-looking beard). Then again, The Doors’ music is unusually well-suited for sampling and segues, because they often start out with such strong and percussion and bass (which always got me, because they never show anyone playing bass for the Doors and I guess I always assumed it was Manzarek on the recordings).
Stone’s penchant for weird film effects fits here too. In short, the guy’s in his element.
I love the performances throughout, and especially admire Val Kilmer’s actual singing everything that’s done on-screen. I’ve always like Meg Ryan (before the face change), and like her here in a role she made her own. Lots of strong supporting people throughout, like Michael Madsen and Crispin Glover.
Yes, Stone goes in big on the Indian spirit story, and probably gives Morrison’s “witch wife” too much play, and the fun Jim known to so many intimates rarely appears, but these are the choices one makes in a two-hour retelling of even this short life.
Watch the featurettes because they really do capture the tension between the various survivors, estates, and Stone himself. He admits that what’s up on screen is his version, and his voiced doubts about certain aspects being fair or not are really engrossing.
I hadn’t watched it for years, and was pissed when I did recently with my elder son, because my Blu-Ray took the DVD and spit out that shrunken letterbox that sometimes happens with older-style DVDs of a certain age. The music really deserves the Blu-Ray quality capture too, because it’s so good.
But these bitches only heighten my realization of how much I love the film; a lesser film wouldn’t have elicited the same dated DVD dissatisfactions.
The promos call The Doors America’s greatest-ever rock band and it’s a defensible claim in my mind. So while admitting my clear bias, this is still my favorite music-based biopic. If anybody suggest we should watch something like that, this is the one I instinctively reach for. The only thing I like more is the Beatle’s Anthology, just because they’re all so entertaining when they discuss their careers.
Reader Comments (3)
I enjoy the Doors a great deal but Morrison has always been more Dadaist charlatan than shaman for me. I don't put him in the category of great American front men and songwriters who have led great enduring bans like Dylan, Brown, Cash, Petty, Holly, Prince, Springsteen, Orbison, Elvis at Sun Studios, Chuck Berry with whatever local drummer and bass player was hired for the night. The Byrds. Beach Boys. I'll throw in the honorary American bands like the Stones and Yardbirds, too. And the punks and garage rockers like MC5, Ramones and whoever Iggy Pop is fronting. All these bands endure and have timelessness that I don't see in the Doors.
But I have never seen the film and will check it out on your recommendation. Kinda partial to Coal Miner's Daughter and that great capture of the zeitgeist, Hard Days Night.
I remember seeing this in 91', and like you said, I went in sober and felt drunk/high when I came out. So much so I have not seen it since. I'll have to rewatch this again.
The Doors is also one of my favorite movies. Oliver Stone is a great storyteller, and he has a knack for using the imagery to convey very primal concepts. A classic example is the desert - and - caves scene, with a wild transition into an early performance of "The End".
"How many of you know you're alive!"
"When the doors to perception are opened, things will appear as they really are."
Stone uses similar technique in "Born On the Fourth of July" to take us from Ron Kovic's Long Island to a beach in Vietnam.
As a side note on globalization's expansion, perhaps we will see similar times of creativity and upheaval in other countries as they sort out their relationship to globalization.