1991: The Doors

The Doors (1991, Stone) 2/10

I am the Lizard King. And I can do anything (Jim Morrison)

"Jim Morrison is a drunken buffoon posing as a poet" (Lester Bangs in Almost Famous)

There are many theories as to when "The Sixties" as a socio-cultural phenomenon ended. Some scholars attest to the murder of actress Sharon Tate by the Manson Family in August, 1969; others point to the violent demise of Meredith Hunter: a spectator who was stabbed to death at the Rolling Stones free concert at Altamont by a member of the concert's Hells Angels-led security crew on December 6, 1969.

The aura of violent intrigue and darkness which surrounds these two events was shocking in its context, but certainly not anomalous in 1960's culture. After all, violence was threaded throughout Western culture in the late Sixties as seen through student protests in Europe and the United States, the Vietnam War and the assassinations of prominent politicians and civil rights leaders such as Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

The artistic sub-cultures of the late '60s also became darker. Undernearth the memorialized collective spectre of "innocence," there lay a rotting core of vice and sin. The drugs and philosophies of love designed to expand human potential soon began to stifle its creative possibilities. The frivolous intakes of "mind-expanding" narcotics soon gave way to harder substances and corresponding habits. As a result the music became bleaker and darker as performers accelerated the throttle of their dependencies. Songs entitled "Heroin" and "Communication Breakdown" encapsulated this culture of destruction and dissolution.

Unsurprisingly, by the end of the decade, a slew of its most iconic musicians all perished under grim circumstances. Between 1969-1970 alone, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, and Tammi Terrell all passed away. Yet, one of the most notable deaths of a Sixties icon would occur in 1971, when Doors frontman was found dead in his Paris apartment due to an apparent overdose.

Influenced by Nietzschean philosophy, Brechtian theatre and the writing of Rimbaud and the Beats, Morrison represented the socio-musical shift from breezy projections of "flower power" to edgier sounds and lyrics focusing on themes of violence, sex and death. Coupled with his metaphysical lyrics, his lewd onstage performances and off-stage antics, Morrison created an aura doused in myth and mystery.

It is through this public spectre of Morrison as counter-cultural icon that director Oliver Stone tries to capitalize on in his 1991 film The Doors: a film less about the band itself and more a MacGuffin to explore the intricacies of Morrison himself. The film can be described as a series of intertwined vignettes about the evolution of The Doors from a cohesive neo-psychedelic West Coast quartet to a blues band splintered by an increasingly notorious and unreliable lead singer.

Beginning in idyllic sun-soaked mid-Sixties, the film captures a young Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) who basks in the glow of the Sixties. As a student of UCLA's Film School, Morrison is privy to the expansion of the university system in the United States as the "baby boomers" entered college. But instead of preparing for a life of endless opportunities, we see a disgruntled figure alienating himself from the world through avant-garde cinema and poetry. Thus, Stone tries to position Morrison as one of the millions of disaffected youth in mid-Sixties America who would begin to clamour for social and cultural change.

But in the case of Morrison this never occurs. At least not in The Doors. Morrison's desires for expansive consciousness are not altruistic, but instead self-serving and ultimately nihilistic. His democratic approach to decision-making becomes anarchic as his reliability decreases along with his ability to perform. Bandmates are intimidated, threatened and abused for standing in his way, while long-time girlfriends like the overly sunny Pamela Courson (a woefully miscast Meg Ryan) become objectified safehouses: metaphysical places to return to when problems deepen.

The cryptic poems-cum-lyrics which inspire Morrison's classmate Ray Manzarek (Kyle McLachlan) to form the band along with drummer John Densmore (Kevin Dillon) and guitarist Robbie Krieger (Frank Whaley) are viewed as enigmatic as Morrison himself. Yet, for all his philosophical mutterings and pretensions as a poet, it has been argued by musical scholars that the majority of Morrison's best lyrics were often homages to his favourite poets and writers such as Blake and Rimbaud. Moreoever, once Morrison's initial poetry books were exhausted, his ability to compose lyrics of real flavour and intent were drowned in a sea of hard liquor and drugs.

Throughout his career, Oliver Stone has faced critcism for his often interpretative methodology: earning the ire of an impish Quentin Tarantino with Natural Born Killers and the entire nation of Greece for his revisionist portrayal of Alexander the Great. The Doors is no different. The surviving members of The Doors, and keyboardist Ray Manzarek in particular, have labelled Stone's film as misintepretation of the Morrison legend and the dynamics within the band. Manzarek went so far to even proclaim the picture as a "white powder film."

The Doors is a film of aesthetic vulgarity: an excuse for blatant fictionalism, extended trips, extraneous nudity and visual excess. Entering into the contours of creative myopia, Stone uses the film as a forum to dispatch stereotypes of the decade's attachment with carnality. Yet, Stone never develops the possibilities within the material. The Doors becomes less a document of the fall of Sixties culture and more an elevation of cliched narratives about rock n' roll behaviour.

The Doors is a rare film that simultaneously feels too long and too short as Stone spends too much time focusing on Morrison's exploits, and too little in examining their consequences. Once the film enters Andy Warhol's Factory, the concept of The Doors as a musical unit is discarded. Thus, Stone never rounds his film. There are no insights into the effects as to how Morrison's actions affected the band. Yes, we see him drunkly meander into studios, but the band still produce records. In light of his star status, it is probable that his bandmates would have feared for their careers in a post-Morrison group, yet Morrison never enters into the inner workings of characters.

Even, Kilmer's eerie portrayal of Morrison is limited by Stone's lack of psychological intrigue. Only via a whispered sub-Freudian relationship with his Navy Admiral Father is their a possible source for Morrison's design for life. But even Stone's overly repetitive attention to Morrison's claim of soul transference with a deceased Native American does not offer any insight into how a wandering Florida army brat could become at once a tender would-be-poet only to become an obnoxious miscreant.

And while Stone's thesis attempts to sanctify Morrison as the ultimate troubled youth and elevate him to the status of a poetic genius, the film's overall approach fails to justify such claims. Instead of a lyrical heir to Rimbaud, Stone enshrouds his savage protagonist in waves of creative impotency. And while Stone's use of Native American imagery and death attempts to give Morrison a clairvoyant mystique, the director conciously neglects the singer's self-destructiveness; which is neither tragic, nor supernatural, but symptomatic of his reckless behaviour.

Thus, The Doors becomes a dirge to excess, waste and hedonism. Stone's film rightly exposes the sinister underbelly of the 60's myth, but it also elevates the myth from a sub-culture into a universal memory. Its disconnected abstract scenes of fiery concert tribalism and inner destruction are detached to the domesticated world of sugary romance and clunky tenderness Stone attempts to contrast them with. If the surviving members of The Doors are to be believed, Stone's film is also an alien representation of their band's ethos and surrounding counter-cultural values. Yet, in this messy pastiche of directorial debauchery one finds a figure whose influence seems based more on controversy than actual talent: a story of a drunken buffoon posing as a poet; and an immoderate director facading as an artist.

* The Doors is available on Artisan Home Video

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque