THE DOORS
A film review by Sandy Grossmann
Copyright 1991 by Sandra J. Grossmann
Cast: Val Kilmer, Meg Ryan, Kyle MacLachlan, Frank Whaley, Kevin Dillon Director: Oliver Stone Screenplay: Jay Randal Johnson and Oliver Stone
Synopsis: A brilliant, eerie, difficult-to-watch recreation of Jim
Morrison's inexorable dance toward death. Stone's work is
mature and restrained, and Kilmer is outstanding. Worth
seeing at full price on a big screen, but remember to bring
ear plugs: the sound will probably be way too loud.
"The show is about to begin." We look around at the audience, my husband and I, wondering how many people in the theatre were old enough to form sentences when Morrison died. Half? Less than half? Will the young ones get it or will they be mesmerized?
By now you've probably seen pictures of Kilmer-as-Morrison. It's uncanny. Tumbled locks of hair, slightly parted lips, the eyes bemused... What was there about that face, about Morrison? Like Rudolf Valentino, he had a femininity that attracted females. Like James Dean, he had a rebellious streak that attracted males. And like Janis Joplin, he had a self-destructive urge that attracted and repelled would-be saviors.
THE DOORS is a disturbing film. A relentless soundtrack, visually skewed images, warped colors, and shamanistic shapes combine into an assault on the senses. Fascinated, we watch. Just as his fans did. Like moths drawn to a bonfire.
Who lit the fire that consumed Morrison? Was it his fans? His band? His girlfriend? His parents? His own visions? Was he an overrated rock star? An underrated poet? Stone's film is like a documentary: scene after scene replayed, vaguely familiar. We want to hear Morrison explain what happened to him, but he doesn't. We want to turn him away from that bathtub in Paris, but we can't. Morrison is beautiful and he is hateful. He gives his soul to his fans and he attacks his friends. He is naive and innocent one moment, brutal and pretentious the next.
This film is about excesses and pushing past limits. In a sense, the 60's were about that, too. Break the old boundaries: they no longer apply. They were our parents' rules, but we are free of their restrictions. We can do anything.
The limits, though, weren't the problem. Morrison and drugs and death weren't the solution.
It is said that every generation must define meaning for itself, and fortunately, most of us survive the experience, even if we fail the test. Perhaps we use our leaders as scouts, cheering them as they blaze the trail. We follow much later, if at all. In Morrison's case, well, we watched Icarus fall from the sky, his wings melted. He plunges into the sea -- in this case, a bathtub, in Paris, in 1971.
The closing scene is at Pere Lachaise, a cemetery in Paris. We see the quiet graves of Chopin, Berlioz, Moliere. The last shot is of Morrison's grave, graffiti-strewn and candlelit. It's an unquiet grave, anointed by the adoration of fans who still worship his self-consuming fire.
Yet some have learned the lesson. Will this film renew the lesson or renew the blind passion? To his credit, Stone doesn't hit us in the face with A Message. He sends us clippings instead and forces us to tie the pieces together. He turns the camera on Morrison/Kilmer, frequently showing us Kilmer's back so that we are, literally, following Morrison to his death.
Kilmer is magnificent. He speaks pure babble as if it were Shakespeare and he absolutely commands a crowd even when he can't focus on it. (Kilmer wore black contact lenses to make his pupils look dilated. The lenses had the added effect of screwing up his equilibrium.) All of the concert shots feature Kilmer's vocals, which means that he not only looks and acts like Morrison, he sounds like him, too.
Kilmer is so good that the original band members had trouble distinguishing some of the cuts Val sings from ones sung by Jim. When viewing some of the footage, guitarist Robby Krieger said, "I'm really glad that we finally got 'The End.' We never got a recording of that live with Jim. Now we've got it." Kilmer has recreated Morrison. It's eerie. Frightening, like a voice from the grave. I ask again: will the young ones get it or will they be mesmerized?
The camera, you see, is in love with Morrison/Kilmer--it can't resist him, and neither can the audience. Morrison's dazed eyes have come back to haunt another generation. Let's hope this generation knows a dead-end when they see one.
Sandy Grossmann sandyg@tekchips.labs.tek.com
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