Stone's next film delved back into 1960's history again - this time on a less political subject, the rock group The Doors, and specifically its tortured leader, Jim Morrison. Val Kilmer gives a hauntingly true to life portrayal of Morrison in a film which I consider to be a very experimental film for Stone - experimenting with the camera and trying to use a lot of new techniques to make a movie that is a little different from something we have seen before. The film concentrates on Morrison, his rise to fame, and his fall to ultimately his very untimely death. We see the man and almost feel his downfall (Stone employed bizarre camera angles and movements to give the audience the feeling of having been drugged).

The film spares nothing in showing the excesses in life in which Jim Morrison took part in - his excessive drinking, his affairs with women, his risk taking with life and his career - when Ed Sullivan invites them to be on his show and asks him to take out an offensive word in one of their popular songs, they not only decide to keep the word in but Morrison jumps forward into the camera and overemphasizes the word. Morrison was a man who didn't wish to please anyone - he was a soul searching man who wallowed in his own excess and didn't really know what to make of life. Stone's film was a bizarre and often dreary experience of the life Morrison led, and the generational environment that fed people like Morrison - Stone definitely became known after this film as a chronicler of the 1960's - one of the most tumultuous and misunderstood decades of this century.

The movie covers the years between 1965 and 1971, showing Morrison as a poet who becomes the rock star, ultimately dying, supposedly of a heart attack, in Paris in 1971. Stone uses a recurring image in the film of a wounded Indian, played by Floyd Red Crow Westerman (from Dances With Wolves), who we see at the very beginning of the film when Morrison is a child and witnesses an accident alongside the road - he becomes fixated on an old Indian, dying. That image of the Indian appears several times throughout the rest of the film, most noticeably in one of the concert scenes. The Indian seems to represent childhood for Morrison, a remembrance of what could have been. As always, Stone uses very interesting camera shots to tell the story - when we first see Jim Morrison, we see a lizard alongside the road - the birth of the Lizard King. The movie starts to take on its over-the-top, drugged style when the band and Morrison's girlfriend, Pam, take a trip to the desert. As the film progresses, Morrison becomes more detached from the band and from reality, as he takes everything to excess, encouraging the audience at the infamous Miami concert in 1969 to do whatever they want - there are no laws and no limits. This is what Morrison was all about - no laws or limits - Morrison did whatever he wanted to do, and ultimately lost not only his life at a young age, but also the people who cared for him. In the beginning, the band wants to make music, and so it seems that Jim Morrison wants to do this also. But we the audience and the band begin to discover that maybe it was the fame, the ability to push the envelope - Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality - that is what Morrison truly wanted. His enjoyment came from the thrill of pushing himself to the limits, and pushing everyone else around him as well.

The band first realizes this at a concert in New Haven where Morrison berates a security cop who sprayed mace in his eyes when he was discovered backstage with a woman (played very well by Kathleen Quinlan, in a role which is quite a departure from the role she would later receive an Oscar nomination for - Apollo 13). We see the expressions on the faces of the members of the band - they are most happy when they are playing music - they realize that Jim Morrison is not about the Doors, Jim Morrison is about himself. Stone's best work in the film is the concert in San Francisco where he edits back and forth between the concert and several scenes of Morrison's downfall as he continues to lose control of reality - most notably, is the scene where Morrison locks Pam into a closet, douses the door with gasoline, and lights it on fire. By the time that Morrison exposes himself and yells expletives at the crowd at the concert in Miami, the band and even the audience it seems has grown tired of Jim Morrison - an egomaniac who lives on the thrill of taking risks to their biggest extreme.

In the end, everyone turns on Jim Morrison - his success ends, the ride has ended. As we see flashes of documentary footage of many of the events of the late 60's and early 70's, Jim Morrison watches - he doesn't recognize the world anymore - without the success and the fame, Jim Morrison has become a nobody - with his health failing, he leaves for Paris and dies - Pam finds him in the bathtub - he has a hint of a smile on his face - Morrison was always fascinated by death and now he finally faced it - Jim Morrison is one of the most intriguing and perhaps most difficult of Stone's characters to understand - Morrison seems beyond understanding - I agree - It's the strangest life I've ever known.

LINKS:
Visual Remembrances From The Doors
Complete Detailed Film Data on The Doors at the Internet Movie Database
Roger Ebert's Review of The Doors
The Doors Movie Website -- One of the most comprehensive sites about the film
The Doors Official Web Site

VIDEO:

Siskel & Ebert Review THE DOORS

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