rsnappy@hydra.unm.edu (Roger Snappy Rubio) (03/07/91)
THE DOORS
A film review by Roger Snappy Rubio
Copyright 1991 Roger Snappy Rubio
REVIEW: THE DOORS
Starring: Val Kilmer, Meg Ryan, Kyle McLachlan, Kevin Dillon, Crispin Glover
Oliver Stone's THE DOORS is the story of Jim Morrison: his rise to
stardom, his turbulent life, and the man behind the music. It is also
the story of the turbulent 60s, and the large role it played in
Morrison's life. Oddly enough, it is not about the group The Doors; if
it were, it would have spent more time describing the lives of the other
group members, and not just Jim Morrison. Nevertheless, it is an
interesting movie, and one worth checking out. Compliments to Kilmer:
I think he "became" Morrison!
Stone paints a surrealistic portrait of a man haunted by ghosts
from his past; a past of which the film tells little about, as much of
this film does with everything. It is known that Morrison's family did
not cooperate with the makers of this film, so Stone and company are
only left to speculate about his childhood and adolescence. So, to make
up for this lack of knowledge, the film focuses on his drug-taking and
alcoholic way of life and his overpowering obsession with death. Oliver
Stone supplements his telling of Morrison's story with the equally
surrealistic poetry Morrison wrote while he was still alive.
This film could be seen as a two-hour-and-twenty-minute music video
with nothing to offer as far as a plot, except how Jim Morrison lived
behind the scenes. On the other hand, this film could be viewed as,
what I like to call, the 60s in a Valium capsule: take one dose and you
know everything there is to know about the 60s. Something like a
decade immortalized in celluloid.
Oliver Stone is known to make movies about things that affect him
personally. He made PLATOON, which was based on his experiences in
Vietnam, and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, which was the story of Vietnam
Vet Ron Kovic. The 60s must have affected him as equally as the
Vietnam War did. This film makes you feel as though you are looking
through the mind of Jim Morrison, but you also feel as though Oliver
Stone is deliberately trying to put you there. All the time-lapse
photography, frame superimposing, varying camera angles, and fades to
white, along with the subconscious sounds of The Doors make you make you
feel as if this is one big acid trip. On the other hand, it makes you
feel as if you are having a vision of life in several radically
different perspectives. This kind of filmmaking is always subject to
the personal tastes of the individual; some may find it engrossing and
innovative, and some may just wind up with a migraine headache by the end
of the movie.
Perhaps a better title for this film would have been one from one
of the books about Jim Morrison, NO ONE GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE. Another
might have been THE MORRISON STORY, because this film is not really
about The Doors as much about Morrison himself. Although Morrison is
the center of this story, Oliver Stone presents the setting of the 60s
to be a potent competitor for the title role. Was he making a movie
about Jim Morrison, The Doors, or the 60s? That's a question you will
have to figure out for yourself.
I personally found THE DOORS to be somewhat entertaining. It
provides some insight into why Jim Morrison was the way he was, and how
the turbulent 60s played a deciding role in his life. It's not so much
the story that people may disagree over (after all, there's not that
much story *to* disagree about), but the way it is told. This film is
what I consider to be true escapist entertainment. It places you in a
different setting, a different place, and a different time. If that's
what you crave in movie, THE DOORS is a good vehicle for consideration.
Go see it; it's worth at least a matinee.
THE SNAPMAN
rsnappy@hydra.unm.edusandyg%sail.labs.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (03/07/91)
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.com10e@hpcvia.CV.HP.COM (Steve_Tenney) (03/13/91)
THE DOORS
A film review by Steve Tenney
Copyright 1991 Steve Tenney
Yes, after watching Oliver Stone's (an appropriate last name for
the director of this movie) THE DOORS, you remember it even if you
really weren't there :-)!
I saw the Doors at Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco back in 1968
(or was it 67). At that time we were really into the San Francisco
Sound--a la Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis), Jefferson
Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Sons of Chaplin, Moby Grape,
QuickSilver Messenger Service, etc. So on this one night when this LA
Band showed up on stage, with Morrison and his black leather pants
(hey-- we were more into knee-high leather moccasins, paisley shirts and
stuff), slithering across the stage on his belly while reciting his
"poetry" (Dylan was more my kind of poet), we had rather mixed feelings
about the experience. Somehow The Doors just didn't fit into the
atmosphere in old Avalon Ballroom that night. Somehow you really got
the impression that Morrison was on a less-than-healthy trip, so in '71
when I heard of his death I wasn't surprised at all.
I really "dug" this Oliver Stone movie, even though I found it
somewhat depressing. Naturally, a movie about the self-destruction of a
rock hero during a very turbulent age would tend to be depressing. I
found myself trying to sift from this movie any positive memories of
that era I could. There were many positive idealist, though naive,
aspects of the counter-culture movement, especially around the San
Francisco Bay Area. But unfortunately that movement was born by drugs
and eventually died by drugs.
The Doors was brilliantly filmed, acted and directed, and caught
the very strange, exciting and destructive character of that time. It's
probably a movie you will either want to see three or four times or
else.... not even once, depending on your taste and background.
Steve Tenney
Hewlett-Packard Corvallis, ORE
10e@hpcvia.CV.HP.COMfrankm@microsoft.UUCP (Frank MALONEY) (03/13/91)
THE DOORS
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
Oliver Stone and Val Kilmer have done it, they have captured
perfectly the feel of my Sixties in the new film THE DOORS, a film which
will surely be on many ten-best lists come December and which ought to
be in for several important Academy nominations unless the curse of
spring release strikes again.
Stone has always shown the most amazing talent for recreating the
look and feel of that turbulent time, as he did in PLATOON and BORN ON
THE FOURTH OF JULY. But Stone's movies have always been flawed by what
a friendly reviewer might see as an excess of zeal and an unfriendly one
as the sledge-hammer approach to making a point. But, unlike his
earlier films, THE DOORS does not seem to have a political point it
wants to drive home above all other considerations; it definitely lacks
Stone's usual smug superiority and instead concentrates on making Jim
Morrison live for us again in the form of Val Kilmer.
Val Kilmer is the second actor this late winter/early spring who
absolutely must be nominated for an Academy Award (the other being
Anthony Hopkins in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS). What price did Kilmer
have to pay to so perfectly become the driven, visionary, besotted
Morrison, the Bacchus and Orpheus of many in my generation? I was
impressed the last time I saw Kilmer, in a little film noir about a
failing detective who gets involved with a devious thief and murderer
played by his wife Joyce Whalley-Kilmer. I had no notion of what the
man was capable of as an actor. What he does by way of becoming
Morrison goes beyond acting into black magic. He looks like Morrison,
he sounds like Morrison even to doing Morrison's vocals on top of the
original Doors' instrumental tracks, he moves like Morrison. He scares
us and disgusts us and fascinates us even as Jim Morrison did.
The film takes a mostly unblinking look at the demon that drove
Morrison. It offers no insights or answers. It merely says this is him
in action, make what you will of it. Unfortunately, one result is that
the other Doors are unfairly neglected, especially Ray Manzarek, played
here by Kyle MacLachlan; Manzarek was probably the unindicted
co-conspirator who as much as Morrison made the unique and unnerving
Doors sound. The other two Doors were Robby Krieger (Frank Whaley,
Joyce's brother(?)) and John Densmore (Kevin Dillon), both of whom play
rather minor roles.
Morrison is important as an artist in his own right, but for the
movie his significance is that of the supreme type, the very summation
and embodiment, of the Sixties rock culture. He is a cultural icon and
as such is as mixed a bag as my own memories of those times--terror and
ecstasy, living on the edge and barely conscious, all at the same time.
We see and judge Morrison and the times on the strength of the music,
the words, the actions, the script, the photography, and the sound
track.
Stone and J. Randal Johnson wrote a wonderful script that
captures the essence fully and honestly. The script gives exactly the
right moments we need. The pacing makes the 135-minute running time
both timeless and instantaneous--exactly the way I used to perceive or
be deceived by time when I was stoned on acid in those days.
The music is in some ways the story and Densmore and Krieger were
involved creatively in the making of the movie, I note. There are 28
Doors songs in the sound track (and a heavy promotion in the music
stores). The concert scenes are perfect. I sat there in the dark
saying Yes, this is the way it was, this is how it felt.
As for the photography, it is bold, imaginative, and innovative.
Like the concerts, the drug trips are real, exactly right. It's taken
more than two decades since Hollywood started trying to film a trip
before someone got it right; even the trips in EASY RIDER fail to
convince and evoke the way these do. And then there are the
hallucinogenic figures that accompany Morrison, his shaman, the bald
figure, enigmatic, suggestive, seen only by Morrison and us and maybe
once by Pam Morrison, played wonderfully well by Meg Ryan, who has never
been one of my personal faves--until now. The film's attitude to drugs
and to alcohol, for Morrison was an alcoholic as much as a druggie, is
accepting without being approving; these people were stoned more or less
all the time and it killed some of them. But whether Morrison could
have been Morrison without them is not a question the movie is
interested in.
Will THE DOORS speak to people who weren't hippies and/or Doors
fans? I suspect it will. For people like me, it speaks loudly and
clearly. I recommend this movie to everyone except those who cannot
tolerate rough language, sex, drug use, and/or frontal nudity in their
films or their lives.
--
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloneyalternat@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Ann Hodgins) (03/25/91)
"Falling Hard for a Dead Drunk"
THE DOORS
A film review by Ann Hodgins
Copyright 1991 Ann Hodgins
I wrote this title after seeing THE DOORS IN EUROPE, a documentary
of the original Doors' performances. That movie made a worshipper out
of me. Then I was brought down hard by NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE, the
biography: Jim made so many deadly errors it's a wonder he didn't die
sooner. But although the book killed my hero worship it did not kill
my love for the guy. But what difference does it make. No woman could
have broken through to Jim. All my love's in vain. Total failure. No
blame. Jim talked of women as "meager food for souls for God." What
woman could win out in the face of such a total negation?
So I was prepared to find Oliver Stone's DOORS a grueling
experience. As a great admirer of Stone's artistry I was afraid that he
would successfully revive the past, the feeling and meaning of it. I
was 17 in 68, and if he was successful Stone could make me relive my
feelings. I was prepared for that but it didn't happen. Instead I was
able to compose this review in my head during most of the movie. The
music was there, and the fashions and all, but nothing touched me as it
should have.
Perhaps the problem was that Jim Morrison was not just a guy in the
crowd that a mere camera could capture. Jim was a soul who was doomed
to be the spirit of his times. He was racked on the extremes of those
times. He was born into a proto-typical American family -- his mother a
neglected nag and his father Mr. Megadeath, a nuclear war expert in the
army. He appeared to be normal and conforming, like every other boy
did. But he caught a spirit from those Indians. He passed puberty just
as Rock and Roll was being born. He came of drafting age during the War
in Vietnam. He came to consciousness just as LSD was invented. He
discovered love during the Summer of Love. He briefly became a father
when the red tide of abortion reached its peak.
In himself he was the times and he did his best to work out those
terrible internal/external conflicts and make something positive emerge
from the struggle into his poetry and to give that good thing to others.
That's why I love his soul, because he was the anti-Hitler. He fought
harder than his father who was the youngest general in the navy. Jim's
personal struggle took him farther faster.
"Don't underestimate the audience," Jim said. "They want the
sacred." Stone's movie fails to deliver. One can hardly blame Stone
for that. Maybe Jim's soul was just too big to capture. Or maybe I
just expected too much after viewing THE DOORS IN EUROPE. Or maybe it
was because I'm a woman looking back at a time of life and a time in
history when men and women just didn't see the same things. I can find
myself in the movie only as a rag of Indian silk, a boney body and a
hank of hair. My experience is locked on the wrong side of those
heavily made-up eyes.
Maybe I should not have expected Stone to revive those times for
me, but actually I think that the movie missed all the points. Things
didn't ring true or have the impact they should have had. For instance,
in the scene where Jim tells his wife to kill their baby, I can't
believe that Patricia replied to that by criticizing Jim's recent weight
gain! That is not how the scene could have been or how it is described
in NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE.
Everything in the movie was like that for me -- just not right. So
I left the theatre competely unmoved and unable to write the review I
wanted to write. I suggest seeing the documentary and reading the
poetry.
a.h.