143. The Doors

Song - Light My Fire (The Doors)

Movie: The Doors (Oliver Stone, 1991)

In one of the film's early scenes we see Jim Morisson (Val Kilmer) screening one of his student films at UCLA. Clearly influenced by the French New Wave, it's some narrative juxtaposing the rise of Hitler with 60's California youth culture. His class mostly hates it, but Morisson is encouraged by his teacher, played in a cameo by Oliver Stone himself. In the film's final scenes the camera glides along Pere Lachaise, past the graves of the likes of Frederic Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust and Moliere only to end up at Morisson's stone, presented as the grandest of them all. If you'd accidentally forgotten that you were watching an Oliver Stone film about The Doors, these scenes would remind you that you are indeed watching an Oliver Stone film about The Doors. I loved it.

It's not very fashionable these days to like Oliver Stone or The Doors. That's partly for bad reasons - we demand art be modest and are suspicious of self-indulgent artists. On the other hand, it's hard to deny that there is a bit of a douchey, chauvinist undercurrent behind their pompous pretentiousness. I am less of a 'Doors' fan than I was when I named this blog, but it's undeniable that at least Riders on the Storm and L.A. Woman are absolute bangers. As for Stone, it's rather disappointing that he is now one of the main proponents of what I've seen wonderfully described as the 'anti-imperialism of idiots'  - being pro Russian, Chinese and other non-western dictators just because they are anti-America. But his manic, no-holds-barred style of filmmaking, unafraid to occasionally descend into irrational lunacy in both form and content, is sorely missing in contemporary (American) film. He is both an extremely obvious choice to make a film about The Doors, and the last person you'd want in charge of such a project. It's easy to imagine this film becoming Scarface on steroids. In actual fact, it's an often surprisingly melancholic and warm film that fully achieves the surreal vibe of an actual Doors song.

It's also a film that fully concedes that most of The Doors' lyrics are rather meaningless gibberish. At the same time, it understands that this meaningless gibberish is what makes them work so well. Stone presents Morrison as someone who aspires to be a great poet, but who deep in his heart knows that he isn't. And that the best he can do is write provocative, mysterious rock lyrics, most of which he seems to make up as he goes along. His lyrics are just smart enough to make you curious and interested, but not intelligent enough to really constitute coherent thoughts grounded in reality. Accidentally or not, that does create a surreal, absurdist effect, especially in combination with Ray Manzarek's arcane keyboard sound. Stone most clearly shows this when during the first half of The End we see the band hallucinating in the desert, while during its second half we hear them playing the song to an entranced audience. The rambling incoherence of the song, combined with Morrison's languid delivery, is what keeps the audience on its feet. They are hearing something they can't quite place, that doesn't quite make sense. That makes the eventual sudden aggressive proclamations only more surprisin and more excitingly dangerous. They wouldn't have the same effect if Morisson was building up to them logically and coherently. 

The film mostly consists of similar large set pieces which aim to recreate this surreal offbeat absurdism  and it does so incredibly well. It often plays as if it's a biopic about a fictional band in a world that looks like ours, but is a just a little skewy in a way you can't quite define. The moon is just a bit too bright, Pam (Meg Ryan) becomes Jim's love of his life the moment he enters her home through her window, and we sometimes hear a Doors song non-diegetically while Morrison and co play another one in the film. As always, Stone mixes film styles and stocks, overlays images upon images, edits across time and space, and accentuates every aural and visual choice he makes. He is also fortunate in casting Kyle MacLachlan as Manzarek, whose dialogue sometimes seems to come straight out of Twin Peaks.

One of the oddest scenes takes place halfway through when Morrison meets Andy Warhol at a party organised by the latter. Warhol is shown to philosophise in much the same way as Morrison does, yet the film seems to have utter contempt for the former. The difference is in the way they present themselves towards the world. Warhol uses his pretension to build himself up as a great artist, while Morrison uses it to create a connection with the audience and to have fun. Stone is probably one of the few filmmakers who would even think to include a scene to explore the various shades of pretentiousness and their morality, and the scene is probably unfair towards Warhol. But the scene's is interesting for its attitude towards Morrison's art, one that is reinforced throughout the rest of the film. The Doors is a full-throttled defense of making art for its own sake, to indulge in meaninglessness. And Stone would not be Stone if he wouldn't try to make the larger point that this freedom to make art that's about nothing but your own whims is not only what makes America great, but also a representation of America at its best. I don't know if that's really true, but it's a wonderful fantasy to have.