MasterChugs Theater: 'The Doors'

A great writer once wrote that the problem with American lives is that they have no second act. Never is this more apparent than with the story of Jim Morrison, whose childhood was lost in a mist of denial and his maturity interrupted by an early death. If we can trust Oliver Stone's film, The Doors, life for Jim Morrison was like being trapped for months at a time in the party from hell. He wanders out of the sun's glare, a curly-haired Southern California beach boy with a cute pout and a notebook full of poetry. He picks up a beer, he smokes a joint, and then life goes on fast-forward as he gobbles up drugs and booze with both hands, while betraying his friends and making life miserable for anyone who loves him. By the age of twenty-seven he is dead.

The Doors is an earnest biopic that charts lead singer Jim Morrison's introspective self-destruction, fueled by a monumental drug problem and mindbending idol status. Stone piles on the psychology and stretches the flower-power myth with all its attendant hippy philosophy and heavily stylized trippy visuals. Somehow, Val Kilmer, lends it a veil of truth, managing to resemble the late singer surprisingly effectively. His vocal impersonation of the Lizard King is remarkable and he wears a pair of leather breeks better than most.

However, Kilmer is plugged into a narrative structure that treats him like a character in a Sophoclean tragedy, doomed to an inevitable implosion and premature death. This takes the easy way out, as it removes personal responsibility from the equation. What could Morrison, his family, friends and band mates have done to produce a different outcome? What role did the carnivorous and self-serving media play in Morrison's self-destruction? These become non-issues if the protagonist is trapped in a Greek drama that demands his death. Kilmer's bravura performance and Stone’s fatalistic approach also make the other actors non-entities who flitter like mute butterflies about the edges of the film.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying. After all, Stone does offer repeated scenes of Morrison's petulant behavior, his narcissistic obsession with death, his child-like self-centerd universe, which seem to point to the man as his own worse enemy. But Stone prefers to indicate that these behaviors and obsessions were, as Wordworth might say, the child being father to the man, the drugs and alcohol essential ingredients to his barrier-breaking development as an artist. In the age of "Just Say No" this is a brave assertion, and I applaud Stone's stones, but to excuse Morrison's deplorable behavior on the grounds that he is "an artist" seems self-serving.

The Doors also makes the fatal mistake of taking an essentially minor talent, and elevating him into the pantheon of great artists. Morrison was not, as Stone's pretentious closing shots of the Parisian cemetery Pere Lachaise in which Morrison is buried, an equal of Oscar Wilde, Proust and Moliere, and for Stone to put him in their company invites the sort of derision to which Stone seems rather sensitive. Indeed, in an early scene Stone--playing Morrison’s film school teacher--criticizes Jim’s film as "a bit pretentious, don’t you think?" I don’t know if this is a self-conscious attempt to disarm the critics before they can sharpen their pens, or an unconscious admittance of guilt. Either way, it is a telling moment and aptly describes the movie.

In the end, Stone leaves a large question unanswered: How was Morrison able to leave the country after being sentenced to a jail term for public indecency? But leave he did, to die of an "apparent heart attack" in Paris, where he lies buried to this day, his tomb a mecca for his fans, who have spray-painted all of the neighboring tombs with exhortations and obscenities. Even in death, Jim Morrison is no fun to be around.