The Doors 20th Anniversary Blu-ray Review

• 16th Apr 2011

Oliver Stone’s controversial biopic comes to Blu-ray in a strangely cyclic but no doubt entirely planned symmetry.

Pretty much exactly twenty years after Jim Morrison; the enigmatic lead singer of The Doors was found dead in a Parisian bathtub; Oliver Stone’s film about him and the band he led, debuted at theatres to mixed reviews and more than a little controversy. Personally (and let’s get this clear early on), I didn’t like it very much. I was not a massive Doors or Morrison devotee (I liked maybe three or four songs), I found it difficult to connect with and downright impossible to actually warm to anyone portrayed in the movie. It was over long, focused entirely on Morrison’s ego and seemed to be straining under the weight of its own self-important delusions of grandeur, as well of those of its principal star and the person he was playing. Perhaps I was missing some key component of the mythos, but it just seemed overblown and lacking any heart. Fast forward exactly twenty more years and the movie finds itself sprung out of mothballs, dusted off and given the HD treatment on an all new Blu-ray release in time for the 40th anniversary of Morrison’s death.

So we are going to revisit the movie in its shiny new format and as a result; this piece will act as both Blu-ray review and movie retrospective.

While prepping this review; I actually found it quite hard to get my noggin around the fact that it had been so long since the movie was originally released. However 1991 was indeed the year we first saw Val Kilmer pouting, posing, drinking, screwing, sometimes singing, drinking some more and generally larking about being Jim for nearly two and a half hours. So in watching it again, I will try and keep an open mind, see how the movie itself fares this time round and if the new hi-def transfer is lighting my fire (apologies, that will be the first and last pun, I promise).

Oh dear, yes I remember it now.

Biopics, biopics oh what a strange breed you are. When a filmmaker sets out to make a movie about a famous person be they a film star, rock star, politician, statesman or king, they are faced with an important creative decision to make right from the start: well, there are no doubt thousands of creative decisions to make, but among the first and most crucial ones have to be considerations like: What is the stylistic intention of the piece? What are we trying to achieve? How are going to present this story? By which I mean; Are they trying to faithfully retell the true story of said person’s life, from perhaps humble (or not) beginnings, through their more notable trials and tribulations and on to significance, and perhaps beyond into tragedy or decline? Or is it to be nonlinear, maybe impressionistic or art-house, attempting to capture a subjective essence of the person or events; presumably at some zeitgeist moment in their journey? Or is it possible to create a movie that adopts elements of both approaches and attempts to weave them together in some way?
Stone’s movie is, in this respect, somewhat muddled as it definitely has a clear degree of linear progression (although it does flash back and forward a bit too). However the movie doesn’t seem to feel it necessary to explain events in a documentarian way unless it fits in with the separate artistic agenda. This leaves much of the business of how the band got together, wrote, recorded and went from nothing to huge being either rapidly glossed over or just a backdrop in favour of the aforementioned focus specifically on Morrison’s personal journey. It’s definitely not a facts and figures piece.

Sitting down to watch the movie again; I’m immediately presented with a real struggle to stay focused. It’s late and my wife had also joined me as she remembered the movie from back in the day (where she had managed about ten minutes).  Suffice to say; she was Facebooking and looking at eBay within half an hour, but this was still a threefold improvement on last time! I fared a bit better and stayed with it for an hour and a half before feeling the irresistible need to just switch off and go to bed (although to be fair; it was by this time very very late). I tried again another day and this time did manage the whole thing.

I just don’t know what it is about this movie that I just can’t absorb; it just doesn’t work for me as a The Doors biopic at all, as the band is always second or third fiddle to Morrison’s antics. But I don’t believe it really works as a Morrison biopic either. It reveals very little about the man, preferring to deal instead solely with the perpetually drunk, high or both Morrison ‘Dionysus’ Lizard King persona and ego. Maybe that was the point, and admittedly this can be entertaining at times, but it’s ultimately 2D, flat and unrewarding without the dimensional depth of a real human story to literally flesh it all out with.

I can honestly say that I come away from this movie almost not caring at all that he’s dead in a bathtub. It’s not because I actually don’t care, in real life, that Jim Morrison died this way. It’s a tragedy. The trouble is, the movie sets you on a particular mental trajectory that seems to offer up nothing but Jim Morrison as this self-gratifying, constantly pleasure seeking, super indulgent, selfish hedonist that fucked up his life and career through irresponsible, borderline psychotic overindulgence. As the viewer, you feel a bit ‘Hmmm…dead? In a bath tub? Age 27?
Boohoo Jimbo, perhaps you shoulda laid off the sauce a bit more and maybe then you’d be enjoying your 67th birthday right about now, perhaps with some small children running about calling you grandpa. Know what I mean?’

Comedian Denis Leary summed it up thus, and I quote:

“I’m drunk, I’m nobody
I’m drunk, I’m famous
I’m drunk, I’m dead”

Now, I don’t believe for an instant that Jim Morrison deserves a cruel and dismissive epitaph like that, but if all you knew about him was only what could be learnt from Stone’s movie; you might just think Leary’s assessment held more water than it does. It’s really only at the end of the film that we see a more self-reflective (although still drunk) Morrison which you can almost connect with before he meets his untimely tub ensconced end.

Dramatically then, the movie overall is still a bit of a dud for me. It doesn’t really work, although I think that’s obviously quite a subjective opinion. There are flashes of brilliance here and there, but also so much that is irksome. An example of the latter would be the sheer number of famous faces creeping in for their pointless cameo ego trips. It’s a near constant irritant, the most grating of which definitely being Billy Idol’s ‘Cat’ repeatedly popping up sneering and horribly….. I was about to say ‘overacting’ but the man can’t act so I don’t know what the hell you’d call it, other than just being Billy, and who needs that? Also, why does Eric Burdon (lead singer of 60s band The Animals) keep turning up in the background? It all just serves to undermine any serious intent the movie has to tell a story convincingly, as do an impressive array of truly terrible 60s wigs throughout almost all of the male characters (even Kilmer during the beard and belly scenes).
Another thing I must mention is the whole Native American imagery thing. This has been mercilessly and endlessly parodied ever since the movie came out (Wayne’s World 2, The Simpsons etc.) and was always a little clunky, but now unfortunately just plays like pure comedy. Some of the supporting characters seem very timidly handled or just plain flat; we never really get much of what Morrison’s long suffering girlfriend Pam (Meg Ryan) is all about for example, and as for his band mates; they flit in and out of the picture mostly just for onstage scenes or studio bust-ups. Some of this could be due to the inordinate amount of interference, conflict and artistic differences that are well known to have occurred between the various parties during production of the film. It seems pretty much no-one (especially certain ex-Doors members) was happy with the end result, and I think it shows.

On the plus side of the ledger; some of the aforementioned onstage performance scenes are really impressive. Particularly Kilmer’s ability to convincingly inhabit Morrison’s leather pants. His body language and authentic Morrison singing voice seems spot on and you don’t doubt Kilmer in the role very often, if at all. As a musician I was also glad to see that actors Kyle MacLachlan, Kevin Dillon and Frank Whaley (playing the band), were all nicely convincing in their performances, having been obviously well tutored. Believe me, this is rare in the movies.

So to the all-new 20th anniversary Blu-ray transfer itself. I certainly have nothing bad to say about it; I think it’s a decent presentation (if not fat on extras) and it would seem that great care has been taken to make it look as clean and dense as possible. Yes I know it’s only twenty years old and I can almost hear people saying that it damn well should be nice looking on Blu-ray, but it really doesn’t work like that and great care needs to be taken to ensure the Blu is worthwhile. The colour palette stays rich and deep and does a great job of maintaining time and place while delivering a solid and satisfying performance that we, the modern hi-def cognoscenti can appreciate. Also, a shout out has to go to the lighting set-ups in the original film which I would wager have never looked as good as they do here. Some of the artistic wipes and transitions also look really groovy and don’t suffer at all from the unflinching clarity of hi-def, quite the opposite in fact. Audio is a choice between stereo [2.0 Surround DTS-HD] and full 7.1 DTS-HD. I don’t have a 7.1 system, so can’t comment on this mix, but the stereo HD audio mix sounded fairly clear and well detailed although there are times when things do become a little crowded.

I would imagine that The Doors on Blu will now become the default preferred format. As far as bonus features; the disc is a little lacking (there is no director commentary for example), but you do get two half decent documentaries, both of which are about an hour long.

Ultimately I feel that I got a little more out of The Doors this time round and admittedly, some of that could be due to the fact that over the years since first seeing it; I have come to know and appreciate a lot more of the classic Doors back catalogue which peppers the movie (mostly as incidental or background music, which is a bit weird). It’s a very flawed work if being judged by the best biopic standards, but it definitely has its merits and is certainly a much better film than I originally gave it credit for. I’m still not quite sure what type of person it really hits the bull’s-eye for and it’ll probably be a long time before I feel inclined to watch it again. But people are strange and the quality of the new Blu-ray edition makes this format a must have for those that already ‘dig’ it and want to break on through to HD heaven!

Sorry I just couldn’t help myself!

Ben Pegley