More so than the likes of Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix, Doors frontman Jim Morrison was, at least by dint of his looks and reputation alone, the quintessential rock star of the sixties. But while his music will always define his public persona, on a personal level, it was his poetry, surreal and symbolic and heavily influenced by the likes of Nietzsche and Rimbaud, that seemed to stir and animate his inner demons the most. One writer at the time described him as a brooding intellectual in a snakeskin suit.
Sadly, instead of condescending to embrace at least a modicum of the conformity that fame invariably demands of a successful artist, Morrison instinctively recoiled by embarking on a course of self-destruction that manifested itself in a series of increasingly erratic and controversial live performances that quite often culminated with his arrest for lewd behaviour. His untimely death at the age of 27 in a bathtub in a Paris hotel in 1971 reinforced unequivocally the prevailing notion that too much sex, drugs and rock n roll would indeed kill you. For his family and the surviving band members, his demise and subsequent elevation to the pantheon of rock star immortality proved to be financially rewarding: more Doors albums were sold following his death than when he was alive.
Director Oliver Stone, in a screenplay co-written with J. Randall Johnson, documents Morrison's much vaunted private and largely public excesses with an operatic flamboyance that reaches a crescendo of sorts with a death scene that is as rich in its spiritual implications as it is in its funereal solemnity.
The film's biggest asset is undoubtedly Val Kilmer. He is an eerie dead ringer for the late singer and even critics who were critical of the film's alleged fusion of fact and fiction generally agreed that Kilmer's was a powerhouse performance. As Pamela Courson, Morrison's longtime girlfriend (who died of a drug overdose three years later) and rock journalist Patricia Kennealy (who married Morrison in an unrecognised pagan ceremony), Meg Ryan and Kathleen Quinlan shine in brief scenes but it's Kilmer's show all the way. The dozen or so Doors songs perfectly underscore the key highs and lows of Morrison's all to brief sojourn under the spotlight.
