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(More customer reviews)In the short 4 ½ years that keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robbie Krieger, drummer John Densmore and lead vocalist Jim Morrison enjoyed an artistic collaboration, they produced six timelessly resonant studio albums and the classic Absolutely Live (which still holds up as one of the best live albums ever by a rock band). The Doors were also one of the first rock bands to successfully bridge deeply avant-garde sensibilities with popular commercial appeal. It was Blake and Rimbaud... that you could dance to.
Surprisingly, it has taken until 2010, 45 years (!) after UCLA film students Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek first starting kicking around the idea of forming a band, for a proper full-length documentary feature about The Doors to appear, Tom DiCillo's When You're Strange. You'll notice I said, "about The Doors". I felt that Oliver Stone's 1991 biopic ultimately lost its way as a true portrait of the band, because it was too myopically fixated on the Jim Morrison legend; Morrison the Lizard King, the Dionysian rock god, the drunken poet, the shaman. Yes, he was all of that (perhaps more of a showman than a shaman), but he was only 25% of the equation that made The Doors...well, The Doors. That's what I like about DiCillo's film; he doesn't gloss over the contributions of the other three musicians.
In fact, one of the things you learn in the film is that Morrison himself always insisted that all songwriting credits go to "The Doors" as an entity, regardless of which band member may have had the dominant hand in the composition of any particular song (when you consider that Morrison couldn't read a note, that's a pragmatic stance for him to take). The band's signature tune, the #1 hit "Light My Fire" was actually composed by Robbie Krieger-and was allegedly the first song he ever wrote (talk about beginner's luck). He's a great guitar player too (he was trained in flamenco, and had only been playing electric for 6 months at the band's inception). Manzarek and Densmore were no slouches either; they had a classical and jazz background, respectively. When you piece these snippets together along with Morrison's interests in poetry, literature, film and improvisational theatre (then sprinkle in a few tabs of acid) you finally begin to get a picture of why this band had such a unique vibe. They've been copied, but never equaled.
The film looks to have been a labor of love by the director. Johnny Depp provides the narration, and DiCillo has assembled some great footage; it's all well-chosen, sensibly sequenced and beautifully edited. Although there are a fair amount of clips and stories that will qualify as old hat to Doors aficionados (the "Light My Fire" performance on the Sullivan Show, the infamous Miami concert "riot", etc.), there is a treasure trove of rare footage. One fascinating (but all too brief) clip shows the band in the studio constructing the song "Wild Child" during the sessions for "The Soft Parade". The real revelation is the interwoven excerpts from Morrison's experimental 1969 film "HWY: An American Pastoral". Although it is basically a bearded Morrison driving around the desert (wearing his trademark leather pants), it's mesmerizing, surreal footage. DiCillo must have had access to a pristine master print, because it looks like it was shot last week. It wasn't until the credits rolled that I realized this wasn't one of those dreaded recreations, utilizing a lookalike. As a matter of fact, Morrison has never appeared so "alive" on film. It's eerie.
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When You re Strange, written and directed bythe award-winning Tom DiCillo, is the first featuredocumentary released on The Doors. Graced by thenarration of Johnny Depp, it carries the audiencethrough the journeys of vocalist Jim Morrison,keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger,and drummer John Densmore. This 90-minutepresentation features never-before-seen rare archival film,pulled from their inception in 1966 to Morrison s passing in 1971.These snapshot scenes of the band s history is as much an intimateexperience, as it is revealing.After being featured at the Sundance, Berlin, Deauville, and San Sebastian Film Festivals, music fans who didn t catch this intheaters can now relish in this extraordinary documentary. It celebrates the collaborative power of this illustrious rock quartetand their revolutionary fusion of creativity and thought-provoking rebellion.
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