The Doors : When You’re Strange
The Doors were one of the biggest bands of the 20 Century, their front man, the melancholy poet Jim Morrison, an icon. His early death in 1971 ended the band’s history. After 2009, the remaining band members tried to Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore Maues a revival with Ian Astbury on vocals.
After the biopic “The Doors” (directed by Oliver Stone) in 1991, and Val Kilmer as Morrison, Tom DiCillo now brings a documentary about the history of the band to the movies, the actor does away with completely, and instead relies on archive material.
“If my poetry aims at something, then to lift people out of the constraints within which they see and feel”- Jim Morrison, this statement stands for everything that The Doors ever created in their musical careers have. The four musicians formed their band in 1965 in California’s Venice Beach. What followed was a rapid rise in the Olympus of music history. Above it all was Jim Morrison’s personality torn, manic, vulnerable, maladjusted.
Morrison was one of those great artists Guard who resist the structures of human society and fail on their own contradictions. Morrison was an early consummate genius. He died at the age of 27 from heart failure. In a bathtub. In Paris.
“When you’re strange”- the film’s title comes from a song by the Doors, a song that perhaps is – next to “Riders On The Storm” and “The End” – one of the most significant, in which Morrison tells of how he strange the people there, and how out of place himself in this world. Morrison was the driving force behind The Doors. Even the band name comes from it. It is inspired by William Blake, who wrote about the “doors of perception”. But Morrison was not only a musician and poet, but also a filmmaker. In 1969, he turned with “HWY” a psychedelic, experimental autobiographical piece, from the use of DiCillo, as well as from concert recordings, television and private photographs of the ‘”Lizard King” and his band.
The strength of the film lies in its conciseness, its sobriety. Morrison is a myth, a legend, as are the Doors. DiCillo has not highlight or underline. He does not speculate, and not cut too suggestive. Even Johnny Depp says quietly and out of the required distance.
“When You’re Strange” is a documentary in the true sense – it documents the story of one of the greatest bands of the past century, from its founding to the early death of her pioneer Morrison. Morrison’s time – the ’60s – is gone. The message he gave his whole life is until today and has lost none of its importance.
