I had a chance recently to see Tom DiCillo’s 2010 documentary on The Doors, When You’re Strange, and while I’m sure there are already numerous reviews out there on the web, I thought I would throw a few of my own thoughts into the ring.
To get my one criticism out of the way first: while I did not live through the period in question and did not experience The Doors firsthand, the film seems to collate a lot of imagery that I am not sure naturally fits together, and that might not strike a person who did live through the era as a truthful representation of how things were. DiCillo goes to some length to situate the band’s rise and fall against the backdrop of the tumultuous late 1960s, and to what extent there is a meaningful connection between the assassinations of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the youth movement, on one hand, and the persona of Jim Morrison and the music of the Doors, on the other, I know not. A basic knowledge of history would suggest that if all those phenomena were somehow critically connected, then so too must have been other phenomena that are barely touched upon in the film: the Civil Rights movement, the Feminist movement, and the politics of the Cold War, to name a few. There is obviously a need when telling a biographical story to place your subjects in a rich historical context, and needless to say The Doors’ era was a particularly eventful one, but a talented storyteller should be able to sort out which connections truly matter to the essence of a subject and which connections are coincidental and/or inconsequential. In telling a story about my own childhood in the early 1990s I could certainly throw in footage of the Gulf War, the ’92 election, and Nirvana, but I am not sure that any of that would help to truthfully portray what my childhood was like.
With that out of the way, I will say that I found this film to be an unusually immersive and edgy viewing experience, especially for a documentary. Some of that has to do with DiCillo’s decision not to use talking head interviews — a set-piece that is common to documentary filmmaking but that often has the effect of creating distance between the viewer and the subject and making the film more an exercise in analysis than experience. DiCillo also employs extensive live concert and recording footage and, from what I am told, rare footage that has never been shown to audiences, including scenes from a film that Morrison himself directed. Having your head held down in this alien-seeming era for 90 minutes straight is a sometimes jarring, sometimes blissful, and altogether unusual experience, for which DiCillo deserves a lot of credit. One could easily imagine this film proceeding in a more conventional way, with interludes from nostalgic seventy-somethings reminiscing about the good old days and offering their insights into who Jim Morrison really was, but there is something a bit more tactile about just being in the moment with Jim and the band, even if deeper insights are not as thoroughly entertained.
On that note it’s worth pointing out that, perhaps for good reason, this film is about Jim Morrison first and The Doors second. If DiCillo proposes any thesis, it’s that Morrison was a dangerous, rebellious, charismatic, ultimately self-destructive, but thoroughly brilliant figure who both affected and embodied 1960s culture by keeping himself on the edge — through a combination of drugs and natural talent — and then pushing himself over. That may not be much of a novel assessment for people who are familiar with the band and/or lived through the era, but there can be little doubt that Morrison is a dynamic enough subject to compensate for conventional views on who he was.
Given DiCillo’s loose leash on live performance footage — including a brilliant scene in which narrator Johnny Depp breaks down the musical qualities and tendencies of each of the band members over a live performance of the song, “People Are Strange” — this film will no doubt appeal more to fans who simply love the music than first-timers who are interested in learning something new. But even for those who are familiar with the band’s songs but less so with the band itself, the film is worth watching for the depiction of Morrison, who is by turns captivating, revolting, and heartbreaking.
Whether one buys into or rejects the mystique of Morrison, it would be hard to quibble with the assessment by Morrison’s estranged father that his son had “unique genius which he expressed without compromise.” Capitalizing on that sentiment more than any cultural zeitgeist from the era, perhaps, we owe some thanks to DiCillo for putting us in the company of a genius for an hour or so.
Mack Lannahan 