Oliver Stone’s ‘The Doors’ is an Ode to Rock ‘n’ Roll Ridiculousness
- by Tim Grierson
THE MESMERIZING, VISIONARY, DEEPLY SILLY BIOPIC, NOW ON HULU, TURNS JIM MORRISON INTO A MYTHIC FIGURE — AND RECALLS A BYGONE ERA WHEN ROCK STARS WERE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE
One of the best things about rock ‘n’ roll is that it’s ridiculous. For all its promise of liberation and rebellion, it can also be stunningly self-serious music, so enraptured by its own sense of grandeur and poetry that it doesn’t realize how silly it is. But there’s power in that, too: Young people believing they can change the world with a few songs has been a renewable resource for generations, reconnecting listeners of all ages to the idealism and passion of their adolescence. We’re all ridiculous in our youth, and popular music reminds us never to let go of that unbridled enthusiasm.
But these tendencies have their limits and you’ll never see them better illustrated than in The Doors, Oliver Stone’s hedonistic, visionary, incredibly overblown biopic about the 1960s band. Now streaming on Hulu, the 1991 film—the first from Stone that year, the other being that winter’s JFK—captures the dark side of the peace-and-love era, illustrating how the group replaced the Beatles’ sunny optimism with a kinky, doom-laden aura.
