The Doors

(Oliver Stone, US 1991, 140 min., 35mm)

Oliver Stone’s jarring portrait of Jim Morrison reveals a young poet obsessed with death. Blessed with the charisma to enrapture those around him, Morrison evolves from misunderstood student filmmaker to Rock God in two short years. In flashback, Stone shows us Morrison’s preoccupation with a hazy childhood memory of a car crash and the bodies at the side of the road. His headlong rush into hedonism and self-destructive behavior influences his music, captures the feeling of the antiestablishment movement of the late 1960s, and ruins his relationships. Stone’s go-for-broke cinematic style is the perfect marriage for the subject matter, resulting in a dark, trippy look inside the wild mind of an artist.