When You're Strange (2010)

One of the strongest memories that,I genuinely think I will never forget is seven years ago,when I was sixteen years old and absolutely having no interest in music at all.Until...One night I felt like watching a film,so I picked up a video with the words Apocalypse Now written on the top of it.When the films excellent opening shot of a Vietnam jungle getting Carpet-bombed,I heard an almost indescribable amazing voice start singing,with some jaw-dropping musicianship matching the excellent vocals.After having played the opening scene non-stop for a week!,I quietly asked my dads friend if he knew the name of the band that performed the song.When I got told that it was by a band called The Doors,I rushed out to buy their self-titled album,from the now shut-down Music Zone.Instantly,I went to the track from the film called The End,At the end of the epic 11 and a half minutes,I was completely speechless.Due to how well the whole album was able to hook me in,I played the album ever day for four whole years!!.And even now,I still have some of the stunning lyrics and beautiful music stuck in my head.The outline of the film:The film is a career over-view of the Los Angeles,California band The Doors.The film looks at the background and friendship of each band member.Whilst the band are very talented,the fame that they very quickly get,particularly for their singer Jim Morrison,is something that the group really struggle with.One of the main thing that the film shows,is how much Jim Morrison transforms as the front man of The Doors,going from the early footage showing Morrison being very shy and nervous,to the final concert footage where he is extremely depress, very angry and furious,with people only going to see the band,not to hear the music,but going to see a "Freak Show"View on the film:Over the years,it has seemed that when film makers have tried to make films or documentaries about The Doors,they have always ended up being disappointing,with,documentary makers always using the same concert footage of the band.Thankfully,director Tom Dicillo is able to erase most of those bad memories with this film.Dicillo wisely makes sure to not make the movie into Jim Morrison-The Movie.(something that Oliver Stones film sadly suffered from.)Instead,he makes sure to give a very good amount of the films running time to look at each band member,with lots of very rarely seen photos,and a huge amount of stunning newly- realised audio and video footage of the band in the studio and performing some of their most famous (and infamous) shows.Though,I do have to highlight,the shockingly pristine footage of an un-finished film that Jim Morrison made with a friend.Final view on the film:A brilliant film,with some astonishing new incites of an extraordinary band.

Despite the brevity of their career, The Doors have a firm place in American culture with streams of books, documentaries, biopics and even a Hollywood film. When You're Strange is the latest documentary to be produced on the band. Written and directed by Tom DiCillo and narrated by Johnny Depp, it is one of the slickest and best constructed documentary of the band produced.There are two pitfalls directors encounter when tackling the subject of The Doors, neither of which DiCillo is able to avoid. The first, and is quite unavoidable, is the blurring of the story of the band with the story of Jim Morrison. Granted Morrison was the focal point of the band, but all too often the other three musicians, and the music itself, are treated as sidebars to the story of Morrison.To DiCillo's credit he does include interviews and snippets about the other members of the band. But insight into their music is very brief. John Densmore speaking about the Doors in terms of the evolution of jazz is the most interesting, and made me wish there were more such insights.The other pitfall is entirely avoidable, which is to make vague generalizations and connections between Jim Morrison and the political climate and events of the sixties. While it is true that all bands, musicians and works of music are informed by their socio-political setting, there is also a quality in great music (and The Doors produced GREAT music) which transcends time and culture and address universal concerns.A blatant example of this is footage of The Doors playing "The End" at the 1970 Isle Of Wight festival. The footage is stunning and the sound is great, but too often the screen shifts from the band to stock footage of Martin Luther King Jr., the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and news reel video of US troops dropping napalm on a village in Viet Nam.This editing begs the question of the relevance between the two. What does a performance of "The End" in England in 1970 have to do with assassinations in the summer of 1968? "The End" began as a song about the ending of a personal relationship and was expanded to become a psycho-sexual drama bordering on myth, and it's relation to American politics and foreign policy isn't clear.Despite those concerns, When You're Strange is one of the best documentaries of The Doors. It opens with footage from what looks like a pristine print of Morrison's 1969 film HWY: An American Pastoral. Clips from the film are used throughout the documentary to lend continuity to the narrative, and often used to comment upon the events discussed.All of the facts seem correct, even mentioning commonly known details about the band such as Morrison wanting Robby Krieger to play bottle neck on every song.DiCillo also continues the trend of contemporary documentary film-making in being more intentional in the footage used and images shown to make a point. For example, when the narrative reaches the Miami 1969 incident, Depp's voice-over states that the band were "surprised." While saying this, the footage shows Ray Manzarek looking surprised. The scene has nothing to do with the Miami indictment, but such editing is effective in making his point.Overall this is a very strong documentary of the Doors. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Festival, and it deserves such accolades.The bonus material contains a fascinating interview with Jim Morrison's father, the late Admiral George S. Morrison. This is supposedly the only time he's been interviewed about his son before his death in 2008. Not much is mentioned of him in the older sources such as No One Here Gets Out Alive. The only pieces of information in that book were his displeasure at hearing "The End," the letter he wrote to his son telling him that he has no talent to be a singer, and that he contested his son's estate after the death of Pamela Courson.The impression one gains from watching the interview is much different. He comes off as a proud and loving father who misses his son, whom he lost both to the demands of fame and his death in 1971. He reiterates his assessment that his son shouldn't have been a rock singer because he felt his talent lay more in film-making.If for nothing else, watching the interview with the Admiral is the most interesting part of the disc. It is unique since no other documentary has ever interviewed him, and makes it worth the asking price.

Jim Morrison's magic is said to have been a question of what he would turn to. Heaven or hell? His magic was anyway more about making an extremely interesting fusion of poetry and music. Neither of them would have managed without the other.This documentary shows many interesting clips, also from studios and backstage. The problem is that the analysis anyway is a little shallow. Both when it comes to The Doors as a phenomena and the times they were living in.And most of all perhaps when it comes to the double or triple meanings of that poetry. Which really was something which was floating between heaven and hell.

It's a documentary. But, the subject being the performing career of the doors, this documentary really becomes a biopic of James Morrison. I enjoyed the film as the former but less as the latter. DiCillo makes cursory investigative inroads into why Morrison might have been the 'shaman' his bandmates allegedly took him for. Yet the connect between the culture-quake through which Morrison lived and to which he contributed is not sufficiently well investigated.The editing isn't too bad, making use of all manner of media and rough cut footage to try and give an impression of time and dynamic, rather than just illustrating the story. Irritatingly, DiCillo uses the conceit of a Morrison lookalike, tearing up the desert in a Mustang, free from his celebrity, deathless like Elvis (his hero, also unexplored). It,s unnecessary and is symptomatic of the indulgence which has clouded DiCillo's judgement. 4/10