When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors (15)
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Tom DiCillo's documentary about American rock band The Doors is rather ploddingly dominated by the personality of their lead singer Jim Morrison, whose death in a Paris hotel room in 1971 has burnished his myth ever since.
The band is a gift to any documentarist of the 1960s counterculture, for it has become difficult not to hear their music when "iconic" footage of riots, peace marches and assassinations rolls by; can we ever listen to their long dirge "The End" without thinking of Vietnam? Morrison, as recounted in Johnny Depp's narration, saw himself as poet, rebel and shaman, though others – such as his band members – saw him increasingly as a hopeless drunk and a terminal liability. Indeed, the cumulative effect of this film is to enhance one's respect for The Doors (John Densmore, Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek) and to diminish the same for Morrison, whose posturing now looks like the most fatuous exhibitionism. But that ghostly sonorous voice of his endures, and I came out of this wanting to listen to "Touch Me" and "Break on Through".
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments