The Doors – 15 Year Anniversary Edition (Double DVD-Video/Oliver Stone/DTS/Lionsgate)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B Extras: B Film: B
Before he
made his film of The Doors from
1991, Oliver Stone had not directly addressed the Rock music culture and Morrison
& the band were potentially drifting into Classic Rock obscurity. That was unthinkable then, but after Grunge,
broadcast radio’s move to narrowcasting and Hip Hop’s temporary take-over as
the dominant genre, it was very likely.
At the time, Stone was attacked for “mischaracterizing” Morrison and
doing injustice to his memory, but much of that was often over-romanticizing of
him and the counterculture era he came out of.
Mind you,
we are talking about trashing one of the most important movements of the 20th
Century, but that some people made it unrealistically utopian not unlike a drug
high before the bottom falls out. On top
of being one of the most underrated and underestimated of all Stone films,
Kilmer gives a dead-on performance as Morrison and never got credit for this
despite repeating aspects of the role in later films. Stone’s take is that Morrison was a loner,
misunderstood, better than he got credit for as a man and that Rock unity was
often a myth. The fall of the genre has
sadly proved him correct.
Meg Ryan
is also amazing as the love of his life in one of her few truly challenging
roles and the additional cast including Kathleen Quinlan, Kyle MacLachlan,
Kevin Dillon, Frank Whaley, Billy Idol, Wes Studi, Mimi Rogers, Eagle Eye Cherry,
Bill Graham, Crispin Glover as Andy
Warhol and Michael Madsen really pull through.
Though it never totally feels like the late 1960s, that works to the
film’s advantage of Morrison’s isolated world as microcosm.
Years
later, it is also one of Stone’s bravest films and harder to refute since it is
not as explicitly political as JFK
and his masterwork, Nixon. Now, like Richard Linklater’s underrated School Of Rock, it becomes an important
and smart record of the movement.
Fortunately, it happened when Rock was still alive and well, making it a
long goodbye most unexpected.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot in real anamorphic Panavision
by the amazing Robert Richardson when he and Stone still worked
exclusively. Since their split, Richardson
has fared better not unlike Bernard Herrmann after his falling out with
Hitchcock. With only rare moments of
visual enhancement by ILM, this is an impressive naturalistic film shoot and
was also issued in 70mm blow-ups. This
transfer is not as sharp and clear as it should be and I have seen the film
several times in different 35mm prints.
It is color consistent.
In those
70mm blow-ups, the original sound was a 4.1 mix in Dolby magnetic stereo, but
some 35mm prints also had the failed CDS (Cinema Digital Sound) system, the
first digital sound system to be used to any extent on feature films. That too was a 4.1 mix in 16 bit PCM, while
the analog 35mm prints were in Dolby’s advanced SR (Spectral Recording)
playback system. For years, terrible Dolby
Digital 5.1 mixes on DVD were all that was available and never sounded good. Even the PCM 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic
surrounds on the old 12” LaserDisc was better.
This new edition upgrades the Dolby to 5.1 EX, but the DTS 6.1 ES really
finally does the sound justice enough and audiophiles can give up the Laser.
Sound
fidelity has come a long way for music, especially classics, with some Doors
material issued in the high fidelity DVD-Audio format. Whether Stone would want to go back and
upgrade some or all of the music is an interesting proposition, but as it
stands, the DTS is solid and like Terminator
2 proves that CDS was a better sound system than may be remembered for.
Extras include
Stone’s audio commentary on DVD 1, plus The Doors In L.A., The
Jim Morrison Phenomena In Paris and The Road To Excess
documentaries, original theatrical trailer & teaser and 43 minutes of
deleted & extended scenes of interest on DVD 2. All are likely (hopefully) to be repeated on
Blu-ray and are all really good. Nice to
see this film get the upgraded treatment it deserves.
- Nicholas Sheffo
