Val Kilmer in Val. Photo / Supplied
Greg and Zanna try to understand Val.
SCORES
Acting: 5
Candid footage: 5
Multiplicity of possible meanings: 5
SHE SAW
I didn't have an opinion on Val Kilmer before watching this documentary. I sometimes got him confused with Christian Bale: Two Batmans both known as "difficult to work with". But there's no confusing these two now. Bale's currently playing the practically immortal Gorr the God Butcher in a Marvel movie, while Kilmer's painting the word God on a canvas and studying the word of Jesus Christ at a church in Malibu - his physical strength all but lost, his mortality never more salient.
Kilmer's life, career, appearance and voice have been irrevocably changed by throat cancer. He has to plug a tracheostomy tube in his neck in order to speak. The sound that comes out is gruff, strained and difficult to understand. He is subtitled throughout the film.
But the film is not about Kilmer's cancer battle. It's about his life's passion: acting. Or at least that's what Kilmer intends. He has documented an enormous amount of his life on camera. An amount that was no doubt infuriating to those close to him in the '80s and '90s but would probably be considered close to normal now - the difference being his camera didn't fit in his pocket.
Val is a retrospective of Kilmer's career and is narrated in the first person by his son Jack. An autobiographical film about the art of acting sounds both narcissistic and the kind of thing only actors and industry people would be even remotely interested in. But fortunately, Kilmer's life is compelling enough that the film doesn't spiral into a heady analysis of the process of transformation for stage and screen in the way Kilmer might have desired.
The magic of this documentary comes from the abundance of Kilmer's videos - from movies he and his two brothers made as young boys to behind-the-scenes footage on films like Top Gun, Batman and The Island of Dr Moreau. It seems Kilmer has been planning this film since he became the youngest actor to be accepted to Juilliard or perhaps even before. He could never have anticipated how it would end, though - a man whose beloved career relies heavily on the use of his voice has that voice taken away from him, squashing any hope of him fulfilling his acting aspirations.
Honestly, Kilmer seems like he would've been insufferable to be around as a young actor but that just makes the trajectory of his life and career all the more engrossing. It's a contemplative, nostalgic film, steeped in sadness, often poetic, and overall a satisfying portrait of a man seeking truth - in performance and ultimately in himself.
HE SAW
Telling stories about one's own life is about creating the illusion of meaning from chaos. In Val Kilmer's case, having recorded his life on camera beyond all reason, he has more chaos to work with than most. The greater the chaos, the harder it is to find meaning, or maybe the easier to make whatever meaning you want.
Kilmer was a talented young actor, but he was cast for his beauty rather than his talent, and thus didn't get to do much of the acting he wanted to do. In middle age, divorced and in debt, he decided it was time to . . .
. . .
. . .
act.
He sold his 2500ha in New Mexico, which were supposed to be a legacy for his kids and their kids, in order to fund his dream project of writing a great American movie about Mark Twain, and simultaneously starring in a play about Mark Twain. If he feels guilt about this act, and I'm not saying he should, he doesn't express it in the documentary.
He fully occupied the role of Twain. In this documentary, he outlines the ways in which he was like Twain: both were in debt, both lost close family, both went on the road, performing to pay their debts.
He was going well, he was writing the Twain screenplay, he was struggling, but he was finally doing what he'd always wanted, and he knew his mum would be proud of him. Then he got cancer and that was the end of his dream.
But hang on a sec, because dreams come in different shapes. He began to paint, which he hadn't done in years and he opened an art gallery, "a sacred space" to help the next generation of artists.
The film could have ended there and it would have been a pretty good finish. Up to that point, it had been a fairly straightforward and quite entertaining narrative, including such filmic nuggets as Kilmer's candid footage of Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn pulling browneyes in a Broadway dressing room, but then comes the coda, and from there it all gets a bit confusing.
Kilmer's religious beliefs - he's a Christian Scientist - are partially addressed. He says, through voiceover: "Here on Earth, the distance between Heaven and Hell is the difference between faith and doubt." He says this has been a story about truth and illusion: "Healing is not born of vanity, it is born of honesty."
These sayings all mean something, and it's possible Kilmer knows what it is, but I don't have a clue. Maybe it's all an illusion.
• Val is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.