Movie Review : Val (2021)
It is entirely possible that someone reading this doesn’t know who Val Kilmer is. The nineties weren’t that long ago, but it’s part of the experience of growing old to feel lie the past a) matters more than the present and b) was more pleasant and meaningful. Of course, the truth is in the eye of the beholder. But the older you get, the more important past experiences will become in your life. This is why you and Val Kilmer both remember his Hollywood run so fondly.
The documentary Val is not just about the career of Val Kilmer. I mean, it’s a lot about that, but its also about death, memory and the part other people play in your legacy.
What makes Val a unique documentary is that it’s built from footage Kilmer shot himself over the last forty years of his life. Another (more unfortunate) detail that makes it different is that he’s battled throat cancer for a period of time. Illness killed his voice and more or less his career, so what he’s got on video is pretty much all that’s left from Val-the-famous-actor-from-the-nineties. It’s very much a film about a man talking to a man he isn’t anymore.
The multiple death of Val Kilmer
I know what you’re thinking. A man talking to the man he isn’t anymore sounds like any bullshit premise from career retrospect documentaries where an egomaniac pretends he learned lessons from a life of success, opulence and unwarranted love. Once again there’s a slight difference that makes Val more interesting than your run-of-the-mill celebrity documentary is that he liked the man he isn’t anymore. He didn’t choose to evolve or become someone else. It’s just something that happened.
See, Val Kilmer is being put through something most human being won’t have to suffer through: experiencing death before his actual physical death. In Val, our protagonist has to deconstruct a character that still feels like a part of himself and yet can only witness anymore. Sure, it must happen to athletes and physical performers of every acumen to a certain degree, but actors don’t usually have to suffer physical limitations if they’re ready to embrace new eras in their career and Kilmer was. He understood that.
When cancer hit (2015 or 2016, it isn’t clear), Val Kilmer was working on a Mark Twain biopic. He was trying to finance it with a stage play version when his voice was taken away from him. Now Kilmer is caught in a creative no man’s land, visiting and revisiting the man he once was. This is both tragic and terrifying. It’s tragic because it happened way too soon (Kilmer is 61) and it’s terrifying because it’ll happen eventually to all of us. Kilmer just has to contemplate it longer.
The transient nature of everything
But Val isn’t a soul crushing endeavor at all. Mostly because its protagonist’s soul isn’t crushed. Despite the gravely voice and the alterned look, Val Kilmer is on a quest to accept his fate and move on. That is the most powerful and touching aspect of this documentary: the acceptance. of the impermanent nature of life. Kilmer knows that he is going to die and knows that it’ll probably happen sooner than later. In Val, he’s transitionning in the last era of his life while trying to make beautiful things.
What happened to Val Kilmer is a microcosm of what eventually happens to all of us. Becoming unable to perform tasks that once were easy. Becoming part of a nostalgic past, rather than a pertinent present. The way Val Kilmer moves past his ego and embraces his place in the greater scheme of things is not only commandable. It’s inspiring. It’s oddly soothing. It confronts the audience to the fact that terror often emerges from when we hold on to things that aren’t there for us anymore.
*
I really liked Val. It didn’t teach me much about who Val Kilmer is, but it taught me a thing or two about the impermanence of things. The subject is both crucial and completely acessory to the topic of this documentary. Not sure if this was intentional from directors Ting Poo and Leo Scott, but it made their documentary unique and powerful despite not being very instrusctive or revealing. Val is worth watching even if you don’t know the man.
But it’s even better if you do.
