Val
A24For a first feature-length documentary from both studio A24 but also directors Leo Scott and Ting Poo, Val is a monumentally large hill to climb. Documenting the life, style and passion of a great innovator of the American movie is a hard task indeed, but assembling his life through pictures and videos he took himself is an added layer of difficulty. A hearty eccentric has his voice stolen from him through complications with chemotherapy. It is one of the many tragedies that afflict Val Kilmer, whose openness throughout Val is not just a noteworthy documentary, but emotionally charged and a great release for the eponymous subject. All good documentaries should be. Val is one of those.
His desire to lend himself so helpfully to the documentary, using his son, Jack Kilmer, as a narrator for his life, makes for a unique angle that most documentarians will never possess. They not only have access to Kilmer, but to his life. It is all on camera. Not just his roles in the movies, but his behind the scenes life. His desire to photograph and document the world around him has served Val well. What Scott and Poo can show with this footage is the long-living passion Kilmer has for acting and the creativity that comes from it. They fashion a simple, effective narrative that walks us through the life of the Top Gun and Top Secret! actor.
When relying on narration, Val stutters from time to time. Surely, we can give Kilmer some leeway. He reflects on the torture of his early days, the loss of his brother, and his recent struggle with throat cancer. He writes with a desire to be poetic, but sometimes simplicity is the most touching of effects. “Raw with grief” is how he describes the beginning of his school days, and that much is explored well. The impact his brother, Wesley Kilmer, had on him and his career trajectory is understood and expanded upon extremely well. It is within these scenes that Val offers us the opportunity to explore other, lesser-known moments. Kilmer the poet. Kilmer the student. It is all offered with a nice, clear comparison to how it moved him to movie-making, and why it was so important to him that he documented everything he did. It serves him well, and to that end, serves us well.
Tragic it is that such a powerful voice was inflicted with tragedy, Val captures the strength of its subject. He was and is a tenacious innovator, the pairing of Scott and Poo in the directing chair motion that well. They bring a strong narrative out of home footage, an excellent attempt at capturing Kilmer in his most natural elements, whilst also serving as a portrayal of a man who was at the forefront of leading men for quite some time. We must never forget that of Kilmer, whose moulding of the people around him and the times he worked at his highs are so crucially influential. He is still an innovator, just in different areas, and Val portrays not just that transition, but the desire for it, with inherent passion gifted to us by the focus of this fantastic documentary.