Watch Val with film summary and movie review

A film festival sensation picked up by mini-studio A24, which has become known for stylish dramatic rawness, “Val” is edited and structured like a deathbed flashback (or like “Marlon . The title subject’s life passes before his eyes in the form of film and video from childhood home movies;  Hollywood productions; the archives of Julliard (where he studied acting); various entertainment TV programs, electronic press kits, and DVD supplements; and Kilmer’s own library of handheld camcorder and phone footage, which he’s been accumulating for decades. The star, who lost his voice to cancer, speaks through a voice-box while holding a finger over the opening of a tube embedded in his throat. In flashbacks to earlier times, Kilmer’s written narration is read by his son Jack, whom he dotes on in the footage (and who captures the essence if Kilmer’s energy as a celebrity even though vocally he’s not a ringer).

But Kilmer steps around a number of memoir landmines that’ll be familiar to anyone who’s followed his acting career, such as his entitled, abusive behavior on sets in the ’90s (including “The Island of Dr. Moreau” where he was accused of burning an assistant cameraman’s face with a cigarette), and accusations of cruelty by his ex-wife, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, during their divorce and custody fights. The low point is a montage of other actors endorsing Kilmer’s defense that he was just a perfectionist trying to make each film as good as it could be, despite the mediocrity of directors and producers who had creative control—this despite personal, behind-the-scenes set footage that, despite rather circumspect editing, still makes it seem as if Kilmer and other (mostly male) actors were treating  workplaces the way entitled little boys treat playgrounds. 

A scene of “Moreau” director John Frankenheimer tearing into Kilmer for his arrogance and inappropriateness plays out mostly as captions on a black screen, KIlmer having set the camera down at Frankenheimer’s orders after the director repeatedly warned him that he didn’t want him shooting a personal documentary on a closed professional film set. Like many scenes in “Val,” it’s hard to tell from this one whether the footage is being presented in the name of warts-and-all honesty, or because Kilmer mistakenly believes that the clips he’s showing us vindicate his point-of-view on who was right. 

With hindsight, and somewhat incredibly, it seems like the latter, though Kilmer is so wounded by his illness, treatments, and surgeries that whatever obstinance comes through in the filmmaking is undercut by our awareness of how frail he is, how vulnerable to sickness and injury, how much closer to death than most of us. The movie’s most wrenching scene is a long, unedited, stationary shot of Kilmer seated at a card table at a fan convention, signing autograph after autography until he begins to feel queasy and has to excuse himself. He then rises unsteadily to his feet, plops down an out-of-focus sofa in the background of the shot, and vomits into a trash can (the sound is muted here, perhaps to allow Kilmer at least a shred of dignity).

At the same time, though, there are odd moments where the vibe of the film’s narration, as well Kilmer’s sly interaction with the camera, make it seem as if, on top of any therapeutic value “Val” might have, KIlmer also sees the project as an extension of his participation in conventions and commemorative screenings where he signs autographs for cash. In narration, Kilmer chastises other actors, and by extension himself, for trying to live off the past in this way. But this is one instance where he’s being harder on himself than he should be. After turning 50, even male leading men’s professional options start to dry up, so who can blame someone of Kilmer’s stature from trying to profit off the fact that he was in “Top Secret!”, “Top Gun,” “The Doors,” “Batman Forever,” “Tombstone,” and other ’80s and ’90s touchstones? (How human of Kilmer to fail to forgive himself for the one thing he seems to find unforgivable: maudlin self-pity at the limitations that always come with age.)

The film is at its most satisfying when it’s just giving us details of Kilmer’s philosophy of acting, which is uncompromising to the point of being exasperating, but is nevertheless preferable to the default attitude of so many straight male actors who denigrate their profession as trivial or somehow unbecoming of an adult man. Kilmer, gloriously, is far too idealistic for that sort of nonsense. Quoting poets, philosophers, playwrights, and mentors who share his lofty opinion of the value of art, he presents a much-needed defense of acting as a way to help the audience understand itself, just as it helps the open-minded, open-hearted actor understand their own tangled thoughts and feelings. 

By pretending to be someone else, as Kilmer did so convincingly in his best film work, he incarnated the idea of a lie that reveals a greater truth. You could even make the the case that the best of Kilmer was already available to us, and that if you want to really understand the essence of this great, strange movie star, you have to cut him out of the equation, and go straight to the work.