Directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, the documentary “Val” traces the career of actor Val Kilmer through the images he filmed throughout his life. An amazing film, to discover on OCS.
Rarely has a Hollywood actor revealed himself so much in front of the camera. In his documentary, titled Val, star Val Kilmer takes stock. On his past, his prodigious career and his present, affected by illness. In 2015, he learned that he had throat cancer. After a tracheostomy – an intervention which consists of making a hole in the trachea – he lost the use of his voice. For him, cinema is now ancient history.
With the help of Ting Poo and Leo Scott, Val Kilmer traces his destiny through thousands of hours of home videos, filmed from his childhood through adulthood. The result is a veritable gold mine for all moviegoers and admirers of the American star. Deprived of his vocal cords, he leaves it to his son, Jack Kilmer, to embody the voice-over to come back to the greatest moments of his life.
The archive images show him in his early days, alongside Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn, but also on the set of Top Gun with Tom Cruise or Batman Forever. Exclusive moments, never seen before. It also documents his year-long preparation for the role of Jim Morrison for the Doors biopic, directed by Oliver Stone.
A24 Val Kilmer filmed his own life for 40 years.
But nothing is ever rosy in Hollywood. In his personal library, Val Kilmer also documents his greatest disappointments, such as his meeting with his hero Marlon Brando on the chaotic filming of The Island of Doctor Moreau. This sequence is also an opportunity to witness a virulent argument with the director, John Frankenheimer.
When he films himself in the present, the actor is upset. A scene, difficult to watch, shows him at a fan convention, which was forcibly interrupted after the star fell ill. The spectator then becomes a witness to the damage, personal and professional, of his illness, but the documentary does not fall into pathos. Without a lighthouse, Val Kilmer turns his vulnerability into a strength.
Presented at the Cannes Film Festival in July 2020, the feature film was welcomed to the applause of a conquered audience. On the spot, Val Kilmer is absent. It is his two children, Jack and Mercedes Kilmer, inevitably moved, who pay tribute to him. A gesture of love for their father who was once one of Hollywood’s sex symbols.
Val is available on OCS and VOD.