By Glenn Dunks
Sometimes movie stars use their power for good. How else to describe Netflix—home of Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas and the fittingly titled Ryan Gosling vehicle The Grey Man—releasing a black and white documentary about an underground cinema pioneer known best for absurdist satires and stoner comedies of the ‘60s and ‘70s. In this case, we surely have to give gratitude to Robert Downey Jr. It’s hard to believe Sr. would be there on millions of people’s TV if it weren’t for him.
Thankfully, not so content to just let his name sell the picture and be done with it, Sr. is a probing, funny exploration of art and the people who make it, and the impression that both can leave on those around them.
Chris Smith turns out to be an entirely appropriate choice to direct this, best known as he is for the indie sensation American Movie and the Andy Kaufman doc Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond. He lends Sr. with as much of its playful tone as its subjects—the father and son pair of Robert Downeys. The novel twist here is that amid the quite typical career history lessons that is actually more fascinating that most, Smith indulges the elder film director with the opportunity to direct his own interpretation of what a film about Robert Downey Sr. should be. As a result, punctuated throughout the movie, are somewhat tangential or off-the-beaten-path diversions that add texture and kick to what was already an entertaining movie.
Thankfully these last few years have seen a healthy and very welcome rise in documentaries about artists that are imbued with the subject of their subject. Works like Wojnarowicz: Fuck You Faggot Fucker or Moments Like This Never Last and even this year’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which took the lives of painters and photographers and artists and made works out of them that weren’t just staid retrospectives for prestige audiences, but vibrant and electric interpretations. Robert Downey Sr. being a filmmaker of irreverent comedy certainly helps, but it’s all too easy to imagine a movie about his life takes the humour of Putney Swope or Greaser’s Palace or even Up the Academy and replaces it with solemn epitaphs and pat lip service.
That “Senior” (as he’s called by his family) was slowly succumbing to Parkinson’s Disease throughout the film’s production is obviously an important part of the story, but Smith and Robert Downey Jr. (who feels as much of a creative force here as his dad) don’t let it consume it. We are given insight into the Iron Man star’s complex relationship with his father alongside some of the harder truths he must confront as his father slips further away from him, but the humour—sometimes odd, definitely rakish—that was his dad’s trademark is never too far away. It feels weird to say a documentary about a man’s death is entertaining, but I doubt a filmmaker who made a movie about a mother and son marrying each other for the welfare benefits (that would be 1966’s Chafed Elbows) would have it any other way.
Here, father and son are allowed the space to admit failures and to engage in the sort of later in life connection that only such hard paths can really lead to. I hope people who have maybe never seen one of Senior’s movies decide to watch. The space he occupied is a fascinating one and ought to be experienced even by those for whom Marvel is maybe the only thing that brought them there. To see their beloved Tony Stark cry for his father is may be one thing. That the father was such a wildly inventive moviemaker himself gives Sr. a wonderful, unique edge and that makes Sr. all the more important element of discovery in this fluctuating age of the artform.
Release: Streaming worldwide on Netflix.
Award chances: I wouldn’t be surprised to see it make the shortlist (although I am not currently predicting it to make that list of 15). I would be very surprised to see it nominated. As we’ve noted time and time again, the Academy don’t really do documentaries about those in the industry for whatever reason. Still, it’s a step above some of the more typical entries we’ve seen lately so maybe it has an edge.