Pablo O. Scholz
08/21/2021 21:26
Clarín.com
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Updated 08/21/2021 9:45 PM
All the boys want to be Batman.
But not all guys want to be the actor who plays Batman.
Val Kilmer
was The
Dark
Knight long before playing him in
Batman forever
.
It was, yes, as a child.
As we all were.
And many of her wishes came true.
Not all.
Val Kilmer, today, as seen in the documentary that had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
Photo Amazon Prime Video
That's what
Val
, the documentary that follows the actor from
The Doors
,
Top Gun
,
Fuego contra fuego
and
El Santo is all about
in his personal and professional life, thanks in large part to the fact that, since he was a boy, he has kept home videos.
Seeing him as he is, today, squeezes the hearts of his fans.
Val overcame throat cancer - well into the documentary he himself will be in charge of telling when and how he discovered it - but he also had to undergo a tracheostomy.
So in order to speak, you must cover the hole in your neck with your hand.
Along with Tom Cruise: Iceman vs.
Maverick.
There was even a rift in the cast of "Top Gun."
Photo Clarín Archive
“I had to choose between eating and breathing.
And without breathing you can't eat ”, he reasons.
Val's premiere was at the recent Cannes Film Festival.
The actor who was Jim Morrison in
Oliver Stone's
The Doors
, was not present.
Yes, his two sons did, who played a fundamental role in the making of the Ting Poo and Leo Scott documentary.
Home movies and more
The actor has an archive of images and home movies from his childhood.
Photo Amazon Prime Video
Kilmer, who was born on December 31, 1959, is 61 years old, but looks older.
He also has an archive of his own images since he was a child.
Methodical as an actor, he has also been methodical when it comes to saving and preserving footage as a boy, such as the amateur shorts he made with his brothers, the backstage of productions like
Top Gun
or his beginnings in professional theater, together with ... Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.
It is always difficult to distance yourself with a film that reviews the life of someone who is not only alive, but also lends himself to speaking on camera.
Are we looking at an authorized biography of Val Kilmer?
The movie poster.
Photo Amazon Prime Video
The truth is that Val is not self-indulgent at any point in the documentary.
And his life story has hit him, and since he was little.
From divorced parents, the death of his older brother in a swimming pool (he suffered from epilepsy) slapped him young, when he was studying at Julliard, in New York, where he had moved from his native California.
The film allows itself to dialogue with intimate moments - how he was enchanted with the British Joanne Whalley, seeing her in a play in London, directed by Danny Boyle, and how the work brought them together in the future in Willow and ended up being his wife, and being who, among others, buried him with huge debts after his divorce.
Kilmer, as Mark Twain, rehearsing for his one-man show.
Photo Amazon Prime Video
Anecdotes the film offers hundreds.
From how he learned to play the guitar for his
Super Secret
character
, and then the directors (Zucker and the Abrahams brothers, who would do
Y ... Where's the pilot?
) Told him they preferred that he mimic, like he was a lousy Elvis Presley.
Or his devotion to
Marlon Brando
, with whom he was finally able to share a troublesome shoot, like the one in
The Island of Dr. Moreau
(and in which, you can see, it is not always Brando who plays Moreau).
Or why he said yes to being Batman, and no to the sequel.
Like many Hollywood stars, Val Kilmer has a reputation for being a tough guy on film set.
The documentary takes care of it, and it is the actor himself, with the archive images, who is in charge of contextualizing these defamations.
Like Jim Morrison in "The Doors."
His work was meticulous, copying every move of the singer.
Photo Amazon Prime Video
There he is, along with David Thewlis, on the set of
The Island of Dr. Moreau
, confronting director John Frankenheimer, over some sayings of the director of
Contact in France II
, who assured that he would leave the filming.
And no matter how much you see and hear him perfectly toast "For more sex, more drugs, more alcohol and less
Tom Cruise
", his relationship with the megastar of Mission: Impossible during and even after the filming of
Top Gun
is respectful.
Since there weren't many details about Iceman, his character, in the script, Val set out to make it real, and made up a past story, in which he had a father who was ignorant of him “and as a result, I was driven by the need to be perfect in all the senses.
This obsession with perfection is what made him so arrogant, "he is heard saying.
Jack Kilmer, his son, assisted him in the filming of the documentary.
Photo Amazon Prime Video
So Tom was ignored off set, because he wanted to keep that enmity at all times.
If there was even a crack in the cast, with two divided sides.
The documentary also shows him in harsh and difficult circumstances, which the directors may well have kept for themselves.
We are not talking about the ones in which Kilmer is moved and moved to tears by what he faces, but displaying the images of the Comic-Con in which he signed autographs to the fans and asks for a moment to lie down because obviously he was not feeling well, and asks for a barrel in which he ends up sticking his head to vomit ...
Val Kilmer, unrecognizable in his last appearance.
Photo Clarín Archive
Kilmer was obsessed with playing Hamlet ("at 27 or 28").
Also, Jim Morrison, the frontman of The Doors, and how he mimics the musician's movements in the film is impressive.
The general public surely does not know that in the middle of a tour of his one-man show in which he played Mark Twain, he woke up bloody and began the odyssey against throat cancer.
Val, we said, is 61 years old.
Looking at him today, he looks like an even older man.
The years do not pass alone, but as Indiana Jones said, what matters is the mileage.
"Val"
Very good
Documentary film.
USA, 2021. 109 ', SAM 16.
From:
Ting Poo and Leo Scott.
Available at:
Amazon Prime Video.
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