Sr. is a touching ode to a maverick father and filmmaker

In Iron Man (2008) , tech genius Tony Stark is a haunted son. After wowing the world by day, he watches archival footage of his late father by night. He craved a deeper connection with his old man, a visionary who was evidently too busy building an empire to tend to his boy. It’s almost like he’s looking for clues of love in the same video, hoping to overwrite his childhood collage of pain. When Tony is at the crossroads of his adult journey, he notices an extra reel of footage – one in which his father waits for everyone to leave the room, breaks character, looks straight into the camera and delivers some heartfelt advice to future Tony. This transforms Stark forever, giving him the closure and validation he needed to become Iron Man. Despite playing a comic-book hero, actor Robert Downey Jr. visibly turns this moment into something very real and intimate.

Sr., a documentary about his late film-maker father Robert Downey Sr ., is the Hollywood superstar’s own self-produced extra reel of footage. It may be centered on the eclectic life and career of a pioneering American indie film-maker, but Sr. is primarily a son’s moving attempt to understand – and renovate his connection with – a father who was too busy being an artist to nurture his son’s life. It is not so much a eulogy as a personal souvenir – an elaborately composed black-and-white memory Robert Downey Jr. perhaps hopes to relive in the future, finding clues of weathered love and affection that might have emerged over the years. The film recounts Sr’s work in chronological order – right from his bizarre no-budget shorts to his provocative zero-budget features that went on to inspire modern-day auteurs like Paul Thomas Anderson.

More importantly, as is the case with any perceptive documentary, each film and anecdote doubles up as a gateway to that phase of living. Robert Downey Jr. calls Sr. and discusses his career, while also getting him to speak about its corresponding consequences on his family life – a nifty communication tool that allows the older film-maker to reflect and discover at once. He realizes that one of his films starring his son (Hugo Pool) was in fact his medium to process the grief of losing his second wife, a woman who had profoundly impacted him as a person. They discuss Sr’s doomed Los Angeles adventures as a studio-hired filmmaker, as well as both the father and son’s struggles with drug addiction. Sr. didn’t bring up his son in the most traditional way, and though Jr. owes his natural camera presence to his father, the documentary gives him the courage to love all the imperfections of his old man. It’s almost as though both the men have finally reached a stage where they can look back and smile. Downey’s desire to capture these last years with his dad brings to mind Luther Vandross’ Dance With My Father, a song that’s as heartbreaking as it is cathartic.

There’s something about watching famous people getting vulnerable that hits differently these days, especially in light of a pandemic that has pretty much democratized the identity of grief. At one point, the actor admits he isn’t sure why he started producing the documentary in 2018. There was no single agenda. He isn’t sure whether this is supposed to be a contemplation on death, a shapeless father-son story or an ode to an underground artist who seldom failed to turn his life into art. What’s even more disarming is that two cuts of the documentary are simultaneously being made – one by Jr. and Netflix (including director Chris Smith), and one by Sr., who is determined to present an arthouse version of himself. Sr’s film starts out as an actual documentary, but poignantly morphs into something that keeps him busy – and spirited – through his Parkinson’s journey. It’s a lovely gesture by the son and the makers, letting the father go out in a way most film-makers dream of. Watching him edit the film from his deathbed becomes a version of watching your life flash before your eyes – in carefully calibrated chunks.

It’s hard not to tear up in these moments, mostly because many of us are learning to confront the inevitable mortality of our parents today. There’s always the fear that every subsequent experience with them might be our last. There’s always the urge to spend some quality time with them before it’s too late – perhaps a nostalgic trip, perhaps a surprise visit, perhaps a weekend of long and heartfelt conversations. But there’s also the rational urge to escape this fear by being busy and involved in our own work. Sr. is a perfectly poignant marriage of that escape and reckoning – a story of a life as well as a life of storytelling. The extra reel is always there, if you look hard enough.

Rahul Desai is a film critic and programmer, who spends his spare time travelling to all the places from the movies he writes about.

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