Val

So, I watched this last night.

Not that I am a Val Kilmer fan, not that I’ve ever seen a single film starring Val Kilmer – no, I’ve never seen Top Gun – but the reviews made it seem fairly interesting, and I was stressed out from a day of helping College Guy move his stuff to the university and then, five miles into the 100-mile trip back, having the tire-level gauge come on and scream it warning, as it likes to do, pulling into a gas station, seeing that a tire was TORN – TORN, I TELL YOU! – and wondering what the heck are people doing with my car – filling it up with air and praying, praying, praying I would make it back, indeed, making it back to town and going immediately, do not pass go, to the tire store right up the road run by very friendly, efficient Mexicans, who looked at the front tires, gave me a price, and had them changed out in ten minutes – so yes, I was not up for reading the New Yorker or Trollope last night. Just give me wine and something to watch while I contemplate the Journey of Life and how freaking precarious it is.

(Soon to be seen in Living Faith. Trust me.)

Anyway – it’s an interesting little film. Anthony Lane captures it here.

Kilmer was a videophile from childhood, so there are seriously thousands of hours of footage from which to draw.

Short version: It’s a look at Kilmer’s life and career, mostly through his own footage and filming in the present day, narrated mostly by Kilmer’s son since Kilmer himself is recovering from throat cancer and can only speak by pushing a button on a contraption around his throat. He does speak, and eloquently, but his son does most of the narrating.

That’s a pretty heavy impact right there. Here’s your glamorous Hollywood lifestyle, your acting dreams fulfilled (sort of), and now here you are right now, divorced, croaking, signing posters at Comic-Con.

Dreams and goals are vastly overrated. What matters is what you’re doing now.

How you’re using this moment.

As I said, I know next to nothing about Val Kilmer and could see right off that this documentary would be limited in impact because it’s only from his perspective, but I still couldn’t consider my viewing of this a waste of time.

Crucial life points? The death of his brother as a teen. His father’s business shenanigans. During the time this film was produced, the death of his mother, which is probably the most affecting point.

His own sense of Acting and related frustrations. Again – he has his own angle, his own story on the last part, but who can doubt that others who worked with them have their own?

At one point, I said to my 16-year old, who plopped down to watch it once he detected the Batman part coming – “He’s a year older than I am. A year.”

So yes, there was that element. Here we are, sixty decades in, looking back at loss and achievement and contemplating what it all means.

You can, of course, watch it for yourself, but a couple of notes that struck me.

First are the scenes around the passing of Kilmer’s mother. There is something about a sixty+ year old man gazing intently at the camera and saying, I miss my mama – which is enough to make any of us mamas rethink our impatience and resentments and frustrations.

We’re here. We’re who we are. This is our most important work.

Secondly – believe it or not – related to this week’s discussion of the traditional Latin Mass and especially, ego.

Yes! I can make anything fit!

But seriously – this actually does. Fit.

Kilmer is talking about his work portraying Jim Morrison, and referring, I suppose to his Method – but also to the whole purpose of art – both his and Morrison’s – and brings Yeats into it.

It think it’s Yeats who said…the idea is…you see a tree and you observe a truth about the tree…and you’re hit with it….the magic of the tree..it’s a spiritual tree…beyond the physical life form of the ,tree…and then you write and write and write about the tree…and the life of the tree and the spirit of it…till your own personality is gone from the words…...when you’re gone from the poem, then it’s a poem. Part of you disappears, so you can dance with the spirit of something else.

No, idiots, it’s not about you. It’s not about you bringing yourself into the present moment and thinking that everyone can come closer to God because you’re expressing yourself. It’s about letting go and disappearing, and being, for some weird, unknown reason that has nothing to do with your specialness, the conduit for truth. For the spirit of Something Else.