Sr. (now on Netflix) lets us see inside Robert Downey Jr.’s home – and a little bit of what’s inside his heart. And that would be his love for his father, Robert Downey Sr., the renowned filmmaker famous for turning New York’s underground film scene of the 1960s and ’70s on its head. This documentary is one final project for Sr., a collaboration with Jr. that’s directed by American Movie’s Chris Smith, and inextricably and inscrutably autobiographical for both Downey men. What begins as Jr.’s quest to figure out “who my father is right now” ends up being a poignant depiction of a man in the final stages of life – he passed away in 2021 – and in the process of reflection.
SR.: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: “I was just Bob Downey’s kid for a long time.” It’s hard to believe that Robert Downey Jr. — you know, “I am Iron Man” — was ever in someone else’s shadow, but that’s how long and far and wide his father’s was cast. We catch up with Jr. and Sr. at Jr.’s home in the Hamptons as they discuss naming this very film Sr.; Sr. doesn’t like it, but obviously, it stuck. The documentary is part Sr.’s project, a biographical retrospective of sorts that finds him visiting New York City locations where he shot some of his infamously wild underground films, and eyeballing the building where the Downey family lived in the ’70s. Jr. remembers his father as being driven by his filmmaking vision – always people around him, always working, always writing, always turning the house into an editing bay.
Sr. made eight films between 1965 and 1975, most famously the satirical black comedy Putney Swope, which was entered in the National Film Registry. The films were highly eccentric live-wire comedies, often high-concept or allegorical. Paul Thomas Anderson was inspired by them. Alan Arkin, interviewed here, says the common thread among them was “a benign nihilism,” and that Sr.’s freewheeling productions gave him the impression that he’d go down to the bowery and put people who were “half in the bag” in his movies. (Let me tell you, there’s something special about watching a documentary in which Alan Arkin uses the phrase “half in the bag.”) Sr. shot a movie called Pound, in which 18 human actors played “dogs” locked in the same cell; Jr. was five years old when his father hired him to appear in the film, delivering the line, “You got any hair on your balls?” to a bald man playing a Mexican hairless pooch, and the rather bizarre sentence you’re reading now is quite nuanced and revelatory in characterizing these two men and their relationship.
Although Sr. gets into some of the lunatic fodder that made Sr.’s films great, it remains firmly rooted in recent years – 2019, 2020, 2021. Sr. visits a duck pond in the middle of New York, and marvels at how there are so many little cavorting ducklings in such a dense, urban area. He has a dizzy spell and needs to sit down. He gets the shakes sometimes, he says. He has Parkinson’s, and we’ll watch him physically deteriorate as the documentary goes on.
We’re right next to Jr. and Sr. as they chat on the phone, the former interviewing the latter for the film. They touch on some of the problematic stuff – how Sr. taught Jr. to smoke marijuana at age six, then watched his son battle serious addiction as an adult. Sr. struggled with drugs as well, and it ended his marriage to Jr.’s mother, Elsie Ford. But the film doesn’t dwell on this stuff. They both seem to be in a place of forgiveness maybe, or evaluation possibly, but definitely one of mutual affection and some understanding. It helps that they have a film, this film, to work on together.What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The recent slate of surprisingly intimate celeb-bio documentaries includes Val Kilmer’s Val, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Jane by Charlotte and Jonah Hill-and-his-therapist film Stutz.
Performance Worth Watching: We all know Jr. and his inimitable personality (essentially a softer version of the flippant fast-talker we see on screen), so it’s fascinating to zoom in on Sr. and see how far the apple fell from the tree.
Memorable Dialogue: TV producer Norman Lear describes working with Sr.: “Time spent with him was perfectly, wonderfully, deliciously insane.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Sr. is shot in gorgeous, crystalline black-and-white, perhaps to reflect the aesthetic of Sr.’s early work, perhaps to give it a nostalgic aesthetic, perhaps to render the relationship between father and son within a warm, soft, gray area where simple emotions – love, respect, fondness – can comfortably exist alongside the more complicated ones. There’s a greater idea at play here that clearly supersedes any concerns that the film is a vanity project or navel-gazing exercise, and it’s spoken clearly during a Zoom session between Jr. and his therapist, the latter pointing out that he and his father have always found their personal lives inevitably tangled with their filmmaking, so it makes sense that they’d explore their relationship via their art.
Notably, this revelation takes a moment to sink in, because the realization that a man as famous as Robert Downey Jr. is allowing us to eavesdrop on his therapy session is an obstacle we have to overcome. But it makes sense to include it; there’s an openness and vulnerability to Sr. that the Downey men perhaps found, if not healing – that may not be the right word, considering the emotional complexity of their situation – then at least necessary. Which isn’t to say the film is nothing but raw nerves. It’s nervy in its restless meta-qualities, with scenes frequently addressing the very conception and construction of this film. It’s just what Sr. and Jr. do, and to not include such self-analysis – because self-analysis is very much what it is – would be to disregard a large portion of their lives.
But that’s the high-minded stuff. The film becomes more direct as Sr.’s condition worsens, and Jr. openly contemplates if a moment might be the last time he sees his father alive. Sr. sits in an adjustable bed, his room converted into a makeshift editing bay, and watches the completed film – but if it was completed, how could it include this very scene? There’s a winking irreverence to these men and their work (there’s a point when Jr. says of his father, “I still feel like, on some level, he’s f—ing with us”) that underscores everything they do, which is where we further understand Arkin’s comment about “benign nihilism.” And there’s the high-minded stuff sneaking in again, although it never undermines the tenderness of a quiet moment in which Jr. and his son Exton lean into an ailing, bedridden Sr. for a three-way hug. Such is the heartbreak of impending loss.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Sr.’s exploration of a famous – and frequently infamous – father-son relationship is as moving as it is fascinating.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.