Sr. : A Documentary Review - Robert Downey Jr. on Robert Downey Sr.

My Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A charming and surprisingly poignant documentary about a famous son examining the life of his enigmatic father.

Sr. is the new Netflix documentary that explores the complex relationship between mega movie-star Robert Downey Jr. and his film maker father Robert Downey Sr.

The film, directed by documentarian Chris Smith, who has made such notable docs as American Movie, Tiger King and 100 Foot Wave, premiered on Netflix December 2nd.

As everyone knows, Robert Downey Jr. is one of the most successful and wealthiest movie stars of the current age. His work as Iron Man was the lynchpin for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s astonishingly successful run from 2008 to 2019.

Jr.’s father, Robert Downey Sr., is less well-known outside of Hollywood than his famous progeny, but is a legend in his own right among those in the know in the movie business.

Downey Sr. was an independent, unorthodox, somewhat avant-garde filmmaker in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s. Sr.’s films never found any mainstream success but did develop a cult following, which included such notable directors as Paul Thomas Anderson.

I readily admit that Sr.’s films never held the least bit of appeal for me. In fact, I find Robert Downey Sr.’s movies to be…well…mostly trash, and I’ve never understood their low rent appeal. But to each his own. That said, Sr. may not have been a gifted movie maker but he was, as evidenced by the closer examination of him by this documentary, unquestionably an artist at heart…maybe not a particularly skilled artist, but an artist nonetheless. This is evident in how he sees the world through an artist’s eyes and finds brilliance and meaning in the mundane…like when he marvels over ducks in a small city pond or is thrilled when a skateboarder nearly runs him over.

Downey Sr. was a paragon of the 1960’s, so much so that he became a victim of his own appetites. In the 1970’s, Sr. became addicted to cocaine and he passed on that unfortunate trait to his son, Robert Downey Jr., whom he introduced to pot at a very young age.

Thankfully, Downey Sr. got sober in the 1980’s, but this was right when Downey Jr.’s addiction was going meteoric. Downey Jr.’s substance abuse issues raged for years and nearly killed both his career and his self. This tension over Downey Jr.’s troubled past and Downey Sr.’s complicity in instigating it, is the subtle, unspoken center of Sr. as Robert Downey Jr. gently searches for answers while his father’s health deteriorates.  

Robert Downey Jr. grew up on camera, getting his first gig working in his father’s film when he was fresh out of diapers, and his default position is one of performance, and so it is in Sr. But Downey Jr.’s performative instinct is so second nature that it actually feels quite genuine when captured in the documentary, and comes across as both endearing and vulnerable.

A movie star making a documentary about his father could have been nothing but a narcissistic, maudlin venture, and while there is certainly something somewhat narcissistic about the festivities in Sr., the film is so laced with a tender and yearning humanity that it becomes engaging, captivating and ultimately deeply moving despite its famous subjects.

Robert Downey Jr. is revealed in Sr. to be a kind-hearted, fragile kid grown up who tenderly loves his dad and wants to find both satisfactory answers for the demons from his past but also peace and acceptance from his dying father.

Downey Sr., to his credit, accepts responsibility for his poor parenting choices and the burden he placed upon his son, and he doesn’t so much avoid answering tough questions as he simply runs out of adequate things to say and the energy to say them.

Downey Jr. doesn’t get the answers he yearns for in Sr., and neither do viewers, but there is a poignancy in his gentle search and in his father’s good-nature that is profound.

Both Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Downey Sr. are preternaturally charming and relentlessly likeable men, and their charm and charisma transform Sr. from a run-of-the-mill movie star tribute to their dad into an entertaining, and remarkably moving chronicle of a son’s bearing witness to the end of his enigmatic father’s life.

If you’re not a fan of Robert Downey Sr.’s movies, or even of Robert Downey Jr’s movies, there is still a lot to appreciate and to relate to in this poignant documentary, especially if you’re a son who has lost a father and been left with more questions than answers.

©2022

The Rehearsal (HBO Max): TV Review

 ****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Batshit, bizarre and brilliant.

“ONE TIME A THING OCCURRED TO ME, WHAT’S REAL AND WHAT’S FOR SALE?” – Vasoline by Stone Temple Pilots

It is very difficult to describe The Rehearsal, a new six-episode series written, directed and starring Nathan Fielder, now streaming on HBO Max.

At first glance, the series is a ‘reality tv’ show about Fielder helping regular people navigate their anxiety by directing elaborate rehearsals of difficult situations they will encounter in the future.

For example, in episode one Fielder assists a man who has been lying to a friend about his level of education and wants to come clean but is worried about how the friend will react. This is pretty standard reality tv stuff…nothing to see here. Except Fielder goes to extraordinary lengths to recreate the setting and the individuals involved in the encounter. He builds an exact replica of the bar where the conversation will take place, and hires actors to play everyone involved except for the man who wants to confess, and then rehearses the hell out of it trying to build a roadmap to follow for any contingency that may arise.

Episode one is amusing for how ridiculous Fielder is in his quest for “authenticity” regarding setting and cast…but it’s child’s play compared to what comes in episodes 2-6. That’s where the show turns the lunacy up to eleven and the absurdity up to infinity.

The first episode actually has almost nothing to do with the rest of the series. I won’t spoil anything vital from episodes 2-6 only because it simply has to be seen to be believed…and even seeing isn’t believing as I assume all of it is as phony as a smile on a two-dollar whore. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fascinating and insightful.

I’ve never seen any of Nathan Fielder’s earlier work, but from what I understand he’s a comedian/actor and comedic provocateur, so The Rehearsal is, I guess, best described as a docu-comedy…or maybe a mocku-comedy, or maybe an off-the-rails, reality tv social experiment.

I’m a notoriously difficult audience for comedy and am incapable of giving pity laughs. The Rehearsal made me guffaw numerous times, and not with traditional build-ups and payoffs but with subtle, understated, insanely weird moments of glorious absurdity.

Nathan Fielder is the ethically and morally corrupt ringmaster and clown of this straight-faced, three-ring circus, and he’s a passive-aggressive, raging narcissist suffering from supreme self-absorption and cluelessness…and it’s hysterical to behold, even when, or maybe especially when, he acts so superior to the rubes he’s supposedly silently judging, despite being just as ignorant, oblivious and self-delusional as they are.

I have no idea if this Fielder persona is genuine or an act, and I don’t much care. Like Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, Fielder’s persona is able to tell a complex story without ever needing to utter a word.

Fielder’s ‘act’ is, in some ways, sort of a more subdued version of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat work, where he bonds with the audience because he’s in on the joke and uses ‘normal’ people as the punchline. But unlike Borat, Fielder’s insecurities and arrogance keeps slipping out from behind the mask.

The Rehearsal reminded me of a documentary/mockumentary from 1999 titled American Movie, which chronicled some passionate but unfortunate Midwestern filmmakers trying to make a movie that is destined to be terrible. American Movie was all the rage amongst a certain sect of hipster cinephiles back in the day. I even worked on a similar project as a cinematographer/actor in the same time frame. Similar to The Rehearsal, debates raged about whether American Movie was a real documentary or a mockumentary, and the answer is still elusive. I’m less in doubt about the dubious voracity of The Rehearsal.

The Rehearsal is also somewhat reminiscent of the Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, NY, which blurs reality and manufactured reality in a post-modern cauldron of existentialism.

And the last thing that The Rehearsal reminded me of was Bo Burnham’s Netflix comedy special, Inside. Although The Rehearsal is nothing like Bo Burnham’s Inside in content and character, it’s similar in the sense that it is undoubtedly a singular work of genius.

Many moons ago while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, my class did a sort of Meisner-esque exercise where an actor sits on a chair and looks straight ahead. The actor is supposed to be still and just listen to the words other classmates say to them from across the room and see if they generate a genuine, spontaneous emotional or physical reaction.

It's an interesting exercise in that it is meant to remove the impulse of the actor to “show” or indicate and instead just open themselves up, to be and to react organically and naturally.

I had already gone to film school prior to the Royal Academy so I realized during this exercise that it was very similar to the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s Theory of Montage. In layman’s terms Eisenstein’s theory claims that the context surrounding an image is what assists the audience in projecting onto it meaning and emotion. For example, the shot of a stoic face is given meaning if it is preceded or followed by different images. The audience projects upon the stoic face a pleasant demeanor if it is preceded by a baby laughing, and the audience projects a darker meaning if the stoic face is preceded by a shot of war or carnage.

All of this came to mind watching Nathan Fielder, as his usually expressionless face and monotonous voice is a blank canvass upon which the audience can project their own meaning, including their own bias and prejudice.

For example, for much of episodes 2-6, Christianity is often positioned to be the butt of the joke by Fielder, who is Jewish. So much so, that at one point that prejudiced sub-text bubbles to the surface as someone openly declares without any opposition, that being a Christian is itself an irredeemable act of anti-Semitism. But afterwards another discussion takes place regarding Judaism, and the previously espoused anti-Christian sentiment is then given more context and its meaning changes radically. This is an instance of Fielder finding insight because of his lack of self-awareness, not in spite of it.

In that class at the Royal Academy there was a student, I’ll call him “Tushy”, who was a recent Ivy league grad, came from a very wealthy family, and seemingly had everything going for him, and yet he still felt the need to tell everyone fantastical stories about the famous women he had dated. Everyone knew these stories were obviously untrue for a variety of reasons, the most obvious of which was that Tushy was very gay, but he and his stories were harmless so nobody really cared.

In the Meisner-esque exercise though, Tushy’s inability to just “be”, which is a form of being honest with yourself and thus your audience, proved a liability. Tushy was incapable of just “being” and had to push and indicate all of the feelings he thought he was supposed to have during the exercise. As an audience member and participant this was uncomfortable to watch because it was so painful, obvious and painfully obvious. The teacher, who was one of the best in the world, gently tried to remind him of the purpose of the exercise and re-direct him to stillness but Tushy would have none of it. He kept pushing and urging himself to have a profound reaction (in this case crying) because he wanted everyone to think he was a profound person having a profound reaction.

There’s a pivotal sequence in The Rehearsal where Nathan Fielder turns into Tushy, and is betrayed by his desperate yearning for profundity and therefore creates a manufactured profundity. Except in this case, Fielder’s forced profundity is actually profound in its own right as it exposes the deeper ‘reality’ about him, his series, and his audience, which is that our culture, marinated in malignant narcissism and saturated with social media, has devolved humanity to the point where we are no longer capable of ever feeling genuine empathy.

On its surface The Rehearsal is a simple bit of reality tv comedy, but beneath that façade is an astoundingly complex piece of work that speaks volumes about the diminished and depraved state of humanity.

The bottom line is that Nathan Fielder is a modern-American holy fool, and his series The Rehearsal is batshit, bizarre and absolutely brilliant.

©2022