Mark Reviews Movies: "SR."

"Sr.", Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 1, 2022

The documentary "Sr." details the career of filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. and the last years of his life, focusing mainly on the relationship between the director and his son, the actor Robert Downey Jr. The movie is filled with people looking for something: a son looking for a better understanding his father professionally and personally, a filmmaker looking for a creative rationale for telling his own story, and this movie's own director Chris Smith looking for a way to merge these often-conflicting goals with the elements of a more straightforward biography. The result is messy, which is both to be expected and somewhat admirable, given the complicated nature of the central relationship. More fundamentally, though, this documentary never digs quite as deep as it seems to think it does.

Some of that stems from the hesitation of the movie's eponymous subject. Downey Sr., affectionately called "Senior" by just about every member of his family who appears in the movie. He's technically involved in the project his son, who serves one of the movie's producers (along with his wife Susan) in addition to being the secondary subject of the documentary, almost seems to have commissioned. Smith's role appears to be simple: just be there, as father and son chat, as the father goes about his day-to-day life, and as the son reckons with his personal demons and the part his ailing father played in bringing about those well-publicized struggles with addiction.

Downey Jr. is far more open about such matters than his father, who has developed Parkinson's disease, knows the end is coming soon, and seems much more interested in making this one final project than actually participating in it. The filmmaker, who came to some underground prominence making low-budget and absurdist movies in the 1960s, isn't the type to speak much about or read much into his own work (Upon hearing his father say, "That's fine," Downey Jr. makes a point that such insights also amounted to the elder Downey's style of giving direction, and throughout, we hear a lot of "fine" and a couple instances of "good" from the man).

As for his personal life, it seems that Downey Sr. has said as much as he's willing to say publicly in the past. How he makes movies and what it was like to have his son appear in several of them are matters for the TV talk shows, and he has already done those. As for the real stuff Downey Jr. wants to get into and to pry some information out of "Senior," the filmmaker and father didn't talk about those subjects then, and he definitely doesn't seem willing to speak about them now.

The movie, then, is divided into three, intermingling sections. The first has Downey Jr. discussing his vague intentions in setting up this documentary and wrestling with the contradictory feelings he has his father. This is a man he genuinely and clearly loves, admires, and respects—even as the actor just as obviously wants some apology for or at least recognition of how a father giving his child drugs at a young age could and, in this case, certainly did have disastrous effects on that child's life.

As much as this is an ode to—and, eventually, a eulogy for—his father, Downey Jr. wants some kind of breakthrough. There's some real, painful honesty in the man acknowledging that, knowing that he can't push such an outcome during the final stage of his father's life, and doubting that he'll get what he's hoping for—almost to the point of certainty that it won't come by the end.

The other two section revolve exclusively around Downey Sr.. In one, Smith assembles a workmanlike biography of the man, using clips from his movies and archival interviews in the usual ways. A couple of contemporary interviews with friends and colleagues, such as Norman Lear and Alan Arkin, don't add much, although it is amusing to see director Paul Thomas Anderson discuss Downey Sr.'s influence on him—only for Downey Jr. to point out that he believes Anderson is more like the son his father actually wanted.

More intriguing are scenes of father and son on the phone together (While the two visit each other early into shooting, the COVID-19 pandemic restricts their access to each other for more than a year), simply talking about Downey Sr.'s life. Sometimes, the simple things matter the most and make the biggest impact.

The third section here has Downey Sr. making the movie he would prefer to make about his own life. That's how his son and Smith convinced him to participate, and since we only see short pieces of the footage he's shooting and snippets of him editing the project (even as his mobility is restricted), there's never any sense of what turns out to be the last movie Downey Sr. ever made. It's a gimmick without any kind of legitimate payoff.

In a way, that absence of payoff, especially when Downey Jr. takes over the focus of the documentary in the last portion, is the whole point of "Sr." Some questions in life are never answered, and some issues are simply left hanging without any kind of resolution. It's brave of Smith and Downey Jr. to leave it at that, but the documentary's initial ambitions do feel especially out of place by the end.

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