Sr.
A highly original family portrait of the late Robert Downey Sr.
Robert Downey Sr.
The title of this strikingly unusual documentary stems from the fact that it is essentially a film in which Robert Downey Jr. focuses on his father who died in Manhattan on the 7th July 2022 aged 85. The actual director here is Chris Smith, but Downey Jr. and his wife Susan are among the producers and their production company, Team Downey, is behind the film so this is very much a family project. What we have on screen can fairly be described as a documentary about the life and work of Robert Downey Sr., but there are a number of significant ways in which Sr. is very different from a standard biopic.
One of the key facts about this movie is the realisation that to find it involving you don’t have to be knowledgeable about the man who is its subject or even to have any particular interest in his work. Downey Sr. was born in 1936 and some thirty years later made his mark in the world of American Underground Cinema with his 16 mm film Chafed Elbows. But it was Putney Swope (1969) which gave him his one big hit, a satire that relished the notion of a black takeover of an advertising agency on Madison Avenue. However, a subsequent attempt at a Hollywood studio movie was so fraught that it persuaded him that his heart lay in his underground roots. From his son’s childhood onwards, he would encourage him to act in some of his films (the first of these occurred when Robert Downey Jr. was only five years old) but, while the filmmaking continued up to 2005, the movies retained his highly individual, quirkily humorous and non-commercial approach. Extracts from most of these films are included here along with reminiscences about Downey Sr.’s personal life including his three marriages: to the actress Elsie Ford (the mother of Robert Downey Jr.), to Laura Ernst, who sadly died of ALS and Rosemary Rogers who survived him and appears in this film. Others who appear offering appreciations include the filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, the actor Alan Arkin and the producer Norman Lear.
The filming of Sr. began in 2019 at a time when Robert Downey Sr. had began to suffer from Parkinson’s disease and could anticipate that he was in the last stages of his life. That life had certainly not been without considerable interest but, even so and despite that being the essential focus of the film, Sr. crucially plays as a film about a son trying to understand his father better. A closeness already existed but, in a way that never becomes sentimental, we sense as the film proceeds that their bond and their intimacy are growing stronger. It may well be that the very procedure of making a film together contributed to this – it certainly gave the father a focus since he could do editing work on it and he determined to make his own cut of the material shot. In addition, the awareness of time being short (albeit that it extended to three years in the event) must have played a part too. Furthermore, a grandchild, Exton Elias Downey, makes his own impact in the later scenes which evidence his personal close rapport with his grandfather. Earlier the film has acknowledged how Robert Downey Sr.’s life and career were disrupted when for a considerable time he became a drug addict and the fact that his son had comparable problems - problems possibly influenced by his father - is not hidden. But this only serves to underline the positive aspects of their relationship which, becoming ever more mellow, lead to this film centred on a man not that far from death being anything but downbeat.
It is because these family issues, especially the father/son relationship, carry such universal weight that Sr. can so readily involve those unfamiliar with Robert Downey Sr. despite this being a pleasingly idiosyncratic film. In utilising first-class black-and-white photography, regularly acknowledging the fact that filmmaking was going on and editing the material in a lively way, Chris Smith’s film breaks away from the traditional documentary. In doing so it creates an off-beat style that matches the unconventional work of Robert Downey Sr. and it also captures the man’s honesty and humour.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring: Robert Downey Sr., Robert Downey Jr., Rosemary Rogers, Exton Elias Downey, Nancy Connor, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alan Arkin, Sean Hayes, Norman Lear, Larry Wolf, Jaime Morales.
Dir Chris Smith, Pro Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, Emily Barclay Ford and Kevin Ford, Ph Kevin Ford and Chris Smith, Ed Kevin Ford, Amanda C. Griffin and Daniel Koehler.
A Team Downey/Library Films production-Netflix.
89 mins. USA. 2022. US and UK Rel: 2 December 2022. Cert. 15.