Robert Downey Jr. invites you to his ‘grief group’ with Netflix documentary about late dad
Robert Downey Jr. could be our next therapist.
In his tear-jerking new documentary “Sr.,” which played Monday at New York Film Festival, the “Iron Man” actor attempts to unpack his affectionate yet complicated relationship with his late father, irreverent filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.
“Welcome to our 3 o’clock grief group,” Downey announced at a mid-afternoon screening of the film at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. “I’m inviting you to hopefully not feel like this film is about me and my dad, but about that crazy, impossible Gordian Knot that is family and dysfunction and art, and trying to make sense of it all.”
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“Sr.,” which streams on Netflix later this year, follows Downey Jr. as he sets out to make a movie about his ailing dad with the help of director Chris Smith (2018’s “Fyre”). Downey Sr., who died last year at 85 after a long fight with Parkinson’s disease, features prominently throughout the doc as he recounts his career as an independent filmmaker, making offbeat comedies such as 1966’s “Chafed Elbows” and 1972’s “Greaser’s Palace.” It also shows how Downey Jr. got his start acting in many of his dad’s projects, making his big-screen debut at age 5 in 1970’s “Pound.”
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Despite his dad’s reluctance to open up at times, Downey Jr., 57, felt it was important to not shy away from the more difficult discussions about life and death.
“We knew we had to get real,” he said. “This can’t be some nepotistic, controlled retrospective – this is not that kind of party. This needs to transcend that. Documentary film is a very different bar than even a narrative, so we knew we had to trust each other and go to places that any publicist would say, ‘Never!’
“We had to start at ‘never’ and then take it from there.”
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