Val, the new documentary film on Amazon Video, tells the story of the actor Val Kilmer’s life up until now using narration, footage from Kilmer’s home video camera (including a lot of fascinating video from the sets of his movies), and recent interviews.
This alone should be enough to pique the interest of potential viewers, but there’s another wrinkle in this story: in recent years Kilmer was treated for throat cancer with the result that he must use a feeding tube to eat and his speech has been noticeably altered. This, alongside the normal visible wear and tear that comes with age, creates a strong contrast with clips of Val the young heartthrob. One is struck with a feeling of sadness at what has been lost and an awareness of our collective mortality that we generally try our very best not to let slip into our thoughts.
However, the message that Kilmer wants to leave the audience with is one of hopefulness in the face of difficulty and loss. As a believer in God, his faith provides him with the vision to see what cannot be seen with the unaided eye.
Kilmer’s surprise optimism in parallel with the viewer’s sadness highlights a paradox. On the one hand, we all wish to live in a world where we do not die, do not decay, where sickness doesn’t eat away at our bodies. This universal longing for a such a world doesn’t come from anything we have seen in our experience, but God “has planted eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NLT).
We call out to God in expectation for the good plans He has for us, knowing that the world we live in is not what it ought to be. In this way, our desire for “the good” becomes a means of seeking and knowing God.
However, the ideal can easily be made into an idol–something that in our forgetfulness of God we cling to desperately and hope for in this life even though we cannot have it. The paradox then is this: the thing that is supposed to point us to God ends up distracting us from Him–we grasp desperately for a long, pain-free life and when it alludes us we feel abandoned by Whomever created us and makes the rules. When reality comes crashing in we experience not only fear, but we get mad. We are angry at God because the world as it exists doesn’t live up to the ideal which He planted in our souls.
We cannot bear to live in the upside down world the apostle Paul described when he wrote, “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). We don’t understand how life, which God gave to us as a good thing to be enjoyed, can become our death when we cling to it apart from God. We hold so tightly to His good gift that we crush it. It is not life that we should cling to, but God. When we do this, we will find a more abundant life that will not rot away (John 10:10, Matthew 6:19-20).
The Psalmist wrote, “when my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up” (Psalm 27:10, KJV). The lesson in this is that everything in this life is transient…
Except God.
This seems to be Kilmer’s philosophy as well. Val is an honest reckoning of both the world as it is and the divine ideal which pushes against it. Instead of seeing his misfortune as a reason to be angry at God, Kilmer counts it as a reminder that we can’t build our hopes on the shifting sand of present happiness apart from God.