The death of Val Kilmer — the brooding actor most well-known for his turns as Batman and as Jim Morrison in The Doors — was confirmed yesterday by his daughter Mercedes Kilmer. The 65-year-old actor died from pneumonia following a decade of health problems including a 2014 throat cancer diagnosis that required two tracheotomies. The stress on his throat from the cancer and treatment left Kilmer with a diminished speaking ability. In 2021, filmmakers Leo Scott and Ting Poo released Val, a documentary compiled from more than 800 hours of footage Kilmer had taken over his life, detailing his rise to fame as well as his struggles with sickness. Here’s what we learnt.

A father speaking through his son

The documentary is written by Kilmer but narrated by his son, Jack, who is also an actor.

Opening on Kilmer at the start of his acting career, it quickly veers to an older version deeply enthralled in scrapbooking.

“I was recently diagnosed with throat cancer, though I healed quickly from the cancer. The extensive radiation and chemotherapy that followed treatment has left my voice impaired,” he says through his son.

“I am still recovering and it is still difficult to talk and be understood.”

Kilmer sometimes talks straight to the camera, pressing on his throat to speak in a rasp that will shock those used to his robust movie star cadence. He speaks about his need to share the visual archive that he’s accumulated over 60 years.

“I have lived my life and it’s sort of all in these boxes, but what is part of the profound sadness is that I know it’s incomplete. As much as I filmed and as hard as I’ve tried, there’s nothing I can do to make any of it understood,” Kilmer says.

“I know that that’s not true but it’s how I feel.”

The beginning of sickness

Late in his career, just before his illness, Kilmer starred in a stage production about author Mark Twain. In debt from his recent divorce, he sold 6,000 acres (2,428 hectares) of land he owned in New Mexico — and intended to turn into an artist’s community — to fund the production.

But after several successful performances of the show, Kilmer began to feel ill.

“I was getting ready to put on Citizen Twain in Nashville when I lost my voice. I postponed the show for what I thought would be a month or two. My voice didn’t get better, it got worse, and one day I started coughing up blood and was rushed to the hospital,” he says.

While in hospital, he began to paint again — a hobby he’d picked in his youth. When he got out, he threw himself into making art, founding a studio “big enough” for his ideas.

“That studio has become a sacred space where artists gather and collaborate and help the next generation of artists in our community grow,” he says.

The film cuts to archive interview footage of Kilmer, young and effervescent as he is asked by an interviewer: “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say at the pearly gates?”

“Well, I had this dream once,” Kilmer begins, clear and measured.

“Where this happened and she opened what would be her arms, that feeling, and enveloped me and said, ‘I love you.'”

On death, dying and daughters

At times, Kilmer is incredibly frank about how cancer has changed his life. It’s possible to see the tracheotomy band around his neck and the artificial hole that allows him to speak. Midway through the film, he addresses his concept of the afterlife.

“I see this hole in my throat and I wonder whether people wonder if I had any fear of dying,” he says.

The scene quickly moves on to Kilmer meeting his child, Mercedes, who he proclaims in the title card as “My genius daughter”.

Confirming that their meeting is imminent, Kilmer is so excited he does a small dance. The film reveals that they live next to each other, before the action cuts to grainy home videos of Kilmer and his then-wife, actor Joanne Whalley, celebrating their baby daughter.

Adjusting career expectations after illness

At points in the film, Kilmer reckons with the shift in his career post cancer, saying he has no doubt that his “illness shut down professional opportunities”.

He appears at a 2019 fan screening in Texas of his 1993 film Tombstone, the full crowd beaming at the movie star as he struggles to thank them for coming out.

“Sometimes, I feel so low and I have the blues really, really hard about having to fly around the country,” he says.

A prankster until the end

Later on, Kilmer rasps to camera that he is on his way to Arizona because his mother, Gladys, had died and “Right now she doesn’t have anyone to cremate her.”

Arriving in the family home, surrounded by cactus and desert, Kilmer immediately starts shooting his loved ones with silly string (“It glows in the dark!” he joyfully informs them) as they’re donning their funeral blacks.

“I wrote something nice last night all about her style, her hairdo, her jewellery, they always popped,” he says about his mother, before the action cuts to Kilmer quietly sobbing.

“I miss my mama but I had a vision that she was so happy with her youngest son.”

Kilmer speaks frequently of his faith and how it intersects with his life.

“I’ve studied all the major religions, I’ve always been interested in religion. Often when I talk to someone, I end up talking about their faith. I’ll ask them…” Kilmer starts but then struggles to breathe, before fainting over a nearby sofa, only to reveal that it was a joke played on his worried son.

“That’s not funny,” Jack says off camera.

“I can’t help it,” Kilmer says, smiling wide at the perfectly executed prank.

“I’m a bastard and I love you. It’s very, very funny.”