Rating: 3.5/5
Anti-Criterion Challenge 2024 | 19/52 | Directed by Kasi Lemmons
Romulus Ledbetter sits on a piano bench, his back to the piano. As he looks up, the scene changes — he is outside in the snow, yelling at a social service agent. Romulus believes the man is a secret agent for someone called Stuyvesant. As Romulus storms off, some teens say, “Later, Caveman.”
He gets a pen from a man named Bob so he can write out some notes on staff paper. In his mind, he is at the piano, surrounded by men with moth wings who play along.
At night, he sleeps in a cave in Central Park. His TV broadcasts messages from Stuyvesant and footage of goings-on in the park.
The following morning, while going out for a pee, he sees a matchbook. Looking up, he sees a frozen man sitting in the tree. He calls his estranged daughter, Lulu, who is a police officer, telling her that it’s a murder and that Stuyvesant is behind it. Of course, she doesn’t believe him. She and the rest of the police force think it’s an accident.
The film follows Romulus as he attempts to prove the death was a murder. When a man confirms the murder, he gives Romulus a name: David Leppenraub, a famous photographer.
Samuel L Jackson’s performance as Romulus is broad and unusual. His glossy, distant eyes fill in the gaps of every conversation with his ideas. He bounces with an urgency that aims nowhere until it has something concrete to latch onto. At times, he’s heartbreaking. At others, he’s comedic in that signature Samuel L. Jackson way.
His wife appears to him as she was when he last saw her. She provides condescending guidance, as well as some lampshades for the audience when we question the reality of a scene.
It’s such a strange blend of genres: the brilliant unhoused musician who gets another chance, the Gilliam-esque mentally unwell person tortured by what only he sees, and amateur gumshoe getting in too deep with powers bigger than himself.
It also wants to talk about the relationship between art and suffering. For Romulus, that suffering comes from within. With Leppenraub, he creates images of suffering, real or imagined.
By design, the movie doesn’t fit together — it shuffles through troupes in as mixed up way as its protagonist. But I found the film so compelling, not because the plot kept me on the edge of my seat, but because Romulus’s path is unpredictable.