By Lawrence Burdick -- 3/31/24
During every festival circuit, there is at least one debut feature film by a short film maker -maker of short films, mind you, not a filmmaker of lesser stature- that forces audiences to consider the potential broader career of the aforementioned maker of films moving forth. This year, at Fundance Film Festival, Sarafina Applebaum seems to be the filmmaker carrying this buzz with her shoestring-budget offbeat dramedy Mr. Limpschitz.
Limpschitz has a whimsical quality to it, not simply on a narrative level but also as a result of its behind-the-scenes. The daring Applebaum (despite being independently wealthy following a series of unicycle-related insurance claims) sought to shoot the film on a DIY camera that she crafted from discarded chicken wire, the eye lens of a once-fried catfish, and an abundance of matchbooks. This unconventional shooting method lends the film a milky kind of film grain that makes the audience feel as though they are the shameful viewer of an invasive (and perhaps unethical) twisted sort of peep show, with the unkempt Mr. Limpschitz at the center.
This stylistic choice, however, would be in vain were it not for the moving and sympathetic performance by Murphy Hodgekiss as the titular character. Hodgekiss, of course, is known best for the dashing leading roles of his youth such as Harry in the screwball romantic comedy Kiss Me Again, Harry or General Sergeant “The Sarge” Sargento in the ensemble Civil War drama Hellfire in Sharpsburg. It’s a delight to see Hodgekiss on the big screen again of course, but it’s always sad to see an actor who once played charismatic heroes in studio films transition to playing gaseous and confused elderly gentlemen in debut films by recent film school graduates. Alas, this seems to be the recurring fate of our former leading men, just look at Charlie Berkowitz or Leslie Ginsberg.
Let’s not let chicken wire and thespians distract us from the meat of the film. The story follows Mr. Limpschitz, an old man on a paper route who suffers from hallucinations as a result of a late-night chili dog that he reheated the night before his first day on the job. It’s unclear why a man of his age sought out a paper route, whether it was for money or some kind of longing for purpose we do not know… however, this seems to be one small question amid a series of much larger questions that an audience member will ask throughout the film. While many of the questions left open seem intentional (as the film does carry a kind of surreal quality) plenty seem to just be left unanswered because Applebaum didn’t have the grace or will to write a particularly strong through line.
Why does Mr. Limpschitz’s paper route take him all the way to the Sierra Nevada? Why does Mr. Limpschitz bring a bicycle with him if, for the duration of the film, he wheels it beside himself? In what world does an out-of-date chili dog lead to a hallucination of a seven-minute dance number complete with tap-dancing chili dogs and singing frogs? Furthermore, in what world is the aforementioned musical number entertaining to audiences? Perhaps this is one of many consequences of shooting a film on chicken wire, catfish, and matchbooks. There were murmurs at the festival that the script was originally one hundred and twenty pages long, which is alarming to think about as the film comes in just under the eighty-minute mark. Applebaum herself admitted that three directors of photography walked from production after just a day working with her makeshift camera invention. She held her ground as any starry-eyed auteur film school grad does, and delayed production until she found a director of photography who was willing to use her invention: Bronald Flippingham.
Having never heard of Flippingham, I looked into his career, and it seems that he is best known as a photographer of fatal car accidents. Prior to this film, he was essentially an ambulance chaser who took photographs of the devastating aftermath of drunk driving incidents that he would then sell to Public Service Announcement production studios and to various nursing programs across America. Whether or not he legitimately directed photography on the project or was just some kind of proxy for Applebaum herself is unclear. In all production photos behind the scenes, Applebaum is the one carrying the chicken wire monstrosity, not Bronald Flippingham.
Mr. Limpschitz is just the kind of film one hopes to stand witness to at a festival like Fundance. As the lights are brought down and the projector flares up, you find yourself asking: “who could have possibly let this happen?” With a film like Mr. Limpschitz, we as film lovers carry the blame… For all the times we allowed a method actor to inject garlic into their bloodstream. For all the times we allowed an auteur to go the extra mile by strapping their leading actress to a rocket with no regard for her safety. For all the times that we allowed a screenwriter to lock himself inside a run-down pizzeria in Manhattan and shoot up opium to write the next great children’s movie. For allowing art to supersede basic human decency, we have allowed Mr. Limpschitz to exist…
-LB