Cave dweller Samuel Jackson

REVIEW / INTERVIEW
THE CAVEMAN COMETH
Director Kasi Lemmons and actress Tamara Tunie discuss The Caveman's Valentine.

BY DAVID WALKER
dwalker@wweek.com

Romulus Ledbetter once had a promising life. The Juilliard-trained classical pianist had a loving wife and beautiful baby girl...but that was a long time ago. Now Romulus is estranged from his wife, Sheila; his daughter, Lulu, is all grown up; and his home is a cave in a New York City park. Wading through trashcans and suffering from "mind typhoons," Romulus, a.k.a. The Caveman, wanders the streets trying to avoid Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant, his all-powerful arch-nemesis who controls the world from the top of the Chrysler Building. But through the schizophrenic haze that clouds his thoughts and fills his mind with visions of black angels, Romulus is sure of one thing: The dead body he's discovered outside his cave was a victim of foul play.

"I think that having a schizophrenic African-American homeless protagonist is challenging for people," says Kasi Lemmons, director of the new off-kilter thriller The Caveman's Valentine.

Based on the novel by George Dawes Green, The Caveman's Valentine is a traditional murder mystery with a nontraditional hero. Samuel L. Jackson stars as Romulus, an unlikely detective in Lemmons' follow-up to her critically acclaimed 1997 film Eve's Bayou. "I think he's a truly amazing actor. He's the hardest-working man in show business and a very, very serious actor, and it's a matter of getting the role where he's allowed to express himself," she says of Jackson. "This was a role that was worthy of him."

His performance as Romulus is a career high point for Jackson, who has long struggled to find his place as a leading man. The slight aura of insanity that is frequently a part of Jackson's best work is in full glow here, but there is also a humanity that's missing from films like Shaft or The Negotiator. Draped in rags and hidden behind a matted beard and a wig full of dreadlocks, Jackson explodes with raw, delusional energy as he struggles to find out who murdered the young street hustler whose body he found. His investigation takes him from the grimy streets of New York's homeless to the upscale world of high-profile artists.

The Caveman's Valentine is a tough sell. While films like Down and Out in Beverly Hills, The Fisher King and With Honors have painted comedic, charming caricatures of the homeless and mentally ill, Caveman avoids going for obvious laughs.
Instead the film attempts to tell a complex tale about a complicated character.

Lemmons struggled for several years to get the film made. "We actually went through the process of getting rejected by all the major places, and then we went through three green lights," she explains. "We had it ready to go and it fell apart and we had to wait a year."

Another reason it was so difficult for Lemmons to get cameras rolling on Caveman's Valentine was her commitment to keep Romulus black. "I knew it was going to be an uphill battle. I knew it was going to be a struggle," says co-star Tamara Tunie, echoing the sentiments of Lemmons. "It's so frustrating because the story doesn't necessarily have to be about a black man--there's a universality. It could be anybody in this situation. So it frustrates me that people can't get past the surface and look deeper into the story, and what the story is trying to tell."

Tunie plays Sheila, Romulus' estranged wife, who, for the most part, appears only in his mind. Equal parts muse, conscience and psychotic delusion, Tunie's character is part of what gives Caveman its grip on the viewer, as it tries to convey what makes Romulus Ledbetter tick. "That's what intrigued me about the part, because Sheila is different things at different times, depending on what situation Romulus is in," says Tunie. "The fact that she was conjured in his mind 15 years ago--
I had to look at the part through the prism of Romulus' brain, which was a very different approach than looking at a script."

With its unconventional--and unapologetically disturbed--lead character, The Caveman's Valentine is a challenging film that tackles issues of race, mental illness, economics and homelessness without offering any easy answers. In one of the film's most telling moments, a rich white couple take Romulus into their home and try to help him by giving him a bath and new clothes. Their efforts are a metaphor for the way many well-meaning liberals tackle the problems that face society but ultimately fail to make a difference. "I think it's hilarious," says Lemmons. laughing. "They clean him up and dress him up, but they can't change him, because he's the Caveman. In their bleeding-heart fashion they try to help Romulus, but he's a schizophrenic and there's no changing that."