“A highly entertaining and eccentric cinematic journey that…offers a poignant reflection on the complexities of an individual teetering on the edge of a breakdown.”

Short Films Matter

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Short Films Matter – 2024

David Baeumler’s cinematic endeavor, ‘The Miami Dentist’ immerses viewers in the offbeat world of its titular character, portrayed by Baeumler himself. The film, propelled by Kevin Silva’s whimsical poetic narration, whose every statement begins with “When a Miami Dentist…” and concludes with a whimsically bizarre finish, leaving the audience both perplexed and intrigued.

Set against the backdrop of the dentist’s European travels, the film unfolds with Silva’s peculiar declarations punctuating each scene, creating an atmosphere that is simultaneously comical and enigmatic. Yet, beneath the veneer of eccentricity lies a profound character study, delving into the likely trauma and survival mechanisms of a man haunted by his father’s near-deployment during the Korean War.

Baeumler’s portrayal of the central protagonist, adorned in a surgical face mask, adds an extra layer of mystery and intensity to the character. The film’s outstanding post-production work, featuring multi-layered screens showcasing the protagonist’s wanderings in various destinations, contributes to a uniquely crafted visual experience.

The unconventional use of these multi-layered screens, combined with intimate cinematography and artistic production editing, elevates the film’s visual storytelling. The narrative skillfully peels back the layers of the protagonist’s psyche, revealing a complex man navigating the intricacies of life and his own history.

‘The Miami Dentist’ is a highly entertaining and eccentric cinematic journey that, through its comical underbelly, Silva’s quirky narration, and outstanding post-production techniques, offers a poignant reflection on the complexities of an individual teetering on the edge of a breakdown.

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Film Threat – October 29, 2011 – David Finkelstein

“The Miami Dentist” is a strange, poetic, and engrossing short by David Baeumler, with an oddly comic tone. The credits are in the jaunty graphic style of the 1950s, and the screen is divided into multiple shots of the eponymous dentist (well portrayed by the filmmaker), always shown in a surgical mask, whether he is on a vacation in Europe, offering flowers to a lover, or rollerblading in a park. The narration, spoken by Kevin Silva in the tone of an educational film voice-over, is a series of enigmatic and disparate poetic statements about the dentist. (“When a Miami Dentist looks back at the whole aching valley of his life, he will gloss over all the times when he was rude to his well-meaning grandmother.”

These seemingly disconnected and surreal declarations are in fact all statements about how this masked dentist defends himself from the dangers of the modern world: whether it is by burning incense in an airport bathroom, or by playing avant-garde jazz on the bassoon. At the climax of the film, the dentist is shown having a breakdown, an inexplicable outpouring of grief, which is related, in an unspecified way, to the war-time traumas of his father’s generation in Korea. Did the dentist in fact move to Miami in order to flee from the traumas of war? Does he represent the mindset of postwar America, with the elaborate defenses of its privileged professional classes?

The overlapping images of the film’s visual format start off by looking as if several Super 8 projectors were being used in a simple multi-screen projection, but the format quickly evolves into more complicated and sophisticated ways of combining images. These formats usually illustrate the text. For example, a section on the dentist’s childhood memories is made to look like slides in a Viewmaster.

Baeumler’s performance as the dentist is full of the comic pratfalls, and many of the lines of text start off as if they are going to be “dentist jokes,” but the film is not in fact funny. This disconcerting and poetic strategy, where the forms of comedy are employed to express states of sadness and disconnection, creates a dreamlike state which reveals the nightmarish aspect of comedy. It makes one feel as if the universe is playing a joke on all of us, but because we are the butt of the joke, no one is laughing.

In “The Miami Dentist,” David Baeumler combines his talent for oddball, poetic texts, sophisticated visual collage, and comic-style performance, to create a strange and moving film poem about the fetishistic beliefs and behaviors of the American middle class.

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