R, 2h 1min, Drama
Available now on DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K and all Streaming Platforms
The cineplex has become an amusement park, home to the big-budgeted roller-coasters. Very rarely do small or mid-level films that focus on more human stories find space next to a behemoth like “Avengers: Endgame.” Thankfully, home video and digital streaming have leveled the playing field, finding a home for wonderfully subtle but affecting films like Joe Talbot’s “The Last Black Man In San Francisco.”
As the title implies, the film centers on a young man searching for a home in the changing city that seems to have left him behind. Gentrification is at the forefront of Talbot’s film, which also serves as a metaphor for other changes the city has gone through. Like me, the director is a fifth-generation San Franciscan, and it shows. He gets a lot of the small details about the city darned near perfect, as only a San Franciscan could. This includes the “drunk trolleys” where out-of-towners would rent cable car look-alike vehicles and get toasted during bachelor parties, as well as the embarrassing nod to the old law that allowed people to be nude in the city which, as a scene from the film points out, was only taken advantage of by the old guys in town. This is probably the reason they outlawed it in 2013 while I still lived there.
What the film really gets right, though, is the sense of the cities deep history being pushed out by corporate greed and expansion. When families that make $117,400/year are considered “low income,” as a city you have a major problem. Some of the best years of my life have been spent living in “The City By the Bay.” It’s heartbreaking that it has mostly turned into a city for the filthy rich now*.
The movie’s two leads, Jimmie Fails and Jonathan Majors, are understated but completely different and well fleshed out characters, both superb. Unjustly, they will go mostly forgotten come awards season (with the exception of the Independent Spirit Awards, hopefully), but they deserve to be recognized.
Danny Glover, who I know from personal experience is very proud to both be from and still living in San Francisco, blesses the movie with his always wonderful presence. He’s only in a few scenes but as always, he’s a pleasure to watch perform.
The film is not perfect. Even as a character piece it can be a bit too much of a slow burn in act two and editor David Marks could have shaved off “a bit of the fat” in this section, but such is the benefit of indie film. It can breathe.
Also, while the movie shows the heartbreaking reality of what living near the Hunters Point Shipyards (cancer clusters, high rates of asthma and heart attacks are now being reported by Bay Area and national media) because of reported toxins in the water has done to the lower income residents, it’s a bit disingenuous with how the movie shows the actual city of San Francisco. As someone who has filmed throughout the city on several occasions, there is a lot of beauty in that 7×7 space. It takes a bit of concentrated effort to focus on the more seedy section for almost two hours. The gorgeous house that main character Jimmie Fails fights to keep in his family is beautiful. It’s a bit unfair to make it seem like it’s one of the few bright spots in a city crawling with poverty and homelessness. It’s absolutely not.
The DVD/Blu-Ray includes an informative commentary from Director Talbot, as well as the featurette “Ode to the City: Finding The Last Black Man In San Francisco.” Both should be sufficient in filling the viewer with information on the story and production.
A final nitpick: The theatrical poster was illustrated in the style of Walter Dean Myers’ book covers. It looked great. Why they chose not to use it on the home video release is anyone’s guess. That had zero bearing on the film itself, however.
“The Last Black Man In San Francisco” is a quietly poetic look about a city, a family, and a man, all trying to find themselves. As more artists from my generation continue to shine a spotlight on the current issues of the city of San Francisco, a city that we love… hopefully it will help it become a city for all again, not just the filthy rich.
*For further viewing that looks at the changes the city has gone through, I recommend 2015’s HBO documentary “San Francisco 2.0.”