The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
A candid yet poignant portrayal of drifting identity, belonging, and the power of place.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
dir. Joe Talbot
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a story about a break-up. But Jimmie Fails (named eponymously) isn’t breaking up with another person, he’s doing so with San Francisco. Joe Talbot sends the viewer careening into the picturesque city that Fails is so anchored to. He spotlights the palpable tension between Fails and the city; how it’s changed too much, how they prioritise different things, how they’ve grown too distant. And then he lets it all go.
The film is marketed as ‘partly’ autobiographical. The central conflict is Jimmie Fails’ attempt, alongside his best friend Montgomery Allen (Jonathan Majors), to re-appropriate a Victorian house that Jimmie grew up in. The house has sentimental value: it was built by his grandfather during World War II, but it also spiritually represents an older San Francisco; less gentrified, more welcoming. It was a passion project for both Fails and Talbot (who is yet to direct another feature film), and it’s a deeply personal tale more than it is political or polemical.
The opening follows Fails skateboarding through the Bay Area, with the scene populated by slow-motion cuts of bystander reactions, pans through the city’s streetside architecture (both the beautiful and the unbeautiful), and close-ups on Fails’ sweat-ridden face. Two minutes and fifty-eight seconds in, you are immediately transported to the city of San Francisco. The cinematography is impressive, and the film never lets down. There’s a scene later in the film where Fails skateboards down Nob Hill as quivering flutes play, and the camera zooms outwards. Talbot is purposeful here - it doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever been in the Golden State, you’ll come to appreciate the city as much as you do the character of Fails.
Nobody appreciates Jimmie Fails more than his companion Montgomery Allen. Majors brings a nuanced performance, imbuing Montgomery with a quiet strength and unwavering loyalty to Fails (a loyalty that San Francisco never offers to him). Majors is in the background of nearly every scene, often looking disheveled and dumbfounded. Allen is almost juvenile in some scenes, especially when he’s waving on the balcony of Fails’ house miming a general or blindly trying to catch falling autumn leaves in a bag. But Allen is the wisest character in the story, and Jonathan Majors is keenly aware of this and exhibits a sliver of that wisdom in every scene he’s in. In an aesthetically fantastical story about a man and the city he loves, Jonathan Majors is the heartfelt knot that ties the story together.
Jimmie Fails and the city of San Francisco are two persons that are both in flux, and any such flux will eventually have to come to an end. Talbot’s portrayal of the two is tender and unflinchingly honest, exploring the complexities of identity and belonging while never overshadowing the intimate human story at its core. The aesthetic beauty of every frame and Majors’ depiction of ceaseless camaraderie contribute to the film leaving an indelible mark that persists well after San Francisco’s “last black man” drifts away from the screen.