What do you do when your city outgrows you?
That’s the question that seems to echo around at the heart of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” the new film co-written and directed by Joe Talbot.
Talbot takes an odd eye to the site of some of Silicon Valley’s biggest disruption; the camera is at times visceral – like when it gets thrown like a rock on the beach with children – and at other times leisurely, creating shots that feel more like slow-moving baroque paintings. It is often unhurried and unobtrusive, as if to say that it doesn’t matter where the camera is positioned, it would capture the warm, soft light landing exactly right no matter where in SF it was.
Indeed, sometimes that idea seems to be the engine powering the story, following Jimmie Falls (played by Jimmie Falls, who grew up with Talbot in San Francisco, and reportedly discussed this film with him as young as being a teenager) who lusts after the Victorian house that – as he proudly tells anyone who will listen – his grandfather built in the 1900s.
The problem is the family doesn’t own it anymore. Despite name-checking a few redlining efforts that shaped San Francisco’s makeup, like internment camps, “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” isn’t concerned with the exact specifics of what drove Jimmie and his family out of the historic Fillmore District; once his family could lay claim to property there, now worth millions, now they can’t.
And while that may not be a universally welcomed creative decision, it’s a strength of “The Last Black Man” and its storytelling: it softly draws its audience in to a story about gentrification, redlining, changing city streets with heart instead of statistics.
Perhaps no one has made a more lilting love story about what it feels like to feel not at home in your hometown; while numbers are helpful for illustrating a larger story, “The Last Black Man” brings things much closer to home with just emotional punches.
Again, Talbot’s camera is key here, catching facial asides after grand statements, or inspecting the house that Jimmie and his best friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors) eventually repossess, in their own way. In between shooting San Francisco’s architecture with almost religious reverence, Talbot and Falls delicately draw connections between how Jimmie at once sticks out and is at home with the city equally angry and fanciful.
As he skates through the city, sweaty and wind-blown, the house itself drips, while the curtains billow out the window. He winds the board down a classically steep hill, comfortably zig-zagging while the cars and trolley around him move perfectly straight. And when he stands on the deck, proudly proclaiming his legacy to a passing segway tour, his clothes match the distinctive color palette of the house. It seems, finally, that he is home at last.
At least, until the green envy of San Francisco real estate comes a-callin’. Ultimately what “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” reminds us is that whether or not your city is a character doesn’t matter if it can merely be ambivalent to your existence.
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