Pi@LFF: The Last Black Man in San Francisco

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Pi@LFF is a series of reviews made by the Pi Culture team attending the 2019 BFI London Film Festival. Here, Matilda Singer reviews a vibrant, poetic drama set on the West Coast.

Joe Talbot’s directorial debut, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, is a story about home. Home in this case is San Francisco. And more specifically, home is a Victorian house - the one with a Witch’s hat - in the increasingly gentrified Fillmore District.

Talbot co-wrote this story with lead actor Jimmie Fails, who plays a version of himself in the film. In the fictionalised retelling of his life, Fails is obsessed with the Fillmore District house because it was built by his grandfather in the 1940s. As waves of cultural and economic change transformed the Bay Area towards the end of the century, the family were turfed out - and Jimmie has never gotten over the loss. 

The scene is set with Fails working on the house; he paints shutters and rakes leaves with such care that you might initially be confused about who it belongs to. This ambiguity is cleared up when the current residents emerge to throw tomatoes and hurl insults at the trespassing handyman. These owners (white and middle class, if the obvious must be stated) soon vacate the property on account of a family emergency, which allows Jimmie and his best friend Mont (Jonathan Majors) to squat. Although in this case, squat is an understatement: the pair gather all their worldly possessions, and make it into a home. 

Talbot and Fails pack in as much social and political history as they do personal to this story, schooling the audience in San Francisco’s urban transformation. In the early 20th century, the Fillmore District experienced mass immigration - in particular, Japanese, Jewish, and African American communities settled in the area (according to family folklore, the influx earned Jimmie’s grandfather the title of first black man in San Francisco). But since the 80s, redevelopment projects have been pricing people out of the district, shifting the Fillmore demographic. In many ways, it’s a product of racism; gentrification disproportionately impacts people of colour, and has left African American communities sidelined. 

But this tale is less polemic, more poetic. Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra takes the dreamy San Francisco landscape and dials up the colour until it is a rich, vibrant canvas. Characters are always placed in the foreground of this backdrop, the camera lingering at key moments to capture minute changes in facial expression. At other times, the lens zooms in on peculiar details (the four-eyed fish mutated by pollutants is particularly haunting), which creates a surrealist, otherworldly vibe. 

Much of the time, I felt I was watching a piece of theatre. Perhaps the intention was for us to see the world through the eyes of Mont, an artist and playwright who spends time contemplating his surroundings, fills a notebook with portraits, and frames real life interactions as if they’re scenes. The film even crescendos with a one-man play put on by Mont at the Fillmore house. Unfortunately, his masterpiece didn’t quite come together for me; in some ways it was a little too performative.

To accurately capture the neighbourhood, Talbot cast as many native San Franciscans as he could, the pinnacle of these being Danny Glover as Mont’s blind grandfather. In the director’s words: “It’s about authenticity sure, but it’s also about showing how fuckin’ talented the city is”. Even Emile Mosseri’s beautiful score evokes the place - it’s jazzy for the West Coast musical scene, melancholic for the trauma of gentrification, and soulful to reflect the big heart of Fillmore District inhabitants. 

Yes, the plot is slow - admittedly sometimes languishing. But The Last Black Man in San Francisco is worth a watch, especially for that mesmerising opening sequence of two friends gliding through their city on a skateboard.