Review: The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

“It bothers me, there are all these people in the street and these big old houses are just sitting there collecting dust.”

In the center of the movie ‘The last black man in San Francisco,’ a young man Jimmie (Jimmie Fails), longs to belong somewhere in the rapidly changing city.  A Victorian house, in the heart of the town San Francisco, supposedly built by Jimmie’s grandfather in 1946 (a first black man in San Francisco) is desired by Jimmie to have it again after his father lost it decades ago. It looks like he wants to live in the past when everything around him changing fast. I saw the movie as an allegory where The victorian house resembles Jimmie himself. Both are different from whatever is around them, on the verge to lose their identity in the reckless moving time. That’s why they both need ‘gentrification’ to ‘fit’ in the city.

San Francisco faces housing crises and people are getting relocated, losing their households. ‘Gentrification’ of the houses, is pricing out poor people, especially black people and they become homeless, forced to leave the city or to live in some low-area. Here Jimmie had to move out of the city, like many others and had to live in some group home before he got to settle down in someplace. Now he is back to the city for his ancestral house but now he cannot afford it. It shows that we show pride of stuff which we think we own but at the end of the day “we never own shit!!”

This is very personal work done by two childhood friends Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails. Fails has co-written it and depicted his own experiences of roaming for having a house in the city.  In the movie, Jimmie revisits the Victorian house repeatedly and renovates its paint, garden, etc. without the permission of its recent white middle-class owner, who does not take care of it. When the couple loses the house, he shifts in the empty mansion. Immediately he starts to get a connection with his surroundings. He changes completely and becomes more alive. The gratification of having it has shown beautifully by equally alive cinematography.

In all these activities, he is supported by his friend Mont. (Jonathan Majors). Right now he lives with Mont., shares his small room, drinks toxic water of a river. Mont. plays a role as being a bridge between Jimmie and a troop of boys two different ends of their community. Jimmie is disconnected from his roots and that troop of boys who have not discovered the roots yet. Both are hollow in their own way. Mont. is more sensitive and observes everything around him. The way he always has dragged behind when Jimmie runs with his skateboard, sometimes it feels like Mont has dragged behind Jimmie and his desires. So when Jimmie leaves him, he becomes motionless. I personally liked his character. I think I am the only one who felt equal pain when Jimmie left Mont the way Frodo left the Same.

P.S. No hell! First ‘The Burial of Kojo’, and now this flick. Both movies are debut features of talented colored directors having distinctive styles to color their stories. This ain’t no shit man!!