Talbot’s photographic journey successfully combines a fairytale-like innocence with urgent social commentary, creating a sublime and fascinating portrait of brotherhood, memory, and inequality. The Last Black Man in San Francisco is screening at BFI London Film Festival.
Few films in modern cinema display their sheer brilliance within the opening ten minutes. But in a similar vein to Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Last Black Man in San Francisco captures your heart and soul from the opening scenes through its vibrant cinematography, sublime score, and assured characters. Grand Jury prize winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Joe Talbot’s debut feature film shines with a rare poetic beauty.
Talbot’s film is a powerful love letter to art, friendship, love, and loss, exploring male friendship, race, and belonging in a changing city, layered with both sadness and joy. Loosely based on the real-life story of Jimmie Fails and his friendship with director Joe Talbot, the film places Jimmie’s experiences into a dreamlike cityscape.
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Jimmie (Jimmie Fails) and his best friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors) share a small single room in Montgomery’s grandfather’s house. Both men were born and raised in San Francisco, yet both feel isolated and alone as the city changes around them. Here, poor communities are moved further and further away from the city’s wealth, and once-thriving black neighbourhoods are forgotten as residents are pushed to the outskirts. But despite this, Jimmie and Montgomery share a deep love for their city and all its flaws.
Montgomery draws and writes, collecting the stories of the young black men who hang around his neighbourhood – his artistic impulses wrapped in a child-like innocence as he closely monitors the growing inequality around him. Meanwhile, Jimmie works as a care assistant during the day, while at night he dreams of returning to the Gothic Victorian house of his childhood. That house now sits in the trendy Fillmore District, a District once known as the Harlem of San Francisco, where Jimmie claims his family were forced to leave as the neighbourhood changed.
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When the house becomes vacant, Jimmie seizes the initiative, illegally moving in with Montgomery in tow. The brothers from different mothers finally live the life they can only dream of, once again feeling a part of a city that has long separated itself from them. However, no dreams last forever, and as the house goes up for sale for $3 million, reality cuts through the fantasy.
Talbot’s photographic journey successfully combines a fairytale-like innocence with urgent social commentary, creating a sublime and fascinating portrait of brotherhood, memory, and inequality. The relationship between Jimmie and Montgomery oozes warmth, hope and belonging even as their paths diverge in a city that never sleeps but constantly shifts. The Last Black Man in San Francisco radiates love while never fearing conversations about the racial inequality that permeates the city, as Talbot explores the dark side of gentrification and the erasure of personal and cultural history in the name of capitalism.
READ MORE: BROTHER
Director: Joe Talbot.
Cast: Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Rob Morgan, Tichina Arnold, Mike Epps, Finn Wittrock, Danny Glover, Willie Hen.
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