The Last Black Man in San Francisco movie review (2019)

A tragic event leaves the house temporarily abandoned, and that’s when Jimmie makes his move. He takes over the place, using his squatter techniques to build a sanctuary for him and Mont. The attic will serve as the location for the premiere of Mont’s new play, for example, and Jimmie reclaims the secret room he used to hide in back when his parents would argue. This place even has an old pipe organ that bellows dust whenever Jimmie tickles the ivories. As Jimmie points out, this address was the only place he truly felt at home; it was the one stable, static place in a lifetime of wandering uncertainty. It’s easy to understand why he’d fight for it, and why he’d see it with the unrealistic, woozy eyes of someone in love. Its history, at least in the stories Jimmie spins, is the only tangible and reliable thing he has.

I’ve flattened out the plot here. “The Last Black Man In San Francisco” doesn’t move in a conventional sense or even a linear one at times. You have to work for this one, to piece it together and to glean out its messages. Though the film is peppered with familiar faces, from Glover to Mike Epps to the always welcome auntie-based sharpness of Tichina Arnold, Talbot entrusts his directorial debut to his less familiar but equally talented leads. This gives the film a sense of urgency and realism; we’re less star-struck and more awestruck by the plight and emotions of the characters. From scene to scene, we’re unsure where Talbot and his actors are taking us, and even when the destination isn’t surprising, it feels like little else you’ve seen before. There’s a uniqueness to the proceedings that heralds the arrival of a new talent, one unafraid to be brash, sentimental, unabashedly emotional or terrifyingly candid. To see this, one need only look at how Talbot stages the play Mont eventually writes: It quickly morphs into a confession-based memorial service and an intervention, a meta-style commentary on the film’s themes that sears itself into one’s brain.

Talbot and his writers are lifelong San Francisco residents (Talbot is fifth generation), so every frame of “The Last Black Man In San Francisco” is imbued with their love—and their frustration—for the place that made them who they are. Jimmie describes it best during one of the film’s many trips on Muni (some of the best moments in this film unspool from the confines of those grungy buses). After hearing some privileged transplants bitch about how much they can’t stand their new home, Jimmie interrupts them, telling them they don’t have the right to hate San Francisco—they just got here. “You can’t hate something if you didn’t love it first,” he says, summing up yet another of the film’s messages. You haven’t earned the right to be critical of a place unless you’ve paid your dues there, and even then, you’ll miss the old way of life when it’s gone. The poignancy of that thought is right there in the film’s title. Jimmie’s story is a slow ballad, a tragic ode, a dirty limerick, a wistful lament and a heartbreaking elegy. It’s a tribute to the notion of home that we all carry. This is one of the year’s best films.

"The Last Black Man in San Francisco" is currently streaming on Amazon and Kanopy.