The Last Black Man in San Francisco review: An elegy to a gentrified city

Dir: Joe Talbot. Starring: Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover, Tichina Arnold, Rob Morgan, Mike Epps and Finn Wittrock. 15 cert, 121 mins.

There’s a scene in The Last Black Man in San Francisco in which our hero, Jimmie (Jimmie Fails), comes across the demolished remains of an apartment block. There’s a crew of men hacking and drilling at the concrete, throwing up thick clouds of dust that threaten to consume the entire street. Suddenly, the gates to the site open. More dust blows out – it’s like peering into a dragon’s den as the creature rumbles awake. A bystander remarks that the people who lived in this building thought they were safe, since their homes were rent controlled. “You never really own s***”, he adds.

It’s a beautiful, frightening and tragic vignette of the urban nightmare, though The Last Black Man in San Francisco isn’t really an angry film. It’s less of a rallying cry against gentrification than a rumination on the kind of pained acceptance those who suffer its effects must face. It’s a poetic work and an impressive debut from director Joe Talbot. Jimmie, in particular, is fixated on a house in San Francisco’s Filmore District, built by his grandfather in 1946. He comes every day to tenderly repaint its window sills and plant shrubbery, despite the fact its actual owners – an older white couple – won’t accept the free labour.

His commitment to it swings from a sense of solemn duty to a near-romantic obsession. He’d never admit this out loud, but there’s a sense that this might be the last place he remembers being truly happy. He spent a chunk of his childhood here, before the family lost the house and caved in on itself. His mother moved to LA, while his father lives alone and resentful in a tiny flat.

Fails plays himself here – he’s childhood friends with Talbot and co-wrote the script, basing it partially on his own life. It’s his debut performance, but he’s got the soulful presence of a seasoned pro. Jimmie’s fixation has started to worry his best friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors), a playwright and keen observer of the world around him. Mont sees and appreciates every shade of Jimmie’s personality. It’s a film that’s interested in seeing people not merely as products of their surroundings: a group of guys who constantly torment Jimmie and Mont are revealed to possess hidden depths.

If that subplot sounds a little on the simplistic side, you’d be right. But the film doesn’t quite take place in our reality. Like its invocation of the mythical dragon, and an appearance by a four-eyed mutant fish, The Last Black Man in San Francisco has one foot in the world of fairytales and folklore. Adam Newport-Berra’s cinematography is rich and picturesque, treating both human faces and views across the bay with the same sense of curiosity. Emile Mosseri’s score, too, is gorgeous – both swooning and elegiac. It’s this conflicting mix of emotions that end up driving the film. What opens with a preacher declaring that “we are these homes, our sweat soaked in the wood”, ends with the revelation that our attachment to the past threatens to limit our future.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco opens in UK cinemas on 25 October