The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
(On Cable TV, July 2021) While I tremendously enjoyed my visit to San Francisco back in 2009, I still remember thinking that the city had, in one sense, escaped from its own citizens. Unlike bigger cities (its population is a mere 875,000 people, although it easily doubles if we throw in the neighbouring areas), San Francisco has to contend harder with maintaining its own local identity when the eyes of the world (and tourists such as myself) have their own ideas about what the city should be. From what I’ve gathered over the past ten years, that tension is even worse today, with immigrants coming to work for the technology sector and inflating house prices far beyond what long-time inhabitants can afford. “Leaving San Francisco” is a worthwhile Google search and the tension between citizens forced out by rich immigrants buying in would be a splendid topic for any movie. The Last Black Man in San Francisco doesn’t directly dwell on the conflict, but it certainly shapes everything about the film. Focusing on a young man’s attempts to purchase his childhood home, it’s a depressing quixotic quest from the get-go: he doesn’t have anywhere near the four million dollars that the heritage house would cost, and his primary claim to filial authority over the house is eventually revealed to be hollow. While writer-director Joe Talbot manages to turn in a visually impressive homage to his hometown (so much so that I temporarily doubted my legitimacy in commenting upon it), I wasn’t so impressed by the film’s narrative zigs and zags. There’s a scattered quality to the result, a lack of narrative hooks and a curious lack of impact to the entire thing. It doesn’t help that the obstacles confronting our protagonist are essentially unsurmountable — he never has a chance, and the film only drags the inevitable longer. This fatalism is hard to shake even when it’s the melancholic point of the film. But I’m still ready to wager that The Last Black Man in San Francisco is most effective for viewers from San Francisco — as it should be.