OUT AT HOME

Displacement fuels poignant, dreamy Last Black Man In San Francisco


The vintage hippie anthem, "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)," keeps popping up on the soundtrack of The Last Black Man In San Francisco. Its use is ironic, referencing the mythology of the city's fabled past while its characters — two young black men born and raised in the city — reckon with the uncertainty of its present.


The most apropos lyric from the song, however, is never actually sung in the movie: the recurring refrain, "People in motion."


Everyone is on the move here —the protagonist on his skateboard, navigating the city's steep hills and ramshackle neighborhoods; passers-by in the streets — techies, joggers, homeless scavengers; chattering Muni bus passengers; platoons of sanitation workers in neon vests marching out to clean up the toxic waterfront.

Majors, Fails: Stealthy

And yet, despite all the activity around them, the protagonists seem rooted in place, unable to move forward as time marches on, struggling to imagine viable new lives for themselves in the rapidly evolving city they love.

This is the first feature from rookie director Joe Talbot, who wrote the script with Rob Richert, based on a story Talbot concocted with his longtime friend and fellow San Francisco native, Jimmie Fails — who stars as a semi-autobiographical version of himself.

Jimmie's passion is the stately, Victorian-style home in the Fillmore district that his grandfather built in the 1940s, after entire communities of Japanese-Americans had been removed to internment camps. It’s long since fallen out of his family’s possession. But when the current owners move out, Jimmie and his best bud Montgomery (the excellent Jonathan Majors) stealthily move in.

It’s a bit thin, plot-wise, but the storytelling is everything in this splendidly atmospheric mood piece. Themes of displacement, gentrification, and cultural identity are there to be pondered in every dreamy, thoughtfully composed shot, every passing image, without Talbot beating us over the head with them.
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Trivia alert: Director Joe Talbot is the grandson of longtime Hollywood veteran Lyle Talbot. Leading man material at Warner Bros in the 1930s and ’40s, Lyle Talbot became a fixture in B-movies of the ’50s (including the notorious Plan 9 From Outer Space), and segued smoothly into TV for a couple of decades after that.

Joe Talbot is also the nephew of Stephen Talbot, a Bay Area TV journalist (long associated with PBS) and documentary producer. Stephen Talbot was also a child actor who had a recurring role on Leave It To Beaver.

Talk about family history!