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Canberra Today 13°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Movie review / ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’ (M)

“The Last Black Man in San Francisco” (M) *** and a half

THIS, the feature debut of writer/director and San Francisco native Joe Talbot, adapted from the life of his childhood friend and long-time collaborator Jimmie Fails, won the Directing Award and a Special Jury Prize for Creative Collaboration at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

The principal character plays himself – Jimmie Fails IV, a young black American, working as a nurse in an aged-care home, sleeping on the floor in his best friend Montgomery’s house. Mont (Jonathan Majors) works at a supermarket fish counter and sketches and writes a play on the side. The pair gets around the city’s residential areas double-dinking on Jimmie’s skateboard.

The film is about issues yet not issue-driven. Jimmie has long wanted to reclaim what he sees as his place in San Francisco, which for him means the house where he grew up and which his paternal grandfather built in the post-war era in a style typical of the area a century earlier. 

The neighbourhood has become gentrified from the immigrant neighbourhood it once was. The house is now worth big money. Its white owners give no indication of either planning to leave or sell. Nevertheless, Jimmie continues to take steps to reclaim the house.

The film is a gentle, sweet observation of the human condition under adversity. Perhaps it’s not populist cinema, but I found satisfaction in both its last black man and its SF vistas. Good on a cinema management with the courage to screen it. 

At Dendy

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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