Review: "The Last Black Man in San Francisco"
I am so overjoyed I had a chance to see this movie.
First of all, the directing and the images themselves are stunning. Not to give away any spoilers, but practically every other scene looks like a painting: Mont sleeping on the floor with a rainbow of light shining on him through the stained glass window; the little girl dressed in purple looking up at the man in the silver hazmat suit; a blind Danny Glover sitting with his son and his best friend on a too-small couch in the living room watching television together. Sometimes there were sighs from the audience when a scene would appear on the screen.
There was also enthusiastic applause at the end of the movie.
Oh let me count the ways. I love how the director, native San Franciscan Joe Talbott, puts you in the skin of the main characters. He shows you how people look at the main characters, black men in a gentrified neighborhood that used to be their home. He shows you what his childhood home means to Jimmie (the main character) by lovingly taking you through the details and the nooks and crannies of the house. He shows you the detachment of Jimmie from his mother and father, both distant from him in different ways although they live in the same city. But most of all he captures the delicacy, beauty, strength, and transcendence of the friendship between Jimmie and Mont, the main thrust of the story, and makes you laugh while tugging at your heart.
What else? One of my favorite parts of this movie is its examination of black masculinity. There are a group of ‘guys on the corner’ outside of Mont’s home who are constantly challenging each other’s manhood, posing and posturing, trying to represent something that they feel they have to be to survive. Their reoccurring presence allows you to get closer and closer to them to see what is really going on. The common theme we’ve all seen of gun violence in the black community gets a lyrically humanistic treatment that has been missing in other movies. You get to see the undersoul of it.
The idea of violence itself is played with throughout the movie. You expect violence, and when it doesn’t happen, you have to ask yourself: why was I expecting him to do that? It points the mirror back at the audience. But it does so in a way that is not accusatory, but understanding. The movie says: “I know you were thinking that, but guess what, I would be thinking that too, but this is also possible too, look closely.” And then instead of violence there is an action or a look that plunges you into the deepest part of the character. As a writer, let me tell you: that is incredibly difficult to do. All of the characters are set up for tragedy but you find a part of yourself rooting so damn hard for them to experience joy, even if for a brief moment.
Mont is probably my favorite part of the movie. He plays a sensitive writer, illustrator, actor, you name it, and he is full of love for everyone in the movie, even the guys who put him down. Maybe there is something is a little off with him, but maybe there is something he is seeing that you are not. The world is his muse: he absorbs the emotions and movements of those around him. His relationship with his best friend Jimmie is touching and more tender than any friendship I have ever seen between two black men on the screen. They don’t hold anything back from each other, there is total acceptance of each other’s flaws, and they don’t flinch or care that other men might criticize them for being too close or affectionate. This is true (and the director makes it clear: pretty straight) love.
Most of all this movie is funny. Laugh out loud funny. Subtle thinky funny and silly goofy funny. This is the best movie of the year for me, hands down.