This grey weather is a good time to test out a different sort of cinema
Why not start off this new calendar year with a hidden gem from last year?
As far as I could see, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, now available on DVD and streaming services, never garnered a local theatrical release, and the reason is probably not hard to find. It is just the sort of slow burn, hard-to-pigeonhole, only-modestly-ambitious kind of cinema that is all but certain to get muscled out on any given movie-going weekend by louder, more blockbusting fare.
Yet for precisely the same reasons, it also provides a welcome change of pace from the more predictable kind of picture.
It tells the rather inauspicious-sounding story of a man whose primary ambition in life is to own a house. And not just any house, but the specific house his grandfather allegedly built with his own hands in a now-gentrified and so prohibitively expensive neighbourhood.
Yet the hero of this story – the young, down and out titular character named Jimmie Fails – cares about the place so intensely that he begins caretaking for it – weeding the garden, touching up the paint on the window sills, etc. – for free and without the owners’ permission.
The owners, of course, find this very strange. They get weirded out, pummel him with fresh produce from the grocery store, and even threaten to call the police. But Jimmie persists unperturbed, patiently doing his best to preserve this concrete symbol of his family’s accomplishment, dignity, and belonging.
To make a long story short – or rather, a relatively short story almost microscopic – the owners finally do move out, and when Jimmie notices that no new tenants seem immediately forthcoming, he and his friend Montgomery decide to move in.
You can probably anticipate how the action that follows examines how long such well-intentioned criminal activity might persist, as well as some of the ironies involved in a disadvantaged minority attempting to reoccupy a neighbourhood once consigned to disadvantaged minorities.
Less predictable is the real heft of the movie, which consists in the profoundly kind and almost unreasonably self-disregarding quality of its humanity. Because part of what motivates Jimmie to care for and then inhabit a house that is not his is an all but unrestrainable kind of love.
An arguably even more profound and purer kind of affection moves Montgomery not only to assist Jimmie in his unlikely adventure, but to pay observational and artistic homage to the down-and-out grab-bag of San Franciscan citizenry all around him.
When Montgomery spies some street thugs he knows on the edge of erupting into violence, he walks right into the middle of them and offers some thoughtful, appreciative encouragement like a film director guiding actors on set. They stop what they are doing, presumably through sheer confusion, and turn their verbal ire on him instead. When Jimmie later asks him why he puts up with the attack, Montgomery asks in response why he should not appreciate them just because they are cruel to him.
It’s as unusual a response to abuse as the film is an unusual attempt at movie-making. Yet the most fundamental oddity might be how natural it is for this pair of characters to love and give affection, even as they expect so little in return.
The two are strange, no doubt about it. But strange in a way that is somehow … better.
We may be complicated, we may be self-deluding, we may bristle and posture and push back, the film would seem to say. But, more importantly, we love and do so in a way that is above, beyond, and more basic than any foreseeable kind of reward. Although the presentation may be oblique, that love is there and decidedly encouraging. The film ultimately does not explain it but presents it as fact.
So, as the greyness gathers and the rain continues and some of us find ourselves hunkering down and bristling against the remainder of the indefinite interval until spring, maybe some evening will be time to consider testing out a different sort of cinema with this understated and difficult to categorize yet ultimately spiritually satisfying film.