- Release: 2019
- Starring: Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Rob Morgan, Danny Glover
- Directed by: Joe Talbot
- Screenwriters: Joe Talbot and Rob Richert, story by Jimmie Fails and Joe Talbot
- Spoilers? I’ll keep them minimal.
It’s hard to know where to start with this movie, because it contains multitudes. Perhaps the easiest introduction is to borrow author and star Jimmie Fails’s description: “It’s a romance between a man and a house.” The semi-autobiographical story follows Fails and his best friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors) as Fails clings to his former family home, even after they are pushed out by gentrification.
The story is about race and gentrification, but it’s much more. It raises deep questions of who belongs. The story grieves the loss of the city San Francisco once was, while celebrating the beloved eccentricity that remains. It’s complicated and pulls no punches, but it’s not resentful. As Fails says to two white newcomers, whining on the bus about their dissatisfaction with their new city, “You don’t get to hate it unless you love it.”
It has a mystical quality to it, from the dreamlike cinematography to the modern version of the Greek chorus that hangs out on the sidewalk in front of the house where Montgomery lives with his blind grandfather (played by Danny Glover).
What works?
Given that the narrative is not only about a deep emotional relationship with a house, but also with a city, the film cultivates a rich sense of place. The Victorian home and the dramatic hills of San Francisco are obvious symbols, rising to the level of characters in the story, but the film is peppered with gorgeous, rich details of the kind that don’t make the tourist brochures.
There’s the street preacher (a real-life figure). There’s the naked guy at the bus stop. An operatic street singer enriches the story. The Segway-based architectural tour (led by one Jello Biafra, by the way) feels wryly true. And the drunken trolley-tour won’t be promoted by the tourist board, but that scene gets at the heart of Fails’s emotional struggle.
Two particular images evoke the sense of place in a way that brings the story immediately to the viewer:
Contamination
First, the film opens with a young African-American girl, her baby front teeth missing, staring up in wonder into the face of a white man in full hazmat gear. She pauses to watch as the man cleans up street trash, placing it into a bright yellow hazmat bag. She skips past him and additional hazmat workers as she carries on her way, the San Francisco shipyards in the background.
Any questions?
This is the Bayview-Hunters Point Shipyards, where the Navy formerly decontaminated ships exposed to atomic testing. Montgomery lives here with his grandfather. This painful contrast of innocence and purity against longstanding contamination pulls you instantly into the story, and doesn’t hesitate to make a point.
This motif echoes throughout the story: at another point, a three-eyed fish flops into Montgomery’s boat. The characters respond with resignation: this is life as it is, and as it has been for ages. As a storytelling lesson, this is how to make a political point. Not by beating the reader or viewer over the head, but by letting the audience absorb the injustice and outrage on the character’s behalf.
Skateboarding
The second is the recurring image of Fails skateboarding (sometimes with Montgomery on the same board) over the hills of San Francisco. Fails and director Joe Talbot apparently bonded as children over their shared loves of film and skateboarding, so the image is authentic to the autobiographic story line.
But more than that, the images of Fails sailing through the streets, taking on their precipitous drops, evokes both a sense of defiance and of deep knowledge of the city. It speaks to his personal history: he’s navigated the streets in this way for so long, slaloming down the hills doesn’t intimidate him. He knows every inch of pavement, every crack, every patch. The image speaks to his poverty and his resourcefulness. This device elegantly illustrates Fails’s insistent claim on the city. Much more so than the newcomers, he belongs here.
Music
I don’t want to overlook how thoughtfully the soundtrack contributes to the story, but I’ll defer that to a later post. You’ll see what I mean when you watch it.
Fiction writing lessons:
Cultivate a rich sense of place.
This film shows a San Francisco most people don’t see. In doing so, it tells a special and important story. Fails’s and Talbot’s thoughtful choices of unexpected detail, of using real San Franciscans to add richness and complexity to the narrative, reveal a story no one else could possibly tell. And it’s heartbreakingly beautiful.
Believe in your own story.
In this article from the Hollywood Reporter, Fails describes how he “didn’t really think anyone would care” about this story. Fortunately for all of us, he had a team that helped him believe in it and bring the project to fruition. His words resonated with me because they echoed an idea from another film I saw recently, the stunning remake of Little Women by Greta Gerwig, nominated for four Oscars (though not Best Director for Gerwig, but that’s another story). In Little Women, the sisters discuss whether Jo’s book will have any resonance because it’s about “their little life.” Amy responds:
It nearly goes without saying that we need diverse stories. The diet of franchise films we can easily consume at the cineplex is fun, but it’s like junk food. Too much of it is unhealthy. Diverse stories help us to understand the world, recognize problems, and empathize with people. So whatever story you’re thinking about writing, believe in it. If you’re drawn to the story, it’s important. And maybe you are the only person who can tell it.
