Goodbye Solo

At the risk of sounding like a snooty film critic I wish to say that Ramin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo is a deeply resonant film.

I can't recall seeing a movie that deals so effectively with the crossing of ethnic, racial and culture lines while at the same time being so offhandedly unconcerned with those very themes.

It is a testament to understated intentions.

ARE YOU LISTENING, JOHN SINGLETON?

To stretch that joke/analogy further - if the directors were both surgeons, Bahrani would go in with a scalpel and remove the tumor. Singleton would drop a grenade in the patient's chest cavity.

But I shouldn't just pick on Singleton. Most films involving race relations and ethnic co-mingling inevitably fall prey to heavy-handedness. One minute you have a strong story about the struggles of a heterogeneous student body at a hypothetical university and the next thing you know Michael Rapaport has a gun to some black kid's head, calling him a monkey.

C'est la guerre.

But we grownups were talking about films that actually work.

Which is why, even with my encyclopedic film knowledge and razor-sharp cinematic memory (it ain't what it used to be), I'm finding it hard to come up with a movie on cross-cultural leanings as subtle and compelling as Goodbye Solo.

Fuck it. That's not even what the film is really about.

Bahrani's little gem is about its characters' desires (small, grand, selfish, whatever) with everything else falling neatly into place because of that minimalist approach to drama.

Set in the director's home town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a Senegalese cab driver named Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane - cool name or what?) picks up a terse, elderly white man named William (Red West) who pays him a large sum of money to take him one way to a bluff in a national park called Blowing Rock.

The sense of suicide is palpable.

Solo agrees, but through his good nature, becomes fascinated by William and insinuates himself into his life in hopes of deterring what he feels to be an unnecessary option for the old man. As William gets his affairs in order before the trip, Solo tries to bond.

The film is a strange reflection on this unlikely pseudo-friendship, the changing face of America's ethnic makeup, the personal choices that surprisingly effect those around us (even those in the periphery) and just what the hell it is that makes us all human and essentially the same.

It is a film devoid of irony. The characters say things they actually mean and behave in ways of strict intent. There are no sly underpinnings or clever manipulations. Solo does try to find the source of William's grief without his knowledge, but pulls back when he realizes he is treading on very personal, emotional territory. He simply wants to understand and help. He is one of the purist and most admirable characters of the recent cinema.

Solo's irrepressible optimism and friendly nature balance well with William's crusty facade. Their relationship is often awkward but never succumbs to the forced mawkishness of "odd couple" simplicity. These are two men with two very different outlooks who, due to a peculiar business transaction, begin to find common threads and understanding. Yet Bahrani is confident enough in his story and his actors to leave almost every question unanswered and every stereotype on the cutting room floor.

Even Bahrani's metaphors are subtle and sparse. Transience is suggested through the impending birth of Solo's son, his occupation as a cab driver, his desire to become an airline steward, his difficulty at home with his Mexican wife and stepdaughter and above all, William's preparations for his suicide (closing bank accounts, selling his apartment, living in a hotel) - all small parts - leading to a philosophical understanding that we are, at once, all alone in the world and yet part of a greater whole.   

Which is why Goodbye Solo is much more than it probably set out to be. Sure, it is a strong, well crafted American indie, but in these curiously troubling times that our country now faces, it may be a clarion call as to the sort of people we need to become and the sort of behavior we need to emulate to weather this storm and forge a new understanding.

Of course, it's only a movie and I could be absolutely full of shit.

But it is a thought. And having to think at the movies is a rare pleasure.