Goodbye Solo
Directed by Ramin Bahrani
Angelika Film Center, City Cinemas, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, BAM Rose Cinemas
Runtime: 91 min.
As a concept, Ramin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo could wind up as a contrived buddy comedy. Instead, it undercuts expectations of convention to arrive at a place of greater thematic intent. Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané), a Senegalese cab driver in Winston-Salem, forms a kinship with a cantankerous old passenger named William (Red West), despite his resistance to the idea. An angry recluse, William shows up in Solo's cab with the mysterious intention of having him drive to a mountainous area called Jagged Peak in a week's time.
Ever the charmer, Solo tries to get behind the mystery. "You're not gonna jump, are you?" he asks. Met with only silence, Solo suddenly becomes obsessed with unraveling the drama William's discontent. In a single static shot from inside the cab, Bahrani sets up a premise and his two central characters; the rest of the movie relies on maintaining their subtle chemistry to create a deeply involving study of human behavior. Solo's charisma is offset by William's jaded discontent, but Bahrani finds a way for them to meet in the middle.
Unlike the filmmaker's previous features, Chop Shop and Man Push Cart, he never compounds his ambitions in Goodbye Solo. It's a character study about two people occupying radically different positions on America's social spectrum. The friction that emerges from such an uneven divide is the piece de résistance. They educate each other: Solo harbors ambitions of becoming a flight attendant, so William hesitantly assists him in preparing for a test. When the driver's pregnant wife temporarily kicks him out of the house, he shows up at William's hotel room with a bag in hand. Under Solo's close watch, William starts to loosen up.
These scenes don't add up to some greater value, but they are individually imbued with meaning. William's suicidal intent becomes evident in the very first scene, giving his stone cold demeanor a constant subtext. Solo's happy-go-lucky facade masks his own insecurities -- about himself, about William, about the imbalance of the world that relegated him to such an aimless role. Bahrani has not told the quintessential American story, but it's certainly a potent one.
