GOODBYE SOLO

Ramin Bahrani is a complete fucking master. At 33 years old.

I am still in total awe over his last film CHOP SHOP, which I have stated to people before that I believe is a near perfect film.

His latest, GOODBYE SOLO, forcefully asserts Bahrani as the most exciting and important new American filmmaker to anyone that couldn't already see that.

Like his previous films, SOLO is centered on a protagonist that is an outsider in society- someone that many of us cross paths with everyday but never follow home to see their life outside of work. The man that sells you coffee and donuts from his street cart, the kids that pedal candy on the subway, and in this case- your cab driver.

The film opens immediately with a bitter old white man named William offering $1000 to his infectiously optimistic Senegalese cab driver Solo, to drive him in a few days to a mountainous lookout point in North Carolina called Blowing Rock. He plans to jump from the cliff on that day, so basically he is asking Solo to be an accomplice in his suicide. But before then, Solo will chauffeur William around town as he ties up loose ends, and the unlikely relationship they build leading to the big day is the basis for the film's simple story.

What I love so much about the film is that Solo and William only speak about the real subject once after their initial meeting. William's impending fate serves to set the tone for how conversations about everything BUT that unfold. The odd couple pairing is a more archetypal relationship depiction what we're used to from Bahrani, but it more than works due to the realism of the performances.

Bahrani's aesthetic is classical and designed to not draw attention to itself. The cinematography is beautiful, but you really don't spend any time marveling over composition, light and color. Like Ozu or Bresson, the idea here is a pure visual presentation that the viewer will not even notice.

I promise you will be moved immensely by the nearly wordless ending on the mountain. When Bahrani escapes the urban landscape that all three of his films are set against at the end of GOODBYE SOLO, it is truly something transcendental. I can't recall a scene from any recent film that is nearly as mysterious. I would love to see Bahrani shoot something entirely in a nature setting and see what kind of story he would develop.

You really, honestly can't afford to miss this great film.

By the way, I just read in an interview that Bahrani is starting to teach at the film school in New York I just transfered out of.

FML.