Goodbye Solo
by Ramin Bahrani
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Diane Franco Galindo, Red West, Souleymane Sy SavaneDirector: Ramin Bahrani
Brand: Lions Gate
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-08-25
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lionsgate
Movie Reviews of Goodbye Solo
Movie Review: Where the Snow Falls Up
Summary: 5 Stars
I was struck by Ramin Bahrani's first film Man Push Cart, and the auteur's ability to convey complex emotional situations of ambivalence and complicated existential dilemmas. Here, again, in Goodbye Solo, he explores a similar emotional topology. How can you not be won over by Solo's exuberant good nature, his unfailing optimism? Alas, some people's lives are beyond redemption. Accepting this reality can be hard to do, when you are so filled with hope for your own future, and striving with all your might for a better life, a better situation, and you are convinced that you must reach out to help others that cross your path. I am reminded of the story of the 'Good Samaritan', which had an enormous impact on me as a child when I first heard it in Sunday school. I can imagine the object of the Good Samaritan's intentions asking: "How come every time I call for a cab, YOU show up? Some people simply can't be helped. They don't want to be helped. Why is that? Sometimes, as the Japanese have well understood, you can make mistakes so serious and costly that there is really no other course of action left but to kneel and open your belly, and, at least reclaim some honor in a courageous act of self destruction. But for others, in different situations, where hope is everything, and striving is the first order of business, this approach is confusing, mistaken, and wrong minded. Solo's long, slow, painful education about the reality of someone else's life who is so different, so incomprehensible, is painful, and poignant, to watch. But since we have no Suicide Parlors, there will always be windy bluffs.
There are so many small moments in this film that are complete revelations in their own right, like individual short, short stories, all strung together on a thread that seems preordained...that, in the end, when the rest is silence, the viewer is left with a profound sense of the suffering inherent in all existence, and, the futility of striving. The battlefield of life is an unending dance of forces of self-affirmation, and forces of self-negation, and wisdom emerges out of the dynamic equilibrium between the two. Solo may have known a traditional folk society when he was growing up, where there were plenty of family to look after one another, care for the elderly. But here, in America, he comes face to face with the reality that, in America, it's every man for himself. There is a terrific moment when Red West comes out of a movie that has been suggested to him by the ticket seller, a young man who never has a hint who he is talking to-- when Red West says: "Good Movie! Great acting!", and that pretty much sums up my feelings about Goodbye Solo, as well.
Summary of Goodbye Solo
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