TIFF Review:  GOODBYE SOLO

This, quite frankly, is the entire film.  And in Bahrani’s hands it’s all you need.  Solo is a perfect foil for the cranky William, a non-stop talker who sees nothing but the good in life and people.  Caring and gregarious Solo simply doesn’t see any boundaries when it comes to personal life and public life, he spills out everything about himself and expects the same from those around him.  And so William is a puzzle to Solo, a deeply disturbing puzzle once Solo realizes the nature and purpose of their arrangement.  And so Solo tries to respond the only way he knows how:  if William is planning to kill himself as a result of his isolation and loneliness, Solo will see to it that William is not isolated.  Though William is a hard nut Solo is determined to crack it.

Bahrani is a remarkably intimate film maker, one not afraid to simply drop his audience into the middle of a situation with minimal explanation.  We know nothing of these two men other than what they are willing to offer of themselves.  In Solo’s case, this is rather a lot.  In William’s, not so much.  He is also a film maker not afraid to mirror the difficult realities of daily life in the lives of his characters.  He feels no need to supply easy answers, no need to tell you that things are going to be okay because, often, they frankly are not.  In West Bahrani has an actor able to play the old crank with a degree of soul to him, a man able to convey a wealth of feeling simply through eyes and posture.  And in Savané he has an absolute monster of a performer, an entirely natural whirlwind of energy and emotion. 

The basic reality of the film world is that films like Goodbye Solo don’t have enough of an audience to merit a big release and this is not a film likely to break that trend.  It’s a little piece of work, a small film that is essentially a chamber piece, most of the drama playing out between two characters in either a cab or small motel room.  But small is certainly not bad, in this case small is really rather good, and if there’s any justice in the world we’ll be seeing a whole lot more of Savané in the future.