THE HANGOVER: Why Are You Even Reading A Review?

Its humor is juvenile.  Its premise is contrived.  Its plot is implausible.

It's completely hilarious.  For Christ's sake, you don't need a review--everything you need to know is in the poster.  Go see the damn thing.

GOODBYE SOLO: The Primacy of Restraint

I first heard of director Ramin Bahrani in a previously-mentioned New York Times article about a vanguard of "realist" filmmakers brought into focus by the surprise success of Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy.  This generation of realism isn't burdened with the conceptual theorizing of its Italian progenitors, nor has it been pushed to the margins of popular taste by obsequious academic adulation.  In fact, knee-jerk comparisons to prior movements may be a disservice to the films themselves, as their very merit is partially due to their refreshing lack of conscious referents.  Wendy and Lucy was a simple story beautifully told, a simple character fully realized, simple emotions deeply felt.  It was, quite simply, a success in every way, and the fact that it ended up breaking even--nay, even profiting--is extremely heartening.  Good films still come down to a core craftsmanship, and the general public will appreciate them accordingly.  (Admittedly, it helped that Wendy and Lucy had Michelle Williams as branding tool--and yet, the celebrity persona was entirely absent in the film, and the actress disappeared into the demure character).  

And so its association with Reichardt's film compelled me to see Ramin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo.  Bahrani's previous films were modest but well-received for their hushed, unadorned style.  I'd just seen The Wrestler, whose realism was a bit too self-conscious to be effective, and looked forward to a film genuinely pared down to its essence--a film with no agenda and nothing to prove.  And Bahrani succeeds, narrowly--a gorgeous understated conclusion makes up for a number of hackneyed plot points.  The premise is pure film-school sentimentalism--a brokendown old man (Red West) hires a plucky Senegalese cabbie (Souleymane Sy Savane) to drive him to a mountain top on in two weeks' time for unspecified reasons (read: suicide), and the resolutely positive cabbie spends the interim trying to revive the old man's withered spirit.

William (West) is a tired husk--chain smoking, yellowing hair, tributaries of wrinkles draining into red and swollen eyes.  He is introduced in the back seat of Solo's (Savane) taxi, in which he is negotiating an appointment for the aforementioned ride to a mountain top.  Where William is all dust and fatigue, Solo is spark and vitality, compensating for the taciturn William with a constant stream of spirited exclaiming and pontificating.  Both characters could easily lapse into cliche, but Bahrani allows his actors to deliver their lines quietly, without histrionics or swelling violins, and in their interactions and behavior both emerge as genuine human beings. The characterization of both is achieved in generally the same elegant, pithy understatement that made Michelle Williams' Lucy so effective.

However, Bahrani panders to the audience in the unfolding of the plot.  Solo's unflagging spirit is believable, but his dogged concern for William is a bit forced--I could sense the writer's hand pushing the plot forward as Solo repeatedly tracks William down with the tenacity of a private investigator, as if he doesn't have enough problems with his crumbling marriage and failed job prospects.  The very premise requires a bit of suspended disbelief--why would William bother arranging a driver two weeks in advance of his plan, when it would be just as easy to call one up the morning of?  A convenient poetic liberty for the sake of putting the story into motion.  

Once said story is put into gear, it unfolds fairly predictably--Solo suspects William's intentions and tries to intervene.  William wants only to be left alone and cuts off contact.  Solo consequently tracks William's calls to the taxi agency and reinstates himself as his unofficial driver.  Beyond the aforementioned assignment to drive William to his supposed death, William requires a taxi for his frequent trips to the movies, where he makes small talk with the kid at the ticket counter. 

Spoiler alert, but who gives a damn--it comes out that the kid is William's son, whose ignorance of this relation is a significant contributor to William's despondency.  This fact is hinted at several times, and then made plainly clear when Solo comes across a few of William's diary entries detailing his affection for the boy, and, albeit begrudgingly, for Solo.  Beyond my questioning that a man as unsentimental and emotionally estranged as William would take the time to write journal entries, I was disappointed that Bahrani would resort to such an overused genre trope as diary entries to show the inner softness of an otherwise hardened character.  

I appreciated the sparseness of the plot and characters--but the film still fell into stilted storytelling conventions that weakened its impact.  I'm loathe to use the term "realism" myself, because such a broad label leaves itself open to criticism--not to mention that critical analysis in the years since its cinematic application has essentially rendered it meaningless.  For the sake of convention, however, I will define any film as "realistic" in which the filmmaker is not lying to me.  When I can sense the writer's hand moving things forward, as opposed to things unfolding naturally by the mechanism of fully realized characters, then realism, however one defines that, begins to crumble.

The film's saving grace, however, is a truly graceful conclusion at the mountain top.  We do not see William after he parts ways with Solo at the bottom of the trail.  We are left only with Solo, later, on top of the mountain, alone with the wind and fog and no resolution--and the quiet bond between Solo and the audience, the shared space of that unresolved stillness, felt real and organic.  For all its failings along the way, Goodbye Solo ends on a note of humility and respect between viewer and filmmaker, and that will endear me to any film I see.