The Pagan Agenda

Rating:

There is a certain kind of film that I seek out when going to the film festival; foregoing the list of talent that I feel compelled to see on name recognition alone, there ends up being three or four films which seduce me with their promise of real pathos. These films tend to be foreign, and tend to slip under most people’s radar due to their sheer lack of novelty. Call me old-fashioned but my favorite genre remains the straight up drama. My whole ambition is to empathize with the characters depicted and be transported on an emotional level to their faraway reality. This year I have earmarked a couple of films with the hopes that they will do just that; they include Sugar, Linha de Passe, Afterwards and Goodbye Solo.

Of the films I have thus far seen at the festival, Goodbye Solo has left the deepest impression. Granted that is not saying a lot considering the poor films I have seen, and Ramin Bahrani’s film is not a complete success, but it was the one that at least extinguished the festival pomp and circumstance and transported me to the disparate world of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to care about the modest ambitions of a Sengalese cab driver, Solo, and his fare, a deeply wounded Texan, William. Bahrani had the audience teary-eyed before the film even started with his touching dedication to a friend that had recently died of cancer and had helped him with finding the locations for the film. In the same introduction we learned that Goodbye Solo had one an award at the Venice film festival, and this only add to our interest in what was to come. From my interpretation of the synopsis I had anticipated the story to be reminiscent of My Dinner with Andre, one uninterrupted conversation between cab driver and customer, touching upon important life altering and philosophic topics, but I soon discovered this not to be the case.

Within the first minute of the film the premise is set: William asks Solo to take him to the top of Blowing Rock in a week, no questions asked, to which Solo suspects suicidal tendencies and spends the remainder of the film trying to inspire William to live on. Rather than being a contained one set narrative the story persists through the week as Solo comedically ingratiates himself into every aspect of William’s life with a buoyant attitude that contrasts sharply with William’s dour mood. Actor Souleymane Sy Savane steals the show as the ever persitant Solo, doing everything in his power to correct his new friend’s destructive path. What may seem as an unlikely premise is made plausible through his effortless sense of benevolence, and when the fateful day comes his character arc rings true in a way one least expects. The same goes for William, whose laconic existence becomes elevated by a few scratched lines in a journal, all minimal but nicely played. While I enjoyed this story and could appreciate the reluctance Bahrani took from being overly expositional in his story, in the end I longed for something more, and maybe that is a defect in me, speaking more of where I am in my life than about the characters, wanting to be shaken into something more violent then which is ultimately presented. That said, Goodbye Solo is a fine film and has inspired me to look into the director’s back catalogue, the lauded Chop Shop and Man Push Cart.