Goodbye Solo: Suicide Revisited

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Winner: Venice Film Festival International Critics' Prize

A slow-moving, seemingly uneventful film that tackles the issue of suicide: not from the victim's prospective but from the point of view of the survivor who sees the end of life as we know it within clear sight. What to do?

This film is the struggle between life and death, portrayed through the encounter of two very different people, a Senegal immigrant man and an American man who was once a full blooded motor cycle, beer drinking, tattooed man of the world who is now "over the hill".

There is a tedium in watching the slow motions that pass as events between the two men, the Senegalese is the taxi driver "Solo" and William the passenger about to end his life.

So many head shots, so little motion. Only the car seems to move. Although the film director is enamored with the car, the motion, the confining of the space allowed, i am more claustrophobic and the endless car trips did not ease the tension I feel within a moving car.

But the message, the process of being able to let go, to stop trying to save a man's life particularly when he doesn't want to be saved is a forceful one, a compelling moment to think about when or if such a moment is put in our way.

Suicide is always a difficult subject to discuss. Whether it is because of the religious taboo against it or the fear that it is a contagious event, there is rarely the question of why not. But, why not? We may not have a choice about being born but certainly there is nothing fundamentally wrong, nor impossible in our ability to end our own life for whatever reason.

Let go. That is the powerful message that informs on Goodbye Solo.

Linda Zises
WBAI Women's Collective
Criticalwomen.net