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

American Violet

The Texas Raids Where Men And Women Are Given Equal Maltreatment

Directed by Tim Disney

Starring Alfre Woodard, Michael O’Keefe, Tim Blake Nelson, Will Patton, Charles S. Dutton, Xzibit, and newcomer Nicole Beharie

Based on real events and set in a small Texas town in the midst of the 2000 Bush/Gore presidential election.

AMERICAN VIOLET tells the astonishing story of Dee Roberts (critically hailed newcomer Nicole Beharie), a 24 year old African-American single mother of four who is wrongfully swept up in a drug raid. A raid that is periodically visited on the denizens of the Texas housing projects, and the threat of its re-occurrence does not stop with the end of the film.

The inside view of the prison was riveting. I had no idea of the conditions, the lack of humanity that people incarcerated, even if not guilty, are afforded.

This is a piece of history we need to know. The trip to knowledge that Tim Disney offers is an engrossing, enjoyable, yet disturbing adventure that will not be forgotten by those who see the film. It isn't a Hollywood extravaganza, but a slice of life that draws us into the moment and doesn't let us go, even after the lights come up.

The acting is stunning, the music is so perfect and the story is strong. A good job, a necessary work of art.

Samuel Goldwyn Films releases American Violet April 17th, 2009 nationwide

Linda Z
Crotocal women
wbai radio

Notes on a Scandal

Notes on a Scandal (2006) DVD
Sexuality, Age and Attraction: what is moral, when?


Director: Richard Eyre
Starring: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett

A twist and turn film with great acting and a moral message that encompasses age, sex, the double standard and the public, the moral majority who relish an attractive woman gone astray. Notes of a Scandal will bring moments of spontaneous fun, clever insight into human nature and moments of repulsion and anger to those who think sex with a young underage person is wrong, reprehensible without equivocation unless sanctioned by marriage.

In Notes of a Scandal morality is turned upside down, the good and bad dichotomy reversed and reversed again while the Pacific Palisades, California Look Out Point towering above the Will Rogers State Park gets center stage for those intimate quiet moments upon which the film's meaning depends.

A good film for quiet restless moments when something interesting, provocative will quell life's multiple distractions.


Linda Zises
WBAI Women's Collective

BALL DON'T LIE

Brin Hill Director
Writers (WGA):
Matt de la Peña (screenplay) &
Brin Hill (screenplay) ...



This is a quiet tour de force, a film that doesn't awaken you until it reaches its climax and then the lightening rod goes crazy.

Ball Don't Lie is the story of Sticky (Grayson Boucher), a 17 year old white boy who travels from one foster care home to another after suffering the trauma of the premature violent loss of his parental figure.

It is a story of a white boy making it in a black boy world because he has found basketball, a game that he excels at. But with all the bonding on the court, with all the seeming similarity in their life expectancy, the black and white world remain divided. It is this divide so beautifully articulated on the sands of Venice Beach, California beach that brings this film into notoriety and extraordinary excellence.

This is a film that uses real people, not just seasoned actors, and real places and even though in the main it feels like a trite, redo of a redo, by the end of the film you feel elevated to another plane of understanding of the world in which we live.

No small feat.

opens June 5th, 2009

Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective