Goodbye Solo

I went by myself to see a film late Sunday night. It was Ramin Bahrani‘s latest, Goodbye Solo. I was very tired from waking early to work brunch. Lucky for me, there were only two other couples in the theater, sitting behind me, and I don’t think they saw the tears streaming down my face through the last quarter of the film.

The film’s plot follows the life of a Senegalese-American taxi driver as does his job, studies for a better job, and lovingly attends to his step-daughter and wife. He runs into an old man named William, played by the lifelong personal assistant to Elvis Presley, a man on his way out of life, and they become friends. The place where Solo and William’s lives intersect and how they open up to one another is the grace of the film. I think Roger Ebert explains it much better than I have time to do…

The ending of the film involves a real place in North Carolina called Blowing Rock. Blowing Rock “takes its name from an unusual rock formation which juts over 1,500 feet (460 m) above the Johns River gorge. Due to the rock’s shape and size, wind currents from the gorge often blow vertically, causing light objects to float upwards into the sky.” This made me think of the ending to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon… when Milkman jumps from Solomon’s Leap.

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”