FeedGoodbye Solo
May 30 2009, 9:10pm
This film, the third by director Ramin Bahrani, came super-highly reviewed, so I was a little surprised when it turned out to be a fairly run-of-the-mill indie movie. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed it quite a bit, particularly the acting of Souleymane Sy Savane as Solo.
But it did share a lot of what I think of as classic "indie film" features: "gritty" cinematography (which in this case meant washed-out colors, soft focus, and some bumpy handheld sequences); a willingness to hold a shot for a few extra beats (and the use of static shots of buildings & scenery as sort of interstitial breath-catching moments); amateurish acting; a plot that meanders & really only contains maybe 2 1/2 acts.
I suppose that if one's dayjob as a film critic takes you to an endless stream of mainstream movies, including all the summer blockbusters, then small movies with tiny budgets that still manage to tell compelling stories must seem extraordinarily fresh by comparison. From where I sit, though -- I see no more than one movie a week, usually, and they're more likely than not to be independent or at least interesting -- this movie seemed like a fairly standard example of the "small indie feature" genre.
What tipped it over for me were, as I said, the performance of Souleymane Sy Savane, as well as that of his counterpart, former Elvis bodyguard Red West. The fact that it was set in Winston-Salem was pretty cool as well, although with the exception of a few shots of that freaky white phallus building downtown, it was nearly all the generic convenience-stores and strip-malls version of Winston-Salem. Could've been any small city anywhere (particularly since most of the main characters are from somewhere else).
But it did share a lot of what I think of as classic "indie film" features: "gritty" cinematography (which in this case meant washed-out colors, soft focus, and some bumpy handheld sequences); a willingness to hold a shot for a few extra beats (and the use of static shots of buildings & scenery as sort of interstitial breath-catching moments); amateurish acting; a plot that meanders & really only contains maybe 2 1/2 acts.
I suppose that if one's dayjob as a film critic takes you to an endless stream of mainstream movies, including all the summer blockbusters, then small movies with tiny budgets that still manage to tell compelling stories must seem extraordinarily fresh by comparison. From where I sit, though -- I see no more than one movie a week, usually, and they're more likely than not to be independent or at least interesting -- this movie seemed like a fairly standard example of the "small indie feature" genre.
What tipped it over for me were, as I said, the performance of Souleymane Sy Savane, as well as that of his counterpart, former Elvis bodyguard Red West. The fact that it was set in Winston-Salem was pretty cool as well, although with the exception of a few shots of that freaky white phallus building downtown, it was nearly all the generic convenience-stores and strip-malls version of Winston-Salem. Could've been any small city anywhere (particularly since most of the main characters are from somewhere else).
