Goodbye Solo (2007)

Solo is a cab driver in Winston-Salem NC. He is originally from Senegal and is the opposite of his name. A passenger, William, is planning a one way trip to a desolate spot called the Blowing Rock and be left alone there. He offers solo $1000 to take him there in about 10 days.

This, however, is not one of those movies in which everything goes according to plan and things fall neatly into place. A bond of sorts does form between Solo and William, but it's not the kind either of them anticipated, and the film never even comes close to straying into Lifetime movie territory.

If you are planning to drop by at Ritz to watch this, I think it will be a good idea to bring Taste of Cherry up in your Netflix queue and watch it if you haven't done so yet.

Bahrani, Iranian-American director of the movie, relies on the legend of the blowing rock, which I did not know when I watched the movie. The legend has it that

a Chickasaw chieftan, fearful of a white man’s admiration for his lovely daughter, journeyed far from the plains to bring her to The Blowing Rock and the care of a squaw mother. One day the maiden, daydreaming on the craggy cliff, spied a Cherokee brave wandering in the wilderness far below and playfully shot an arrow in his direction. The flirtation worked because soon he appeared before her wigwam, courted her with songs of his land and they became lovers, wandering the pathless woodlands and along the crystal streams.

One day a strange reddening of the sky brought the brave and the maiden to The Blowing Rock. To him it was a sign of trouble commanding his return to his tribe in the plains. With the maiden’s entreaties not to leave her, the brave, torn by conflict of duty and heart, leaped from The Rock into the wilderness far below. The grief-stricken maiden prayed daily to the Great Spirit until one evening with a reddening sky, a gust of wind blew her lover back onto The Rock and into her arms. From that day a perpetual wind has blown up onto The Rock from the valley below. For people of other days, at least, this was explanation enough for The Blowing Rock’s mysterious winds causing even the snow to fall upside down.