Plastic Bag

How I have managed to elude Ramin Bahrani's short film Plastic Bag for months baffles me. Bahrani, the greatest newcomer to American cinema, is guaranteed my money for anything he does, and Plastic Bag was conveniently available on YouTube, legally, for free. However I ended up getting distracted, I was reminded at last to finally set aside the time for the 18-minute short upon seeing that Ed Howard posted a review earlier today. Before I could read it, I had to sit down and watch Plastic Bag, and when it was over, I kicked myself even harder for waiting all these months.

Superficially an expansion of the (in)famous bag sequence of American Beauty, one of the dumbest and most vacantly symbolic moments in modern American cinema, Plastic Bag plays like what Sam Mendes and Alan Ball wished they'd said in their film. Where Ball intended the bag sequence as one of the few serious moments in a suburban satire, Bahrani understands the innate humor of following a bag around as it floats through the air, sticks in trees and rolls along a beach. Yet he also delves into the suggestive properties of such an insignificant thing in an indifferent world.

Ergo, the decision to use Werner Herzog as the voice of the bag is a stroke of genius: no other filmmaker has more consistently focused upon the imposing endlessness of the world around the speck of an ambitious protagonist than Herzog, and no one has been as darkly funny in the process. His unique cadence, in which words slur together slightly as if being rushed out of the mouth even as Herzog draws out every last syllable in sostenuto tones, is fatalistic but deadpan, creating a depressing narration but also one filled with laughs.

The bag speaks of taking its first breath when a grocery clerk pulls the flattened bag open to fill it with groceries. The woman who buys the food grabs the bag, which comes to view her as his Maker, and takes her stuff home. There, she continues to reuse the bag as a means of recycling, and the bag speaks of the pure ecstasy of carrying her lunch and other items, bordering on sexual desire when she puts ice in the bag and rests it on a sore leg. Then, she starts using the bag to hold dog food and, finally, to pick up the dog's crap before tossing it in the trash.

The landfill where a garbage truck takes the bag is endless, stretching over hills teeming with seagulls as bulldozers try in vain to compact the refuse. The bag speaks of being pecked by the monsters who take pieces of it until they realize that the bag is not food. Several types of creatures do this to the bag in its journey to return home, poking holes in the thing but never fully destroying it.

Through Bahrani's lens, the sight of a plastic bag being endlessly pecked and experiencing moments of blissful flight and excruciatingly dull stillness when the wind dies becomes a poetic view of life itself. Everything is sunny and wondrous at the onset of being, only for maturation and moving into solitary life to bring the hardship of feeling as if the world casually steals pieces of you. Worse, it has no reason to do so, no way to use those bits it strips from the flesh and soul. The bag enjoys a moment of happiness when it enters into a midair "dance" with a red bag, but in an age where half of marriages end in divorce, the wind blows the two apart. At last, our hero makes its way to the Pacific Trash Vortex to be with its kind, only to pine for its Maker until it cannot relate to the other trash. Bahrani -- and maybe even Herzog -- paints life as the combination of fleeting moments of bliss and a sense of discomfort that nags whenever the good moments pass, and they always pass so quckly. Maybe that's bleak, but the director achieves a more beautiful rumination of life by choosing exclusively neither optimism nor cynicism.


The subtlety of Bahrani's direction also allows him to deal with environmental and economic messages. He tracks the bag through the outside world through alternating shots of nature and post-industrial decay. The press material for the film places it in the "not-so distant future," and the sights of suburban rot the bag passes by speak to a dying world where the pollution of humans may be the inheritor to mankind. The only human ever shown is the woman who bought the groceries, but the effects of humanity on the world are plainly evident. The bag, itself trash that could kill one of the animals that pecks at it if something swallowed the whole bag, rolls through abandoned homes possibly foreclosed upon during the economic crisis and finds not one but two massive areas coated with non-degradable garbage. At the same time, nature surivives, and the bag's spoken views on its surroundings, which displays a peevishly human view of nature as an obstacle, are contrasted with the beauty of Bahrani's high-definition imagery, capturing blue skies and green foliage in brilliant clarity. Mankind may be circling the drain like the garbage in the trash vortex, but nature will survive, and its beauty is mesmerizing in the background.

What amused and affected me the most was the Freudian streak running through Bahrani's narrative. The first person who has any use for the bag, just as the first person to care about us, is his "mother," who creates an expectation for life that life cannot live up to. Eventually, she sends him packing to go into the world, and for all the bag's adventures, it can never stop thinking about its maker/mother, even drowning itself (literally) in its own kind to try to forget about her. In the end, it cannot, and it throws itself outside the vortex, only to get caught on a rock and be left to float for eternity to be gently nibbled at by fish. But the bag finally sobers up a bit and accepts the beauty of what's in front of it. Still, it has one complaint for the mother that abandoned it and provided the basis of a life of searching: "I wish you had created me so I could die."

In 18 minutes, Plastic Bag manages to be funny, bleak, thought-provoking, emotive and poetic. It is the fourth significant work by Ramin Bahrani, and the fourth great movie. Plastic Bag contains as many memorable images as any feature I've seen this year, from the gorgeous, lilting sky ballet between the two bags to a shot of the main bag floating through the ocean by jellyfish that do not look so different from the flimsy but endurable plastic. Bahrani's direction normally recalls the other great modern North Carolinian, David Gordon Green, only with a clearer deference to Abbas Kiarostami than Terrence Malick. Yet it is this short film that breaks him fully of even the slightest dependence on any other director. The comparisons to American Beauty are as meaningless as the scene in Mendes' movie that prompts the juxtaposition: this is art, symbolic yet emotive and expressive, stylistic but aesthetically spare. Once again, I am reminded that a short film in the hands of a master can be vastly superior to the full-length products of the less-talented.

Goodbye Solo

In the commentary track for their new film Goodbye Solo, director Ramin Bahrani and cinematographer Michael Simmonds note enthusiastically that this, Bahrani's third film, features their first use of a shot/reverse shot setup. Most would scoff at the glee with which they report using in the director's third feature what is generally taught within the first few weeks of film school, but to me it only proves Roger Ebert's assertion that Bahrani is "new great American director." Though it may lack that thoroughly verité feel of Man Push Cart or Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo feels every bit as real and vital as those other two triumphs.

It opens in the middle of a conversation between Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané), an ever-smiling Senegalese cabbie, and his old white passenger William (Red West). William offers Solo $1,000 to take him to the top of a mountain in two weeks and leave him. Solo jokes at first, then asks if the man is going to kill himself up there. William doesn't answer. Concerned, Solo decides to be the old man's personal driver for the next two weeks in an attempt to talk William out of it. All of this is established within the first two minutes, as Bahrani posited that people would read a description of the film before going to see it or on a festival program anyway, so why draw it out? Besides, Goodbye Solo is not about whether William will commit suicide, or how, but the strange bond the two leads form.

And what leads they are! For the first time, the director hired professional actors -- though all but the two leads are still locals -- and what's impressive is how both men are every it as natural in their environment as those who genuinely live in the area. Savané's Solo dreams of becoming a flight attendant -- the real Solo actually worked for Air Afrique -- and he sees his polite and charming interactions with his customers as training for his dream job. Solo gives his personal number to "preferred clients," for whom he will do anything. Need some drugs or some "company"? Solo's your man. He's not some sinister pusher, mind you; he just wants his friends to be happy.

William is another matter entirely. Gruff and impersonal, he rarely even bothers to look at Solo when he speaks. As Solo attempts to strike up a friendship to reach the old man, William rebuffs him. I can think of no other person who could have pulled off the role like Red West. West was one of Elvis' childhood friends, and later his bodyguard. The two had a falling out when Red broke the foot of Elvis' cousin for trying to bring the King some dope, then told the poor sod that he was going to slowly work his way up to the face. Afterward, he became a stuntman and country singer as well as a character actor. Now, at age 72, he at last has his first leading role, and he commands it. Much rides on the simple nature of his face, which is a work of art unto itself. Sporting thinning red hair, a gray moustache and a leather hide, every wrinkle has a story to tell. West looks like Jeff Foxworthy, if Foxworthy had run the Hell's Angels instead of gone into comedy, and despite his age he still has a forceful presence. But there is also a kindness in his eyes, which may explain why he only looks at people when they impress him enough to warrant consideration.

On a surface level, the promise of an "unlikely friendship" between the two might smack of good ol' buddy film generics, but Bahrani has a far gentler and subtler touch than the typical "buddy" movie. West perfectly calibrates his performance, right down to when he chooses to look at Solo. When he lets the younger man in, he does so gently, never once acknowledging the gesture with anything other than a curt remark that barely hints at a deeper kindness. He never lets down the barrier, but he does open up enough to let Solo slip in.

As Solo scrambles to find something to convince William that life is worth living, Bahrani brilliantly juxtaposes Solo's conflict with William against Solo's relationship with his pregnant wife. She tells Solo that his dream job is just that, that he needs to stay so he can take care of his child. Solo re-assures her over and over that he will never leave them, but that he needs the freedom to make his own choices. In another film, the character of Solo's wife would be nothing more than a nagging shrew, written in solely to be mocked and reviled by the audience. But Bahrani stealthily contrasts Quiera's valid concerns with Solo's own intrusive desire to help William; as Solo rifles through his friend's possessions and even contemplates reaching out to a potential relative of William's, how can we sit there and judge Quiera for checking her husband's mail to make sure he's not applying to become a flight attendant again?

Bahrani's strength as a director, which Simmonds effortlessly bolsters, is the ability to use impressive camera movements and framing without ever calling our attention away from the action. Every pan, track and reverse shot aids what is happening on-screen, and when Bahrani lingers on a shot, it's not simply because he's seen Tokyo Story. The climax of the film takes place on Blowing Rock, a cliff where wind currents blast up into the sky like an airy geyser. Solo's stepdaughter, Alex (Diana Franco Galindo, in one of the best child performances since, well, Alejandro Polanco in Chop Shop), wants to test a rumor she heard that a stick thrown into the gale will fly right back into the hands of the person who tossed it. As Solo shuffles carefully toward the edge, the camera moves in front of him, almost reaching the edge and peering over, and I actually found myself leaning forward to see if somehow I could see over the rock that only just blocked the camera's view. Not many films can so immerse me that I attempt to see outside of the frame.

Goodbye Solo ends on a tragic note, yes, and one that offers little message of hope, yet it's unfair to call it a cynical film. Bahrani's movie has a profoundly realistic, humanist feel, and I don't say that because I believe that "sad" endings are more true to life than happy ones. This, like the director's other two films, is the work of a true independent, whose characters are always American but see themselves (and the audience sees them) as outsiders. Bahrani was born American but raised in an Iranian family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where everyone else was, according to him, white or black. In that sense Bahrani can easily tap into the "American as foreign observer of America" vibe that Jarmusch shoots for, though they're styles are far removed. A certain kinship can also be drawn to that other great modern director from N.C., David Gordon Green, though where Green approaches his clear-headed depictions of human interaction through the filter of Terrence Malick's tone poetry, Bahrani works through the ecstatic truth of Werner Herzog. Make no mistake: Bahrani's on a roll, and this quietly devastating, truly independent drama is as moving a film as you're likely to see this year.