How’s this for an example of Obama’s America? An Iranian American filmmaker makes a movie set in his hometown, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, about a charismatic young Senegalese taxi driver and his elderly Southern-born passenger. Director Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop) creates another subtle, sublime, humanist gem about the travails of the country’s multicultural underclass, this time through the lens of the fraught relationship between these two very different men, one of whom wants to kill himself. Driving Mr. Daisy it’s not. Bahrani never sentimentalizes the situation, instead crafting an elegant tale about life’s comings and goings.
