The Soloist is a 2009 drama about a newspaper journalist who discovers a homeless musical genius and tries to improve his situation.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT: Poor Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) is having a bad day. Out on his bike in the foothills around Los Angeles, he takes a spill and lands on his head. Too bad he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Bashed up good, he ends up in the hospital but thankfully, recoverable. Back at The LA Times, where he works as a journalist writing human interest stories, his ex-wife (the great Catherine Keener) is the editor, and wants him on a new piece. He takes to the streets in search of a new story.
There, he comes upon the lilting sounds of a violin (with only two strings). He follows the music to a homeless man, who introduces himself as Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a former Juilliard student having trouble with some mental stability. Lopez wants to write about him and in his research finds his sister (LisaGay Hamilton) and begins to piece together the story of a man torn apart by voices in his head. It’s eventually understood he suffers from schizophrenia. When the newspaper article has a reader donate a cello, something Lopez learned was Ayers’ original instrument, he offers it to the troubled man. Unexpectedly, the music changes not just Ayers, but Lopez, too.
MINI REVIEW: While the film seems set up to be about a musician given a second chance, which it surely is, it’s more about mental illness and living on the street. Neither of these are new to the big screen, with many highly-acclaimed films tackling such issues with a number of actors earning Academy Awards for their performances. The Soloist isn’t rewriting the book per se, and as such, the movie was no doubt made thinking it too would be Oscar material.
Based on true events, both Downey Jr. and Foxx deliver very convincing and intimate portrayals (and Keener is just amazing in her limited time on screen). However, as moving as the story ultimately is, the film is strangely distant, even a bit contrived in how it spins it all together. There are times when it feels right, when director Joe Wright finds his footing, weaving compelling threads of madness and music together, but too often it doesn’t strike with the impact surely intended. Mix in a heavy-handed religious overtone and it all falls a bit flat.
THAT MOMENT IN: Despite The Soloist not quite working as well as it might, there are several good moments that certainly make watching worth it, especially for how creative Wright gets with his camera. It’s often quite rousing in bridging the gap between the music and the mental breakdown. The best of this comes early in the story right after Lopez meets Ayers, a moment that combines the necessary emotional punch with some delicate but provocative imagery.
It begins with a cool little sequence where a used cello is donated to the paper so that Lopez can give it to Ayers, the instrument in its case stacked in a mail cart riding through the cubicles until it reaches Lopez. From there, it takes a ride with him to an underpass not far from the newspaper, where Lopez once again meets Ayers, this time dodging traffic for a cigarette butt.
Once the cello is in Ayers’ hands though, the tone shifts from the nervous action of near misses on a highway, to the gentle strings of a solo cello piece as the suddenly calm musician takes bow in hand. As he begins to play, he closes his eyes as the camera soon lifts from the pair and rises away, carried metaphorically from the pain and suffering of the world Ayres feels trapped within.
RETHINKING THE MEANING: I’ll admit, when I first watched The Soloist on release, this scene greatly disappointed me, knowing it was coming and wanting it to have some larger impact. I disliked how, over the cello, the soundtrack swells with an accompanying orchestra, and the camera simply leaving Ayers behind and heads off into some seemingly random montage of city and sky. It really bothered me and shifted my whole appreciation of the rest of the movie.
However, nearly ten years on, watching again, I’m confident now that I ‘get’ what Wright was after and am surprised to find myself actually taken by this moment, even as I tensed with a kind of expectation for the worst. What I thought was a misstep in rounding some corners on the Ayers character a decade ago is in fact a brilliant little journey into the splinters of his mind, the cello in his hand bringing the noises in his head to a grateful silence, his mind free to fly away to great heights, distant from the cacophony that has left him hiding on the streets.
WHY IT MATTERS: I love how it cuts to Lopez when Ayers begins to play, his head in his hands, eyes closed in thought, letting the truth of what Ayers really is wash over him with aching relief. It’s a pitch perfect shot because it reveals that Lopez is not simply looking to close the gaps on his story but actually appreciates the talent this man has and is genuinely overcome by the tragedy of what he’s become.
I like too now how the score builds on the piece (the whole composition written by the movie’s composer Dario Marianelli), a subtle cue that I missed the first time because I thought the music was for me, a kind of signal from the director that shouts, “Feel something now!” It’s actually not. It’s for Ayers, the music in his head (duh!), the feeling of bow to strings conjuring within his troubled mind a symphony of peace, something we see on his face as well. It’s quite lovely.
What’s more, birds fly from under the bridge up to towering buildings and then off even further, racing along open air, over two key images, the first of a parking lot full of new cars still sheathed in protective white plastic aligned in synchronized patterns and then next, the wavy twists and turns of a highway ramp system. The first reflects the ordered, rhythmic structure of notes on the neck of a cello and the other the beautiful random emotional chaos it can create. How did I miss this before? It’s a sensational sequence.
IN THE END: However, as good as many moments like this are, there is a sort of artificial flavor to The Soloist that is hard to put your finger on. Take for example a scene later on when Lopez is able to get Ayres to a dress rehearsal for an orchestra playing at the opera house. Here, Wright takes the same approach as before but turns it up to mach 4, with all kinds of swirling neon lights and visual gimmickry that is meant to pull us into the magic of what live music does for Ayres but instead is just a disconcerting collage of colors and faces that doesn’t have any emotional investment like the first.
Either way, the film doesn’t really give the homelessness nor the mental illness angles the right edge or sympathy, despite great work from the cast. It’s disappointing considering the potential. Still a bit under the bridge when a broken man finds solace in the comforts of a passion long out of reach makes for something special. It’s a great movie moment.