Mental illness, personal rights, personal responsibility, homelessness, the crumbling newspaper business — these are the issues circling this biopic on Los Angeles Times journalist Steve Lopez and homeless musical prodigy Nathaniel Ayers, who is possibly schizophrenic. In real life Lopez won accolades for his columns on Ayers. He wants to help, but what is the best thing to do for Nathaniel?
Lopez (Robert Downey Jr., IRON MAN) meets Ayers (Jamie Foxx, RAY) in a park playing a violin with two strings. In their first rambling conversation, Ayers mentions that he went to Julliard and Lopez's journalism ears are piqued. Ayers did indeed go to Julliard, but something happened and over the course of the film we learn how Ayers went from the poor neighborhoods of Cleveland to Julliard to the streets of Los Angeles where he lives unaware of reality from moment to moment.
The role of Ayers smells of Oscar bait and Foxx gives his best performance since winning his Oscar playing Ray Charles. He brings a gentle shyness to Ayers that’s hard to resist. Yet he is unpredictable and one sees that his mental tics put him in danger and conceivably could put others in danger. Downey plays Lopez as an observer. He looks around the world for the story. At first we get a sense that helping Ayers is only because he feels obligated to do so. And it won't hurt his story either. His coolness for commitment and others' feelings seem to be the chief reason his marriage ended to his editor Mary (Catherine Keener, CAPOTE).
I found THE SOLOIST engaging for the many things it tries to say. Joe Wright does a great job crafting the intimidating world Ayers lives in. When a reader gives Lopez a cello to give Ayers, Lopez sets up a deal to give the instrument to a local shelter. Lopez is frustrated when Ayers doesn't want to go to the shelter, but when he arrives for the first time he realizes why Ayers wants to stay away. Homeless drug addicts and mentally ill fill the streets in front of the shelter. It's not a pleasant place. I came to fear for Ayers because he seems so ill equipped to live on the streets. But he has found a way. Lopez suggests forcing Ayers to take meds, but that's a simplistic view of mental illness. Shelter worker David (Nelsan Ellis, TV's TRUE BLOOD) understands that like a drug addict a mentally ill person can only be helped by treatment as long as it is of their own free will. It's a cruel irony of mental illness that the illness itself robs the sufferer of the understanding that they are ill.
Like Lopez, the film, however, observes the material as a story. We are hit on an emotional level because we don't want to see Ayers suffer, but we don't connect on a personal level, because our protagonist is distant. THE SOLOIST's chief weakness is that it doesn't capture the growing friendship between Lopez and Ayers until the very end. Susannah Grant (ERIN BROCKOVICH) should have consulted RAIN MAN on how to make a relationship grow between a self-centered man and a mental ill man. In addition, Wright over directs several of the scenes where he's trying to convey the power of Ayers' playing. Elaborate tracking shots of pigeons soaring into the air make the music maudlin not inspiring.
Foxx's dedicated and touching performance is what drives this film. Like Lopez, we want to know more about him. We want a better life for him. Wright not only provides his story, but a larger look at the homeless problem in Los Angeles. He doesn't present easy answers, because there aren't any.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
