Photo by Francois Duhamel/Parmaount Pictures, Francois Duhamel/Parmaount Pictures
Street musician Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) captivates journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) in ''The Soloist.''
"The Soloist" is not science fiction, yet its early scenes depict an alien newsroom so crowded with reporters that ace columnist Robert Downey Jr. can barely navigate the cluttered desks without colliding with a fellow scribbler.
Photo by Francois Duhamel/Parmaount Pictures
Street musician Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) captivates journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) in ''The Soloist.''
Columnist Steve Lopez is at a dead end. The newspaper business is in an uproar, his marriage to a fellow journalist has fallen apart and ...
Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, some drug use and language
Length: 109 minutes
Released: April 24, 2009 Nationwide
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr., Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander, LisaGay Hamilton
Director: Joe Wright
Writer: Susannah Grant, Steve Lopez
To demonstrate the reach of Downey's printed musings, the director also stages a traveling shot of an early-morning newspaper deliveryman on his rounds, tossing that day's rag into every single yard on the street.
Those were the days -- the good (?) old (??) days way back in the middle part of this decade, when Los Angeles Times reporter Steven Lopez met homeless schizophrenic street musician Nathaniel Anthony Ayers and developed a relationship that led to a series of columns and now to this movie, "The Soloist," which casts Downey as Lopez and Best Actor Oscar-winner (for "Ray") Jamie Foxx as Ayers.
In his first film in America, British director Joe Wright ("Atonement"; the ampersand version of "Pride & Prejudice") strenuously avoids the traps of the typical inspirational based-on-a-true-story drama by focusing on grit and "realism," leavened on occasion with literal flights of fancy (a pair of apparently digital doves cruise the city, like Forrest Gump's feather) and other moments of visual symbolism. Bits of business seemingly unrelated to the central story -- Lopez's battles with invasive raccoons, the script's references to impending newspaper layoffs -- ground the film in an apparent authenticity that make the friendship between Lopez and Ayers believable. (Italian director Gabriele Muccino used the same "populist art film" approach for his first American movie, the similarly inspirational yet tough Will Smith vehicle, "The Pursuit of Happyness.")
While Ayers is coaxing the melodies of his beloved Beethoven from the catgut of his battered violin, Wright resists tugging at the heartstrings. What the director does overinflate is the action within his impeccably composed shots. Even in what is essentially a two-man drama, Wright seems a man born to make epics. The homeless shelters of Los Angeles may in fact be as crowded as a Cincinnati Who concert, but the colorfully choreographed Bedlam of bedbug-infested bedhead insanity depicted here is a rival for the organized chaos of Wright's already famous Dunkirk beach sequence in "Atonement."
The director couldn't have chosen better actors. Downey's weirdly fey cynicism is -- almost magically -- life-affirming; his performances are a joy to watch even as they seem to acknowledge not just the silliness of his overcompensated profession ("movie star") but the absurdity of everybody else's existence. Working the insane-classical-musician territory already mined for Oscar gold by Geoffrey Rush in "Shine," Foxx -- pushing a cart loaded with trash can treasures that include a discarded American flag and an Uncle Sam hat -- has a showier, more problematic role. His back story is told through flashbacks, but more interesting than Ayers' dramatized memories is an abstract sequence that takes us within the character's mind, where colored lights -- created with non-digital effects, to emphasize the organic nature of the visions -- pulse in time to Beethoven's music.
As with many, perhaps even most "prestige" films that focus on the theoretically mutually enobling relationship between a white character and a black character ("Driving Miss Daisy," "The Legend of Bagger Vance"), the movie is fraught with unintended implications and contradictory messages. No doubt the filmmakers are hoping nobody will notice that "The Soloist" can be read as an anti-inspirational cautionary tale about the impracticality of trying to help an "inferior" class. One might also see it as a dramatic literalization of Malcolm X's claim that the black man in racist America "can't even control his own mind."
- |
Comments » 1
Molliemole writes:
"While Ayers is coaxing the melodies of his beloved Beethoven from the catgut of his battered violin..."
And what a really big violin it is. Why, it's the size of a cello.
Share your thoughts
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.