Review: ‘The Soloist’
Review: ‘The Soloist’
The Soloist
3 stars out of 5
Instead of saying what The Soloist is, it may be more beneficial to state what it is not. Despite what previews and a long history of projects showcasing the mentally handicapped may sell themselves as, the latest from Atonement director Joe Wright is not inspirational, uplifting and nowhere near memorable. Though the film has taken surprising strides against a notorious theory within the arts community (more on that later), The Soloist is tragically void of rhythm, meaningful characters and does little to move, let alone push.
Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) is a popular writer for the now beleaguered Los Angeles Times, where he earns his wage by producing human interest stories on local goings-on. After a bike accident left him banged up, Steve takes a break from the daily grind and meets a street musician named Nathaniel Ayers (JamieFoxx ) who is playing beautifully on a violin with only two strings. The banter is strange. Nathaniel rambles incessantly about the statue of Beethoven set alongside military leaders and the chaotic confusion it brings him. Steve asks him about a few names that have been scrawled out nearby and the colorfully dressed vagabond informs him those were his classmates at Juilliard. <double-take>
Steve bids the eccentric musician adieu and runs off to begin a story on him. Discovering that, yes, Ayers was indeed a former student who dropped out after two years, along with a long history of mental illness, Steve pens his article for the Times with heartwarming results. One reader, moved by the piece, sends the scribe a cello she no longer uses due to arthritis. Nathanial is a longtime cellist but has learned to play multiple instruments while on the street. The two lonely men, one happy and content, the other, though employed, struggling with what friendship actually means, form a quick and uneasy bond. Lopez tries to fix Nathaniel and hooks him up with Lamp, a community center on skid row in L.A., where they store his cello along with giving him a place to lay his head, though his chooses to sleep outside its doors. Nathanial is reluctant on this change but he goes where the cello goes.
The writer, trying to find usefulness in the midst of his post-marriage life, finds comfort in helping and repairing another person though his attempts sometimes have an adverse effect. He organizes a recital for him, arranges an apartment for him and even takes the musician to a closed-door practice of the Los Angeles Philharmonic where Lopez is authentically moved by Ayers’ love of classical music. “I’ve never loved anything as much as he loves music,” he exclaims to his ex-wife. Ouch.
The story takes a turn when Steve invites Nathaniel’s estranged sister to take custody of him. Needing to have Nathaniel’s signature to make it legal, an altercation between the two men shatters preconceived notions about African-American characters in cinema. Lopez, treading on Nathaniel’s independence, snaps and throws Lopez to the floor shouting that he’s not his “boy”, nor his “Bo Diddley .” He’s a man and deserves to be treated as such. For the rest of the film, Lopez addresses him as “Mr. Ayers” and goes on to say, “I should have been saying that from the beginning.”
Spike Lee coined the term “magical negro” during a campus visit to Yale University in 2001, though the theory precedes this. Mr. Lee was criticizing the role of African-American characters in film who too often appear as a wise sage/spirit/janitor/old man who helps the Caucasian protagonist with a major problem. He specifically criticizes The Family Man, What Dreams May Come, The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Green Mile. One can also see this theory played out in Driving Miss Daisy and Bruce Almighty, both Morgan Freeman movies. These characters are rarely the noble lead but instead are drunks or hapless individuals who look for redemption through other characters. In The Soloist, though we have a white guy playing a Latino character, Jaime Foxx’s Nathanial Ayers looks to fit this mold…until the start of the third act. Mr. Ayers will not be any one’s tool to fulfill a self-righteousness fantasy sparked by white liberal guilt. He stomps on it. He threatens to cut it open like a fish and it’s amazing to see.
The film is based on Steve Lopez’s real-life writings and book entitled The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, And The Redemptive Power of Music. The film rights were quickly snatched up purely based on the book proposal. The film’s main cast, which includes many homeless residents of Skid Row in L.A., is excellent. Foxx is powerful and doesn’t overreach for sympathy like Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Radio or Sean Penn’s I Am Sam. Downey is typical Downey: he drips with charisma and is enticing just by standing there, yet the script adaptation from Susannah Grant and the direction from Joe Wright leaves little to the imagination by explaining every scene through dialogue, overhanded symbolism (yes, Nathanial can see the colors of music and, sadly and blindly, so can we. Nathanial can hear voices and, oddly, we can too.). The film ultimately crumbles under the weight of its message to save the homeless. Wright does a fine job with execution yet the scenes he captures (scary life on Skid Row that includes nightly beatings, crack pipes, prostitution and more, mixed with haunting images from Nathaniel’s past) just do not resonate with the viewer. It’s hard to move somebody when they’re not told where to go.
For more information about Lamp, visit their web site.
