DUET: a review of "The Soloist"

Originally written April 30, 2009

"The Soloist" Directed by Joe Wright
**** (4 stars)

In "The Soloist," the remarkable new film from director Joe Wright ("Atonement"), there is a short sequence of such glorious power and exactness that effected me so dramatically that I felt compelled to stand upright and cheer the screen. (Never fear, dear readers. I didn't.)

The sequence occurs well into the film as Los Angeles Times journalist Steve Lopez (the inimitable Robert Downey Jr.) has procured two seats at an exclusive orchestral rehearsal performance at the Little Walt Disney Concert Hall. The patrons for this sight include himself and Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Jr. (beautifully portrayed by Jamie Foxx), a supremely talented street musician overcome with mental handicaps who was once a child prodigy and promising student from Julliard some 30 years prior. The music, a composition by Ayers' musical hero Beethoven, begins and we are then transported into Ayers' inner-visions as he reaches a transcendental state of hallucinogenic reverie. It is the purity and solace music holds over him, his reaction and surrender to its awesome power and graceful beauty. It is the moment all of us experience when in contact with something that moves us to a place that is unexplainable. I will not go into how such a sequence has been visualized because I want you to see it for yourselves. But, it is handled with an ingenious, delicate inventiveness that for me, was simply a superior depiction of that moment of connection and quite possibly the best connection to music I have seen in any film.

High praise indeed and yet "The Soloist" is not entirely a film about music. The story, which begins with Lopez writing newspaper articles about Ayers, solely to fulfill deadlines as well as maintain his employment within an institution that is slowly dying away in an Internet age, covers a lot of ground. Topics of mental illness, the homeless population, the death of the newspaper in addition to musical themes about the creative process and our response to that process are filtered through the tenuous relationship between Lopez and Ayers, which segues between genuine concern, impatience, exploitation, lost trust and understanding.

What worked extremely well for me was that the film didn't provide any easy, trite answers to issues that continue to plague our country. Early in the film, one of Lopez's articles has inspired an elderly reader to donate her beloved cello (an instrument she can no longer play due to her arthritis) to Ayers as his violin has been reported to only possess two strings. Lopez, concerned for Ayers' safety on the Los Angeles streets, presents the cello to Ayers on the condition that he can only play it at LAMP, a facility for the homeless. Ayers is distrustful, tentative, fearful and paranoid but his desire to maintain his connection to the thing he loves most is stronger. Wright stages the many sequences set at LAMP more as a "fly on the wall" and not as a cinematic freak-show. Scenes are allowed to play longer and build naturally as we, with Lopez, get a front row seat to Skid Row and its denizens. As Lopez spends extended time with the displaced and mentally unstable, as he waits and wonders if Ayers will ever arrive to LAMP, we are able to see the humanity that still exists in the very individuals society has forgotten. I couldn't help but to think about a person's sense of resolve and what is it inside of us that allows us to continue marching, if not forward, but just in place because sometimes that is all a person is able to do.

The film also presents a quiet anger at a country, with albeit depleting resources and finances, that has allowed so many to slip through the cracks. Exactly what led these people to this station in life and who will join them? In fact, the movie may be arguing that it doesn't even matter what each person's back story happens to be, or even if they are able to be "saved" or "cured" because in many cases, they cannot. Lopez wrestles with these very issues throughout the entirety of the film and by the conclusion, he is not transformed in that cliched Hollywood fashion, but simply more informed. Food for thought that never felt like a lesson or condescended to an audience of people sitting in plush movie theater seats munching on overly expensive concession treats.

With the two lead performances, "The Soloist" often reminded me of Barry Levinson's "Rain Man." Jamie Foxx, with the flashier role, completely disappears into the character of Ayers and erases his clownish and sometimes obnoxious off-screen persona. It is easy to forget just how skilled of a dramatic actor he is and he never seems to be clamoring for an additional Oscar. In his far-off gazes, frenetically paced soliloquies and complete devotion to his art, Foxx portrays a man who is nearly unreachable (his sequences of his mental breakdowns are genuinely disturbing) but he is defiantly nobody's fool as his inability to be "saved" continuously challenges the purity of Lopez's intentions. Downey Jr. is compulsively watchable as always and like "Rain Man," he serves the same purpose as the Tom Cruise character by being a stand-in for the audience and even somehow making us question our own intentions if we were placed into the same situation. Is Lopez wanting to help Ayers because of human empathy or is Ayers simply another story to sell and greater insurance for job security in a fading industry? Downey Jr. makes every moment feel so effortless, as if he arrived on the set and just began speaking naturally. He is truly a gift to every film he appears in.

By not allowing the film to descend into melodrama and "Movie-Of-The Week" emotional falseness, Joe Wright has created a deeply moving and thoughtful work. As I keep turning the film over in my mind, I think that "The Soloist" is ultimately about all of us. We are all soloists as we speed through our lives, all seeking and desiring that moment where we connect to something or someone, expanding our collective humanity into something sublime and soulful. This is another highly effective film in the early part of this year's film-going.