LA Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) is looking for a new story to write when he chances upon a surprisingly talented street musician, Nathaniel Ayers, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), and discovers that Ayers is a brilliant multi-instrumentalist whose schizophrenia eventually caused him to drop out of Julliard and abandon a potential career to live on the streets. What begins as a story for the paper soon leads to a close and unlikely friendship between the two men that changes the lives of both.
Sigh. Here's another film about a privileged white* person's deep and important emotional journey as he plays the father figure and helps out all the poor homeless people. The film is based on the real Lopez's book about this relationship, with all the egotism that one might expect from someone who would use the life stories of the less fortunate to propel himself to fame. The Soloist is frequently unbelievable and almost entirely cringeworthy (and the 'comic relief' provided by scatological humor doesn't help). It would have still irked me a little with its tendency to put Ayers and the other street people of Los Angeles in the position of the other and the naive child, but a film about Lopez coming down from his pedestal a little and realizing that offering endless handouts to his favorite homeless person for being so, I don't know, noble or whatever, is nothing short of insulting might have been a bit more forgivable. Unfortunately this isn't it, and Lopez walks away a hero.
At least The Soloist does know what it has going for it. For one thing, it is gorgeously filmed, with evocative use of light and shadow, echoing the contrast between the worlds of Lopez and Ayers. For another, Downey manages to find the heart of the role of Lopez, and if nothing else this is an interesting character study of someone who tries to change the world in order to escape from his own personal problems. Then when Lopez and Ayers attend a rehearsal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the scenery fades to a display of color and light and the music takes center stage. Maybe it should have from the start. Maybe this should have told the story of a gifted, yet troubled man trying to keep his dignity and express himself through music**. But again. Not this film.
*Wikipedia tells me that Lopez is "the son of Spanish and Italian immigrants", but in the film, the surname is the only indication of this.
**Which would make this an oddly themed week of movie-watching for yours truly.
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