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 In cinemas Thursday Sep 3 [M]
Director: Joe Wright
Runtime: 117mins
The Soloist is based on a true story, so it’s hard to fault that story for its familiar set-up. Newspaper columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr) befriends gifted homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), who plays violin on the streets of Los Angeles and at first the writer sees the musician as a potential story, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess that in the process of digging into Ayers’ life the two will bond and overcome some of the boundaries between them. But real life can be messy and unpredictable as well as familiar, and that goes double where schizophrenia – the cause of Ayers’ homelessness – is concerned.
Although it begins with the formula of the uplifting telemovie, The Soloist veers towards a much more interesting and honest story as it goes on. Despite flashbacks showing Ayers’ youth and the beginnings of his illness, no pat explanation is concocted for the voices in his head nor is there a suggestion of a simple cure. The healing power of music gives him solace, but only temporarily. The Soloist instead becomes an indictment of a society that lets down so many of its members, seen in hellish Skid Row sequences.
By taking a hard turn into more out-of-the-ordinary territory in its second half, The Soloist does cause itself some problems. Subplots from the early stages of the movie, like the war Lopez fights with raccoons in his yard or the way the newspaper industry decays underneath him and his co-workers, become forgotten and never really go anywhere. It’s a shame because showing a world outside the relationship between the two leads gives it valuable context. Lopez’s family issues do continue bubbling along however, which is unfortunate because that’s the least interesting of the subplots.
Director Joe Wright – previous adapter of Pride & Prejudice and Atonement – attempts to get into the schizophrenic mindset with several imaginative flights-of-fancy. A breakdown comes with clamouring disembodied voices and a child’s face screaming out of a television while the blissful effect of music is visualised as a psychedelic play of light and colour. Some of these experiments work better than others, which is a pretty accurate summary of the movie as a whole. It’s definitely enjoyable – and it goes without saying that neither of the lead actors can put a foot wrong – but you get the sense it could have been more.
***˝
JODY MACGREGOR
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