The Soloist is a thoughtful film with a large heart, but it’s somehow
missing a beat. Perhaps it’s that the story on which it is based, the
unexpected friendship between a Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve
Lopez, and a homeless street musician suffering from schizophrenia,
Nathaniel Ayers, is already familiar through coming attractions, Lopez’s
columns and book (The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship,
and the Redemptive Power of Music), and a recent “60 Minutes” piece. It
doesn’t help that Susannah Grant’s screenplay turns Lopez, who in real
life is married (the production notes say “happily”), into a single guy
undergoing a mid-life crisis, whose ex-wife is also his editor. Further
cementing the fictional Lopez’s damage is a face-bruising bicycle
accident that occurs in the movie’s first scene. The parallelism between
one of society’s winners flailing alongside a societal “loser” is a
little obvious, depriving the story of what one suspects are the subtler
gifts the friendship offers both men.
Sunday 30 December 2012
Friday 28 December 2012
Thursday 27 December 2012
The Soloist movie cast and crew
Directed by
Joe Wright
Jamie Foxx
Robert Downey Jr.
Catherine Keener
Tom Hollander
LisaGay Hamilton
Nelsan Ellis
Rachael Harris
Stephen Root
Lorraine Toussaint
Justin Martin
Kokayi Ampah
Patrick Tatten
The Soloist movie overview
The Soloist is a thoughtful film with a large heart, but it’s somehow missing a beat. Perhaps it’s that the story on which it is based, the unexpected friendship between a Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, and a homeless street musician suffering from schizophrenia, Nathaniel Ayers, is already familiar through coming attractions, Lopez’s columns and book (The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music), and a recent “60 Minutes” piece. It doesn’t help that Susannah Grant’s screenplay turns Lopez, who in real life is married (the production notes say “happily”), into a single guy undergoing a mid-life crisis, whose ex-wife is also his editor. Further cementing the fictional Lopez’s damage is a face-bruising bicycle accident that occurs in the movie’s first scene. The parallelism between one of society’s winners flailing alongside a societal “loser” is a little obvious, depriving the story of what one suspects are the subtler gifts the friendship offers both men.
This bromance, however, is a profound one, bridging the divides of mental illness, class and race. Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) stumbles upon Ayers (Jamie Foxx) while walking in downtown Los Angeles in search of a story. Impressed by the music Ayers produces from a weathered two-stringed violin, Lopez starts a conversation, and does a double-take when Ayers tells him he once studied at Julliard. Acknowledging his disheveled appearance, Ayers says, “I’ve had a few setbacks.” Pointing to his shiner, Lopez replies, “Me, too.” When Lopez returns to his office, he calls Julliard to see if he has a story, and is disappointed but not surprised when told that Ayers is not listed. But soon Lopez receives word Ayers had indeed attended the institution before dropping out, and he bolts to the park with the Beethoven statue where he first heard Ayers play. He eventually discovers Ayers playing in a tunnel along the highway and sets out to earn his trust.
Foxx throws himself into the part of Ayers. His appearance is transformed with thinning, wavy, graying hair parted in the middle and plastered to his head. Wearing a fanciful, tattered wardrobe (one outfit mixes a silver sequined top, purple scarf, worn-out pants and sneakers), Foxx conveys Ayers’ poetic intelligence, as well as his emotional fragility, his capacity for both childlike trust and paranoid fear. He speaks in a hurried, hushed voice, fusing long stretches of dialogue into one run-on sentence, running in and out of sense. He’s completely believable as a musician (as he was in Ray), and as a man who at one point confesses to Lopez that he (Lopez) is literally his god.
Downey brings his usual wit, focus and jittery charm to Lopez. It’s not his fault that he’s played similar roles before, that he’s been overexposed lately, and that his character, as written, is more of a stereotype than Ayers. Although it’s doubtful this film would have been made without the star power, it would have profited from less familiar faces. Although the two have decent chemistry, it’s not always possible to forget that Jamie Foxx is in a weird costume under a tunnel playing a refrain over and over so a frustrated Robert Downey, Jr. can’t get a word in.
The wonderful Catherine Keener, who has also been working a lot lately, plays another acerbic woman (Mary, Lopez’s ex-wife) who tells it like it is. LisaGay Hamilton sensitively portrays Ayers’ estranged sister, Jennifer.
To his credit, the British director Joe Wright ( Atonement) pointedly draws attention to the plight of the homeless in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, depicting the violence, rats and squalor of the streets where more than 5,000 people live. Hundreds of homeless background extras were recruited for the film. Lopez’s columns on Nathaniel did more than provide Ayers with friendship, a cello and contact with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall, it brought increased funding and social services to Skid Row and the homeless, many of whom suffer from drug dependency and mental illness.
Wright is less successful in conveying the passion of music, which speaks better for itself. In one scene Ayers listens, eyes closed, to a rehearsal at Disney Hall, and the screen fills with a multi-colored light show until the concert ends. The film lacks Scott Hicks’ flair in Shine (another film about a child prodigy whose musical career was cut short by mental illness) for letting music be a major character. But Wright’s depiction of schizophrenia is more authentic than Ron Howard’s in A Beautiful Mind, in which visual hallucinations rather than aural ones torment the afflicted character. The scene in New York when Ayers first starts hearing threatening voices, rather than the music he is playing, is terrifying.
This bromance, however, is a profound one, bridging the divides of mental illness, class and race. Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) stumbles upon Ayers (Jamie Foxx) while walking in downtown Los Angeles in search of a story. Impressed by the music Ayers produces from a weathered two-stringed violin, Lopez starts a conversation, and does a double-take when Ayers tells him he once studied at Julliard. Acknowledging his disheveled appearance, Ayers says, “I’ve had a few setbacks.” Pointing to his shiner, Lopez replies, “Me, too.” When Lopez returns to his office, he calls Julliard to see if he has a story, and is disappointed but not surprised when told that Ayers is not listed. But soon Lopez receives word Ayers had indeed attended the institution before dropping out, and he bolts to the park with the Beethoven statue where he first heard Ayers play. He eventually discovers Ayers playing in a tunnel along the highway and sets out to earn his trust.
Foxx throws himself into the part of Ayers. His appearance is transformed with thinning, wavy, graying hair parted in the middle and plastered to his head. Wearing a fanciful, tattered wardrobe (one outfit mixes a silver sequined top, purple scarf, worn-out pants and sneakers), Foxx conveys Ayers’ poetic intelligence, as well as his emotional fragility, his capacity for both childlike trust and paranoid fear. He speaks in a hurried, hushed voice, fusing long stretches of dialogue into one run-on sentence, running in and out of sense. He’s completely believable as a musician (as he was in Ray), and as a man who at one point confesses to Lopez that he (Lopez) is literally his god.
Downey brings his usual wit, focus and jittery charm to Lopez. It’s not his fault that he’s played similar roles before, that he’s been overexposed lately, and that his character, as written, is more of a stereotype than Ayers. Although it’s doubtful this film would have been made without the star power, it would have profited from less familiar faces. Although the two have decent chemistry, it’s not always possible to forget that Jamie Foxx is in a weird costume under a tunnel playing a refrain over and over so a frustrated Robert Downey, Jr. can’t get a word in.
The wonderful Catherine Keener, who has also been working a lot lately, plays another acerbic woman (Mary, Lopez’s ex-wife) who tells it like it is. LisaGay Hamilton sensitively portrays Ayers’ estranged sister, Jennifer.
To his credit, the British director Joe Wright ( Atonement) pointedly draws attention to the plight of the homeless in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, depicting the violence, rats and squalor of the streets where more than 5,000 people live. Hundreds of homeless background extras were recruited for the film. Lopez’s columns on Nathaniel did more than provide Ayers with friendship, a cello and contact with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall, it brought increased funding and social services to Skid Row and the homeless, many of whom suffer from drug dependency and mental illness.
Wright is less successful in conveying the passion of music, which speaks better for itself. In one scene Ayers listens, eyes closed, to a rehearsal at Disney Hall, and the screen fills with a multi-colored light show until the concert ends. The film lacks Scott Hicks’ flair in Shine (another film about a child prodigy whose musical career was cut short by mental illness) for letting music be a major character. But Wright’s depiction of schizophrenia is more authentic than Ron Howard’s in A Beautiful Mind, in which visual hallucinations rather than aural ones torment the afflicted character. The scene in New York when Ayers first starts hearing threatening voices, rather than the music he is playing, is terrifying.
The Soloist movie review
Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement) makes beautiful movies, and he does so without shying away from the less than flattering aspects of his stories. The Soloist is certainly a beautiful film that occasionally delves into dark corners, but at the same time it seems lost in its storytelling. This is a film that could very easily have fallen deep into melodrama, and had it done so it may have been left in its late 2008 award season release date. However, the film is almost too honest for its own good, never fully committing itself to any one side of its story only to result in a mish-mash of ideas that never fully reveal much of anything.
The Soloist is based on the true story of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a schizophrenic musical prodigy who had to drop out of Julliard after two years and is now homeless on the streets of Los Angeles. It is here where he meets LA Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.), who turns Nathaniel's life into a series of editorials as the two strike up an unlikely friendship, but not without reservations.
For the better part of the film Lopez is doing nothing more than exploiting Nathaniel and the only reason he continues to write about him is because he continues to feel some level of guilt for the situation he's in or because a reader sends gifts he is expected to deliver. Of course, that doesn't make for much of an intriguing story and certainly not an uplifting one, which is where Nathaniel’s schizophrenia comes into play.
My biggest fear walking into The Soloist was an expectation that Jamie Foxx would try too hard to act out Ayers' mental illness, which would have pretty much turned the character into a clown considering the radical costumes he is seen wearing. Instead, Foxx turned in a fine performance, playing a semi-lucid character suffering from occasional outbursts and serious anxiety issues. The film, however, never fully commits to the character and treats him more as a B-movie cliché with needless flashbacks interrupting the narrative flow. The present day scenes are extremely strong thanks to fine work turned in by each actor involved, but you are never quite sure if this is a film about schizophrenia, homeless people, journalism and its effect on society, human nature, missed opportunities or what exactly. All of these themes are here, but it is presented in a hodgepodge that is still watchable and at moments very entertaining, but overall the lack of focus causes you to lose interest throughout the film's ups and downs.
The strongest points of the film are undoubtedly its lead actors. As I already said, Foxx is great in a role he could have taken so far over the top it would have been a caricature, and Downey Jr. as Lopez is an excellent counter to Nathaniel's instability. Actually, while watching this movie I began to realize Downey is most likely the only actor working right now I watch and can't wait to see what he is going to do next. How is he going to deliver his next line? How will he walk down the street? How will he react to what that person just said? He is an amazing talent and simply casting him in a film is enough to get me into the theater.
While The Soloist is not a film I would recommend anyone rush out and see. It is, however, a film I have a hard time believing anyone could walk out of entirely disappointed and expect some will actually like it quite a bit. Buzz on the film and a death sentence of a release date lowered my expectations greatly, but I will say I was happy to walk out of the theater having been able to take something away from the film, realizing the night wasn't a total loss.
The Soloist is based on the true story of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a schizophrenic musical prodigy who had to drop out of Julliard after two years and is now homeless on the streets of Los Angeles. It is here where he meets LA Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.), who turns Nathaniel's life into a series of editorials as the two strike up an unlikely friendship, but not without reservations.
For the better part of the film Lopez is doing nothing more than exploiting Nathaniel and the only reason he continues to write about him is because he continues to feel some level of guilt for the situation he's in or because a reader sends gifts he is expected to deliver. Of course, that doesn't make for much of an intriguing story and certainly not an uplifting one, which is where Nathaniel’s schizophrenia comes into play.
My biggest fear walking into The Soloist was an expectation that Jamie Foxx would try too hard to act out Ayers' mental illness, which would have pretty much turned the character into a clown considering the radical costumes he is seen wearing. Instead, Foxx turned in a fine performance, playing a semi-lucid character suffering from occasional outbursts and serious anxiety issues. The film, however, never fully commits to the character and treats him more as a B-movie cliché with needless flashbacks interrupting the narrative flow. The present day scenes are extremely strong thanks to fine work turned in by each actor involved, but you are never quite sure if this is a film about schizophrenia, homeless people, journalism and its effect on society, human nature, missed opportunities or what exactly. All of these themes are here, but it is presented in a hodgepodge that is still watchable and at moments very entertaining, but overall the lack of focus causes you to lose interest throughout the film's ups and downs.
The strongest points of the film are undoubtedly its lead actors. As I already said, Foxx is great in a role he could have taken so far over the top it would have been a caricature, and Downey Jr. as Lopez is an excellent counter to Nathaniel's instability. Actually, while watching this movie I began to realize Downey is most likely the only actor working right now I watch and can't wait to see what he is going to do next. How is he going to deliver his next line? How will he walk down the street? How will he react to what that person just said? He is an amazing talent and simply casting him in a film is enough to get me into the theater.
While The Soloist is not a film I would recommend anyone rush out and see. It is, however, a film I have a hard time believing anyone could walk out of entirely disappointed and expect some will actually like it quite a bit. Buzz on the film and a death sentence of a release date lowered my expectations greatly, but I will say I was happy to walk out of the theater having been able to take something away from the film, realizing the night wasn't a total loss.
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