The Soloist

One of the biggest annoyances at the end of 2008 was Paramount/Dreamworks/Universal deciding to push Defiance and move The Soloist. The trailer for The Soloist was a wonderfully heart breaking/ heart warming thing and the movie did star 2008's wonder boy Robert Downey Jr(RDJ). Why in the world would they move it? It worried me because usually moving a movie means the movie is bad. The belief was that the combined studios could only promote one of those movies for Oscar gold and some studio wanted to keep Daniel Craig happy, so they chose Defiance. I did not see that movie, so I cannot compare the two or anything, but I can say that Defiance was not even pushed because it was torn apart by the critics. Well, here we are a week before the big summer movie season and The Soloist is finally here!

Steve Lopez(Downey Jr.), with a slat and pepper beard is a journalist with no passion for anything. He writes a column for a Los Angeles paper where he wonders about life in the city or just wonders about his life in general. One day while walking the streets he writes about he hears a little Stevie Wonder jam being played on a violin. He follows the music and meets Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Jr(Jamie Foxx). Ayers, a homeless man with a series of awesomely weird hats, speaks in long stream of consciousness monologues that are only barely coherent. Lopez and Ayers chat briefly and Ayers mentions he used to be at Julliard School of Music and Lopez knows he has a story. Ayers was a student at Julliard but he dropped out. Now he is on the street playing a violin with missing strings. Lopez's story is well received and a woman even donates a Cello for Lopez to give to Ayers. In this moment, Lopez becomes intertwined with Ayers whether he wants it or not. What Ayers has is never fully clear, but he hears voices and they are not friendly voices. He feels trapped by being inside, therefore he lives outside. Lopez is, at times, burdened by the possible friendship but he wants to help. He is just unsure of how. He writes more columns about homelessness and Ayers and eventually the Mayor promises to try to fix the homeless problem, But this story is about Ayers and Lopez, first and foremost.

Joe Wright who directs his first American and first contemporary movie with The Soloist works really hard to ruin this movie. First off, he gets two wonderful performances, but he never is content to let this movie be about that. He wants more, so instead of focusing on Foxx and RDJ during a wonderful moment, he pulls the camera back and takes us on an aerial tour of Skid Row. The shot itself is not a bad one, but it pulls focus from the friendship and the prayer that Foxx is giving. In the first scene where Foxx plays the cello, instead of giving us that emotional moment to connect to the two actors, we get a shot that follows the pigeons flying away. I get that while playing the cello he feels as a free as the birds, but the symbolism crosses over into stupidity as the camera continues to follow the bird soaring. Pull it back and let me see Foxx and RDJ together! The final moment of this is when the two men are sitting in on a rehearsal of the L.A. symphony and instead, again, of watching their faces, we see that the Foxx character hears in colors. The visual is kind of cool, I guess, but I want to just see the two men react to this beautiful music.

In a series of flashbacks, we find out what happened to Ayers and these moments are wonderful. With voices in his head layering on top of each other, becoming very scary, the scenes are shot with off-putting lighting and sound that makes it feel very creepy and Foxx really sells those scene. We get the impression that if taken inside Ayers might actually snap and that is important for later in the film. It is tough to play a guy with mental problems because the performance can often become a series of tics or mannerisms. Foxx, I think, goes beyond just the odd speaking patterns and constantly movement of Ayers and finds a nice balance between insanity and charm. He plays Ayers as a bright but troubled man and he finds little layers to rise and fall into and he plays well off of RDJ. RDJ continues his impressive run of late as his Steve Lopez is a man who is not only down on his luck but unsure of what he should do about it. He really gets into the heart of Lopez as he struggles with what to do with Ayers. Lopez believes Ayers needs help or treatment, but Ayers does not want it. The turmoil of that shines through in the final twenty minutes.

The Soloist is a mixed bag of great and bad. The performances from the two leads make up for the stylistic choices that go awry. It should be a more personal story than it ends up being because Wright has visions of epic grandeur. I admire the man for wanting to make the movie bigger, but if you are going to do that you need a longer movie. In staying with the two men, you can make enough statements about friendship, music and humanity without going all epic. The Soloist is all about making the best out of life when you only have "two strings" and in that message the movie succeeds. It never gets the tearjerker I expected it to be, but you leave the movie feeling optimistic about where life can go.