The Soloist: A Review (The Contributor, USA)
Andrew KrinksJune 8, 2009
Directed by Joe Wright and starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr, The Soloist is a telling portrait of the challenges and gifts that manifest when two people from seemingly separate circumstances and backgrounds meet and form a friendship. As the movie prepares for general release Andrew Krinks gauges the cultural importance of The Soloist, as one of the rare modern films which aims to document and understand the lives of those on society’s fringes. (1,299 words, English)
The Soloist: A Review
If you ask any of Nashville’s homeless outreach workers how many individuals they have fixed or cured of their poverty or the problems that go along with it, the response, if it is genuine, ought to be a baffled one. The reason is that the challenge of offering help to individuals who have found themselves living on the streets is often less a matter of coming up with results—numbers of bodies put into housing, numbers of names added to food and disability databases—and more a matter of learning to be present in the midst of deeply complex circumstances. Of course, getting people into housing, retrieving greater benefits, ending poverty—these are central goals, but they should not become central in such a way that they eclipse the human person behind them. Thus, in a culture where the bottom line to just about everything is quick results, the challenge of abandoning the standard of high rates of success in exchange for moment-to-moment, engaged presence and relationship with homeless individuals is a difficult one.
The Soloist, directed by Joe Wright and starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr., based on a true story, is a telling portrait of the challenges and the gifts that manifest when two people coming from two seemingly separate circumstances meet and form a friendship. As the story goes, Steve Lopez, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, coming up dry on a story for his daily column, left the Times office one day in search of a story and discovered in a nearby park a homeless man playing violin. Not only was this homeless man playing the violin, he was playing it remarkably well. Lopez was intrigued. How did a man with such immense musical talent end up on a street corner? Over time, Lopez struck up a friendship with the man, Nathaniel Ayers, and made him the subject of a series of columns for the Times.
Ayers, once a student of the world-famous Juilliard School, a premier music institution in New York City, dropped out in a process that resulted in his being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The movie leaves some of the reasons for these turn of events ambiguous but hints that the inner demons Ayers was already dealing with came to the surface in the cut-throat atmosphere of the Juilliard School where he was one of only a handful of African-American students. Finally, unable to function properly either at school or at home, Ayers, a deeply gifted musician, ended up on the streets, mentally ill, homeless, and alone.
The real focal point of The Soloist, however, is the nature of the relationship between Lopez and Ayers. Before long, feeling compassion for his new acquaintance, Lopez tries to help lift Ayers out of his poverty, but is met with nothing but frustration. First, taking a brand new cello donated by a reader, Lopez tries to convince Ayers to leave his beloved city underpass—his concert hall, equipped with applauding birds and passing cars—and go to the LAMP community, a homeless center located on Skid Row where he could keep and play his new cello. But Ayers is resistant, and does not show at first. Next, once Ayers is somewhat comfortable at LAMP, Lopez finds him an apartment. When Ayers is fearful of moving into the apartment, Lopez is baffled and frustrated. It only makes sense to Lopez that someone living on the street would jump at the chance to live in their very own apartment. But he soon learns that it isn’t so simple with his new acquaintance.
After encountering Ayers’ dark and violent side, Lopez, exhausted and bereft of ideas, is at last struck with the realization which lies at the heart of The Soloist: what Ayers, as well as many, if not all homeless individuals suffering mental illness, needs most is not to be diagnosed, cured, or fixed; what he needs is a friend. The dignity afforded to Ayers when Lopez takes the time to be present, to listen, to enjoy conversation—not to mention when he treats him to private Los Angeles Philharmonic rehearsals—is as valuable for Ayers as would be housing or financial assistance. What Lopez learns is that no one can be helped without relationship—and that for some, the challenges are too complex for any one person to fix, leaving sustained friendship as the most valuable form of assistance.
The only underside of The Soloist, however, lies in what the average moviegoer unfamiliar with the homelessness could take away from it. Mental illness, as it is portrayed in Ayers, is a reality for many homeless individuals. However, there are many homeless individuals who do not suffer from mental illness, and I fear that the movie does not create space enough for the average moviegoer to realize that not all people they encounter on the streets have a tendency to act out as Ayers does—whether violently and schizophrenically, thus perhaps reinforcing common stereotypes. Though I can’t be sure, I would imagine that a decent portion of those people who would buy tickets to see The Soloist would have the capacity to think critically in such a way as to not project Ayers’ character onto every homeless person they encounter in their own city. However, we can only hope that this is true.
All in all, The Soloist is an important movie for a few reasons. First, it is one of very few mainstream movies being made today about people living in the margins of society. For this reason alone, it holds great potential. Second, on the whole, it does not over-dramatize, romanticize or exploit the conditions and experiences of people living in poverty. I recently read a review in which the reviewer accused the director of exploiting the homeless extras in the final scene of the movie by portraying them as crazy and almost carnivalesque. I cannot entirely agree. While the recklessly drug-infested, over-populated representation of L.A.’s Skid Row may not be entirely accurate, the movie represents homelessness in some important and redemptive ways.
First, the movie breaks through layers that some people would never break through otherwise, namely that people who are homeless are human beings with unique stories and fantastic gifts; they are fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, and spouses, they are people who play the violin, who write, who sing, who are articulate well, who listen well, who laugh well. Second, while some of the scenes on Skid Row hyper-highlight the negative aspects of poverty and life in the ghettos of urban America, they also show that authentic life takes place there. The locus of this life in the movie, besides in the relationship between Lopez and Ayers, is at the LAMP community. The scenes shot in the community’s courtyard are among the movie’s highlights. The men and women spending their time there, looking as colorful and motley as is possible anywhere, reveal, through their quiet and hospitable demeanors, the common humanity of people everywhere, particularly of someone like Steve Lopez with an old homeless woman and a generous and blind young man.
Indeed, that authentic life can take place in these situations of poverty—between the housed Lopez and the homeless, mentally ill Ayers, as well as among the various and outwardly disfigured people at the LAMP community—is what makes The Soloist a film worth watching.
Furthermore, in The Soloist, it is the playing of the violin and cello which gives way to the revelation, the spark which then creates space for compassion and community. Indeed, The Soloist is valuable for its upholding of the idea that art gives way to common life. Indeed, the art of this film may even give way to the manifestation of life and compassion outside of the theater, perhaps even on the streets of Nashville.
By Andrew Krinks
Reprinted from The Contributor
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