The Soloist (2009)

The Grace of Music

CLASSIFICATION     CP Catholic Patronage

RATING     Five of Five Stars

Distributed by Dreamworks (first released in the United States on 24 April 2009) and by Universeal Pictures internationally

 

The Film

The Soloist is a drama film directed by Joe Wright and written for the silver screen by Susannah Grant, based on a true story of Nathaniel Ayers written in a book The Soloist (2008) by Steve Lopez.

The film won the 2009 Best Buddy Movie award from AARP Movies for Grownups Awards.

 

The Preview

 

The Story

The film opens with a newspaper delivery man throwing around Los Angeles Times subscriptions containing a front-page story (“Life Has a Mind of Its Own”) written by Point West columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.).

Meanwhile, that same early morning, Lopez goes out on a bicycle to a construction site where he meets an accident, bumping his front wheel into a crack in the road, throwing him off the bike and injuring the right side of his face. After four weeks of disorientation, he reports back to work with a disfigured right eye.

While walking around Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, Lopez accidentally meets a bum named Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) who plays a two-stringed violin at teh foot of Beethoven’s statue. He makes friends with Ayers. His interest gets awakened by the great talent that Ayers displays. He starts calling around, and finds out that Ayers was a musical prodigy at Juilliard School, but developed schizophrenia during his second year and dropped out towards the end of that school year. Ayers took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Intermittent flashbacks show the earlier life of Ayers as a young student at Juilliard as Lopez researchers about him.

As the Ayers articles start coming out readers got sympathetic with Ayers. One reader, an old woman who played cello for 50 years until she stopped because of arthritis, sends Lopez a cello that Ayers may use. He makes Ayers play with the cello for  a few minutes, and cuts Ayers a deal that Ayers can only play with the instrument again and thereafter if he will do it in the Lamp Communities, a shelter for the mentally ill, in a place known as Skid Row.

Lopez seeks the help of Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra principal cellist Graham Claydon (Tom Hollander) to rehabilitate Ayers. Claydon will be giving Ayers cello lessons. Lopez friend and therapist at Lamp, David Carter (Nelsan Ellis), offers for Ayers an apartment at teh Transient Living Center (TLC) that can both be used as Ayer’s apartment and music studio for cello lessons. Ayers initially refused but buckled down. With his loot cart in tow, Ayers took apartment B116. As Ayers starts playing the cello, Lopez leaves and picks up Claydon to meet up with Ayers for their first lesson.

Lopez and Claydon make arrangements for a solo cello concert for Ayers before a small audience. But the moutning pressure makes Ayers recall a bad experience with his mother during his breakdown, which led him to leave her and hit the streets. Ayers leaves the concerto only before he is able to start a piece. Lopez is frantic on what happened to Ayers as he cannot be found, only learning later that Ayers appears in Skid Row behaving like a normal person eating his food and returning to the TLC apartment on his own.

Lopez decided to make arrangements for Ayer’s treatment. But when Ayers discovers the plan he furiously threatened Lopez and tells Lopez not to see him again. Hurtling for his mistake, Lopez visits his LA Times editor and ex-wife Mary Weston (Catherine Keener) in her place. He decides to get Jennifer Ayers-Moore (Lisa Gay Hamilton), Ayer’s sister, to see Ayer in Lamp. Ayers thanks Lopez and asks for his forgiveness. Lopez assures him that it is part of being friends.

The film closes with Ayers, Moore, Lopez and Weston watching the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in concert. Post credits show the patients in Lamp dancing happily with Lopez and Weston.

 

 The Review

The Soloist is a beautiful movie about friendship, music and an exploration of mental illness as well as teh development of talent. It is also in certain scenes hilarious. It is free form the usual downsides of a Hollywood movie. The music selection is superb and the cinematography artistically sensitive. Foxx and Downye Jr. performed wonderfully in their roles. It is rich in both positive and negative emotions as well as good value propositions.

Grace abounds even in unlikely people. Lopez is a sensitive writer, and like any sane persons is unlikely to befriend a schizophrenic bum. But the gift of music in Ayers became a tool of grace to build on and grow their friendship. Even the mentally ill the film proposes may receive so much grace from above. And this grace simply attracted many characters to help Ayers overcome his mental illness through his music. People around Lopez and Ayers also got drawn in love by grace–Lopez gets closer again to his ex-wife; Ayers meets his sister after many long years of separation.

Music can touch souls when people allow it to. The film proposes that music can become a powerful healing instrument for mental illness. In some ways it also brings healing even to the normal people it touched in the story. Music apparently is a powerful vehicle for the grace of healing.

Only love can bring people “back to life.” It is Lopez’s love for music, his craft, and Ayers that enabled Ayers to find his way back to life after so many years of getting lost in downtown Los Angeles. Without Lopez’s persistent love that goes beyond the interest of his writing, Ayers may have died in the streets, alone and his gifts lost with him.

 

The Verdict

The Soloist is rich with love, warmth, gentleness, and heart-rending slice of life, sprinkled along the way with wit that makes the viewer silently smile or laugh. It is a wholesome movie for the family and any Christian viewer.

Reviewed by Zosimo Literatus

 

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