The Big Screen | The Soloist

Ludwig van Beethoven's aural cameos somehow become the sole attraction in The Soloist. Though ostensibly a vehicle to further solidify the recently revived careers of Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr., the movie sidelines the stars and shows off the skills of the composer and the editors who help eulogize him.

Director Joe Wright tackled this biopic about Nathaniel Ayers, a schizophrenic street musician, after completing 2007's Atonement. His new movie maintains the artful touch that he demonstrated in that Academy Award-winning picture. However, I do not expect this feature to match Atonement's feats. Although artful at times, it runs into treacle at every turn. Even the artist flairs feel cloying at times.

The foray is a think piece-movie about how even the most derelict inhabitants of one of the richest countries in the world contribute something to society. Not by way of their intrinsic value as humans, mind you, but rather by way of the art that they can create. The movie overemphasizes the need to use noblesse oblige to help these poor, tired, huddled masses longing to be free. The concluding title cards even mention that there are over 90,000 homeless people in the greater Los Angeles area, the setting of Wright's aestheticized schlock.

The Soloist opens on Steve Lopez, played by Downey, riding his bicycle through the city of angels before crashing it and finding himself in a hospital bed. To most, this would be annoying. To Steve, it's an opportunity: a new topic for his newspaper column, "Point West," for the Los Angeles Times. He starts scrawling his story on his only constant companion: his notebook. Wright emphasizes the irony that Steve pens a human-interest column yet lacks any true human companionship.

One day, Steve runs across Nathaniel, a former cello student at The Julliard School. Nathaniel currently lives out of a shopping cart on the streets of L.A. next to a statue of his idol, Beethoven. All day, he plays a violin with only two strings left. Steve decides to write a column about him. As it turns out, the column begins a chain of events, some positive and some negative, that profoundly affect Nathaniel's life. A rich former cellist gives him her instrument, the head of the Los Angeles Philharmonic invites him to listen to a rehearsal, and the mayor increases the city's funding of the homeless shelters. However, Nathaniel becomes reliant on Steve for everything, and when in the middle of giving an ad hoc performance for some Philharmonic benefactors, he breaks down, attacks the coordinator of the event and runs away.

The movie's editing emphasizes some amusing similarities between Nathaniel and Steve. They're both crazy. Both characters talk to themselves: Nathaniel because of his mental disorder and Steve because of his profession, which benefits from Steve speaking his thoughts into a portable recorder. Both characters also hear noises that they don't want to hear: Nathaniel hears voices that tell him that people are conspiring against him and that he cannot succeed at his dreams; Steve hears the buzzing sound of a recorder because his entire life is mediated through that medium. Who knew that schizophrenia and journalism were so similar?

Foxx and Downey are in top form. Foxx completely gives himself over physically, from slouching when he walks to simultaneously darting his eyes while making them appear glazed over, an interesting physiological aspect of schizophrenic individuals. His mannerism-inhabiting performance is almost as good as Heath Ledger's Academy Award-winning turn in The Dark Knight.

Downey plays Steve's transformation from social leech to human being with understatement. You don't feel as if the movie is force-feeding you a moral because of his performance, even though you do because of Wright's treatment of the entire production.
It would be nice to be able to focus on these touching star turns, but Wright keeps interrupting them with artful flourishes. In one particularly overwrought shot, doves flutter out of from under intersecting highway bridges and fly up to, metaphorically, the heavens above upon hearing Nathaniel play Beethoven on his new cello.

At one point, Nathaniel comments after listening to the Philharmonic's rendition of a Beethoven piece that the composer is "in the room." Sadly, I cannot say that he—or any of the cinematic or sociological greats to whom Wright indirectly alludes—is fully present in The Soloist. But Wright does provide the audience with an enjoyable ride while trying to find them.

—Jackson Reeves '09 is a media studies major writing a bi-weekly column on movies and their meanings. He is the Arts Editor.