"The Soloist" Will Bow You Over

Rating: 8/10 (8 May 2009)

I saw "The Soloist" the other night when there was nothing else on that I hadn't seen. I wound up at one of those special showings where nobody else showed up for the movie. It was just as well that nobody else showed up. "The Soloist" is what callous critics label as a tear-jerker. Although I'm a guy, I don't mind crying at movies. The best movies make you cry or at least they make me cry. Sometimes you cry a lot because it is really a tender, sensitive movie about many sweet souls who endure travails that nobody should suffer from, and you'd have to be an ogle not to weep. And then there are those movies where you laugh so hard that you cry.
"The Soloist" qualifies as the first kind of weep-a-thon. A real-life Los Angeles newspaper columnist, Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr. of "Iron Man") discovers this guy, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx of "Miami Vice"),living out of a shopping cart but who plays the violin or the cello. He can be found virtually anywhere and he's playing classical music. He plays Beethoven so well that Lopez is drawn to his plight. Anyway, Lopez has led a pretty screwed up life. His wife (Catherine Keener of "The 40-Year Old Virgin")serves as his editor at the Los Angeles Times where he writes, but they are divorced and manage to co-exist. They have a college-age son that Lopez never talks to and she has all these important news stories that she wants him to follow up on. Instead, Lopez decides to investigate this homeless African-American who plays classical movie like a genius. He discovers that Nathaniel dropped out of Julliard and now lives on the streets of L.A where--according to the movie--90-thousand homeless people live.
Lopez gets Nathaniel strings for his musical instrument and struggles to get the guy off the streets. The life of homeless people is depicted as dreadful. "Atonement" director Joe Wright pushes all the right buttons without pushing them to heavily. These desperate people--many of whom are insane--get harassed by everybody simply because they are vulnerable and have nobody to protect them. Lopez begins to behave like a parent and wants to control Nathaniel's life. He wants to get Nathaniel to see a doctor and get medication, so he can come to his senses and join the rest of grieving humanity. The homeless guy worships the ground that Lopez walks on without question.
Meanwhile,the thick-skinned people that run a homeless shelter try to convince Lopez that all the do-gooder things that he wants to do for Nathaniel are wrong. They tell him just to be the guy's friend. Wright strikes the right balance between being a hopeless liberal and restrained conservative.
Every time that you see Jamie Foxx, you want to cry because he is so vulnerable and his life is so wretched. Lopez is haunted by Nathaniel's predicament and Lopez starts climbing the walls with anxiety, and you want to cry because he is going through so much grief to help Nathaniel but Nathaniel is so spaced out on planet Nathaniel that he doesn't seem to care. In fact, at one point, the Foxx character turns vicious and threatens to kill Nathaniel. In an effort to lighten things up, Wright works in a wacky subplot about the problems with raccoons that Lopez is dealing with because these critters are excavating holes in his lawn and a pest specialist assures him that the secret to running the coons off is to use coyote urine.
Basically, "The Soloist" is an ode to homeless people. Homeless people must be treated with dignity. We shouldn't try to help them by making their lives more miserable than they already are. So there I sit soaking up this saga, crying for the existence of the poor homeless guy because it is a miracle that he survives each day and watching the poor journalist going through hell because he genuinely wants to make a difference. Foxx and Downey are both nothing short of brilliant. These roles are the kind that actors live and breathe for because the characters are so out of the box. Catherine Keener plays Downey's ex-wife and boss and she is still looks sexy even though she is no longer a spring chicken. She spends most of her time ridiculing all of her ex-husband's best efforts.
"The Soloist" is an art-house movie. Popcorn munching maniacs on a date are not going to put up with this somewhat tragic film. Yes, there is a happy compromise ending. And there I sit with tears streaming down my face between of my sympathy for the plight of the homeless while I'm crying for laughter at the conflicted journalist because he tries so hard to make a difference and doesn't realize that he has made a difference.
The real surprise is that I'll probably go back and see this nonsense again because of the acting and the storyline. It is a very meaningful movie with a lot of irony. I think that the message is that we are all our brother's keepers, but we don't need to turn into crusaders. It is like when somebody has a problem. You don't try and solve their problem because they will get resentful because you are butting into their life. However, if you sit and listen to them, they love you. You have to have a sense of humor.