Fine biopic and music and poverty film.

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2009)

Steve Lopez is not the kind of hero Hollywood bores us with. He's a jerky loner who doesn't care for anybody and, let's face it, he's not a very good guy. He sticks to poor Nathaniel Ayers "Jr." just or mainly because he needs an article, then it's a few, when he gets his prize with all the rich & famous people around him we can see he cares little for him. But then again, who does? He did more for one lost sheep than most of us did in our lives. If his intentions are not very angelic, he wants to "get rid of" him many times, even once yells in front of the mental asylum inmates: "I've got a job to do!!" when he gets exasperated. Very comprehensible, for this film shows without wanting to how difficult it must be to deal with one schizophrenic. The best phrase is Katherine Keener's: "You can't cure him. But you can be his friend, and be around". A real shrink. And probably the most beautifully emphatic woman in her forties there is :)!
What they can show of poverty in LA is quite interesting given the idealization we foreigners have of "the US". The end credits stating it's 90.000 of them is also startling. Here in Lat Am, and probably in the rest of the third world things are far worse. There wouldn't be state/ ONGs delivering warm food every day, nor a nice mental health facility with cool knowledgeable personnel, and no, the major wouldn't show up to give 50 million dollars... If I am allowed to digress, the day we as a society cared for the 90 thousand other homeless, and not for "the one that went to Julliard and at least was a genius", then we'd be able to look ourselves in the mirror, so to speak. Music is important, but I expected a bit more. And not so much Beethoven! I liked Pekka-Salonen being in the movie, albeit briefly. I'd liked to know a bit more, how did he come to be a drifter from his Julliard past. We only get to see him suffering at one rehearsal, and attacking his mum. For a 120 minutes film, I'd have liked to know why the authorities didn't "spot" him as being mentally sick, instead of letting him basically die in the streets (I was about to throw a pun about the American health system, but I'll refrain :)). I'd like to know a bit more about the sister, how didn't she do much either. She must be on this film for about ... less than one minute.
Read Tom Murray on IMDb, he wrote a great critic because he's got experience treating this patients. Not having those credentials, I nevertheless understand what he says about the "chaos", jarring music, visuals, etc, is intentional, part of the effort of the film to make us "be into" a schizophrenic's head. At least a glimpse of it. At that it succeeds, much more than other films. I am thinking of Canvas (2006) with Marcia Gay Harden and others, which looks like a "for dummies" book compared to this one, that wouldn't be the DSM IV but maybe an abridged Kaplan, if you know what I mean :).