Reporter finds music on the streets-movie version loses the point

Rating: 6/10 (3 May 2009)

Arrestingly-filmed yet oddly distanced dramatization of LA Times columnist Steve Lopez's (Robert Downey, Jr) series of articles regarding his befriending and increased sponsoring of a failed classical musician, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), now begging for change near several of the city's musical landmarks and during his investigations becoming forced to explore his own societal and interpersonal biases & fears. Lopez appeared to accept from reader reaction that Ayers--swerving between trilled spouting of information and history and self-dangerous descents into violent rage--came through the reportage more believably and immediate when the two went into action together--touring old haunts, enduring rehab, abandoned family members like Ayers' sister Jennifer (Lisagay Hamilton) reintroduced to him yet the encounters brim with recrimination. Yet through the patient and increasing level of support not just from the uncertain Lopez (almost driven to drink or career distraction without the knowing, cheeky support of his ex-wife and editor (Catherine Keener) but from an unexpectedly diverse range of contributors in LA and around the US who register their remembrance of Ayers or admiration of Lopez' remarkable patience and dedicated journalism, the film winds everything through a completely overburdened halfway house in the second half where Ayers himself will make the film's climactic decision on whether to embrace the help of esteemed classical musicians and a stable household or destroy himself in the immense miasma of the LA slums. THE SOLOIST refuses to either take sides or provide easy answers, and to a degree director Joe Wright (ATONEMENT) looks like he could pull the film version's ethically unovert conditions off successfully. Downey and Foxx throughout the film compete with Wright's excessively willful, almost smothering stylization--very hard key lighting and light source spillage, minimalist background staging, profile close-ups and crowded two shots whipped away by breathtaking location zoom lensing, all topped off with a breathtaking hi-fidelity sound mix (the orchestra scenes sound like the mikes were placed right into the bowstrings), alternating with reassuringly traditional lighting and designing of scenes of Ayers' childhood and early education at Julliard. Downey is particularly impressive, seeming to get steadily greyer and more anxious as he guides and controls Ayers' naive remembrances and stocky musical technique into repicking up his beloved cello permanently. As Ayers, Foxx packs a generally believable punch playing a street urchin who was capable of much more, and as the relationship developed I noticed Susannah Grant's screenplay devoting an inordinate--some might say unbalanced--amount of time to both Ayers and the wonky lot of the city's environs, creating understandably large amounts of audience empathy yet tottering a little too trustworthily into the comfort zone of a $60 million dollar big-star vehicle lecturing America about the poor. The result is that Foxx's zombied character conception (the fault may be more Grant's than his, though) lacks either the leavening humor, sociopolitical complexity, and symbolic gravitas (the film version cannot decide if its supposed to be a docudrama or a riveting psychological examination) to humanize him against Lopez and make them a representational force of both their adoptive city or their career frustrations. THE SOLOIST in the end does make for a occasionally striking and formatively well-acted drama but its arch technique and lack of severe social reverberation fails to take detailed advantage of two very fine actors and only partly captures the playful yet deeply haunting contact of an American journalist to a specimen/victim of America's obstinate focus on success and what an 'artist' should be.