Truncated Arc.

Rating: 7/10 (23 April 2010)

It's a pretty neat title, "The Soloist." Jamie Foxx is a homeless schizophrenic on the streets of Los Angeles who happens to be (or once have been) a brilliant musician. Now, a mentally ill bum, he plays a violin with only two strings on the sidewalk -- an instrumental soloist. And schizophrenics don't form any social bonds to speak of. They live in what some psychiatrists have called "the schizophrenic no society." They're social soloists too.
A few years ago there appeared a movie about a young woman who is a dance instructor and finds a terpsichorean genius on the street. It turned out he could do MTV riffs and the moonwalk like nobody's business and this was celebrated as a talent that led to his apotheosis on television. I was afraid this would run along the same dismal gutter.
Nope. It's derived from Steve Lopez's (Robert Downey Jr.'s) no-doubt slightly polished book about his discovery of Nathanial Ayers, the challenges the two of them face, and their finally settling into a life style that is satisfactory in the way that most human adaptations are -- incomplete but (shrug) okay.
The movie ends with a scene of four people sitting in an auditorium listening to music -- Foxx and his sister (Lisagay Hamilton), and Downey and his friend and colleague (Catherine Keener). Foxx's eyes glow with pleasure but he's still psychotic and he's dressed something like Apollo Creed before the championship bout in "Rocky." In reality, there may have been scenes like that but I doubt they were common. A widely-read columnist at the LA Times is unlikely to spend much time with a schizophrenic who lives in a shelter. Not because of any prejudice but simply because of the absence of many shared interests.
The film presents itself as the story of Downey, mostly, who first sees Foxx as not much more than an interesting column in his paper. After all, the guy was a student at the Julliard School of Music, which wouldn't look bad on anybody's resume. I mean, Miles Davis went there too. Downey tries to promote some healthier adaptive styles in Foxx. He gets him a cello, for instance, and tries to install him in an apartment. Foxx considers Downey his "God" but then rebels and throws Downey around bodily. Then they shake hands and go to the concert. An epilogue tells us that Foxx's character still lives in the shelter but now plays many different instruments. You don't just shake off schizophrenia as if it were a bout of influenza.
The performances are decent. Downey isn't shown as especially tender-minded towards Foxx. He's matter-of-fact, sometimes comic, sometimes fed up. Foxx does what he can with the role and it's not bad as written. Foxx has features that are brutal but hint at the sensitivity beneath, or the other way round. Keener has a face that seems made for the camera. If her cheeks were any higher they'd be eyebrows. And her throaty giggle is coarse and compelling. Nelsan Ellis plays the young supervisor at LAMP, the homeless shelter, but he paints an extremely satisfying portrait of a man who is resigned, practical, and understanding. He's not written or played as some kind of saint of the streets either. That's one of the nice things about the film. Nobody's perfect. The supervisor disagrees with Downey's desire to get Foxx doped up. "We can't COHERSE him into taking drugs," he says mildly, getting the verb wrong. It's obviously a word he learned from pamphlets about the responsibilities of the job. The guy is perceptive but he's not an educated or articulate man.
Above all, there is Beethoven's semi-divine music, and there's nothing pompous about the way it's presented. In one scene, his first chance at playing a cello in many years, Foxx's eyes close dreamily as he saws slowly away at the piece, all by himself, the rough notes apparently spelling out no melody. Then we hear the full orchestra inside Foxx's head as it gradually swells and Foxx's solitary strings melt into the more general. There's a visual trick to show us what Foxx sees when he hears music, and it looks like what might show up on your monitor if you use Windows Media Player with a CD.
Not that you're pounded over the head with the music. If you want to hear snatches of the life-affirming chorus from Beethoven's ninth symphony, you'll have to listen to tooth paste commercials on TV. The selections we hear are subdued and thoughtful. There are also pop songs and "May the Circle Be Unbroken." All in all, if you're patient, if your mind is open, if you're not expecting a lot of fireworks from either the story or the director's way of showing it, this ought to slowly gather you in.