Movie review (take two): The Soloist

by David T. Harwood

Humanity is universal, it’s everywhere; that's the very reason we should care about big world events in the first place.

The Soloist is the third feature from director Joe Wright, and the first to be set outside of his native England. Featuring Robert Downey Jr. and a chameleonic Jamie Foxx, it tells the story of LA Times reporter Steve Lopez’s relationship with the homeless musical wunderkind Nathaniel Ayers (Downey and Foxx, respectively). It’s based on a true story, and everything about it screams award-bait. So why did the studio (Dreamworks) decide to push back its release from November last year (as was originally planned) to April 24? Officially, the reason was that Dreamworks was undergoing some restructuring and the shift was due to cutting back on the number of films it released each year. Despite the possible awards success The Soloist could have enjoyed had it been released when originally intended, it is equally possible it could have gotten lost in the slew of “worthy” films that traditionally clog the last month of so of every year.

Being released now, in the spring, can only be a good thing. The months between Award Season and Summer Blockbusters are typically a dumping ground for predictable romantic comedies and formulaic genre duds. Amongst the competition, The Soloist will stand out as the classy, intelligent adult-orientated movie it is. As much art as it is entertainment.

Joe Wright has quickly become one of his generation’s most accomplished directors. Whilst his focus is always predominantly on the storytelling and the characters, he has increasingly allowed himself the freedom to experiment with visual and audio flourishes which not only prove his technical worth, but also enhance the very nature of the story being told. Often, he accomplishes this by simply letting the camera wander, letting the actors act, letting the story happen. It is technical mastery with minimal technical obviousness: in Pride And Prejudice it was an endlessly wandering camera which not only lent the period ballrooms some contemporary originality, but also left the impression that we were within a Renaissance painting. Atonement’s tour-de-force was a ten-plus minute shot of the beach at Dunkirk which not only gave the scene an epic realism, but put the audience firmly in the mind of the soldiers it portrayed. We felt the sorrow, the camaraderie, the desperation.

With The Soloist, Wright once again allows himself greater freedom to experiment for the sake of the the story and for maximizing the film’s emotional impact. Whilst Lopez is the protagonist and our guide throughout the story, it is Ayers who is the main character. He was a child prodigy on the cello, who attended Juilliard only to drop out when he succumbed to mental illness. His mind is equal parts beautiful and tortured. Throughout the film we hear a symphony of sounds not just musical but from the world around us. The sound of traffic, birds, people’s chatter, construction work, mechanical noises, anything you can imagine. The device serves a dual purpose within the film. It reminds we are constantly surrounded by beauty in sound form, something any artist can surely appreciate. On the flip side, however, the sheer quantity of sounds can be made to seem menacing, a source of threat and pain, and serves to put us in the mind of Ayers as he suffers through his daily life, never quite knowing what is real and what is not.

Another device used frequently throughout the film is an extreme bird’s eye view shot of the freeways of Los Angeles; concrete spaghetti snakes, honking traffic constantly clogging their veins. It is Tati’s madness cranked up to insanity-inducing heights. When Ayers plays a cello for the first time in many years, we follow birds as they soar up through the LA sky-scape, transcending the physical mess.

Wright also explores the possibilities surrounding a subject predominantly concerned with the audible, with music. Film is definitively a visual medium, but rather than struggling with the audio elements as a challenge, Wright turns them into an opportunity, and the result is visually magnificent. During a visit to the LA Symphony Orchestra, we are put in the mind of Ayers as he sees the music as a series of heavenly-colored flashes. The sequence goes on for quite some time, and is completely entrancing throughout: one of the finest moments in mainstream cinema as you are ever likely to encounter. As the sequence advances, the flashes become faster, and we are alternated between bright rainbow shocks and black darkness with such rapidity that it impossible for your brain to process what is happening, other than to simply react emotionally. It is equal parts maddening and beautiful. Forget umpteen blockbusters’ special effects: this is what must be experienced on a big screen within a darkened theatre.

More so than Wright’s previous work, The Soloist seems to draw on the history of cinema, and all other visual arts, allowing Wright to draw on all the filmmaker’s tools and use them to his greatest advantage. There are a couple of flashback sequences early on in the film which portray firstly young Ayers’ increasing obsession with his cello and then his descent into true madness. The result is an homage not only to Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, but also Lynch and Cronenberg at their edgiest. What Wright achieves is a complex hybrid of cinematic styles and philosophies drawing on Spielbergian sentimentality and avant-garde surrealism in equal measure to achieve a film which affects all quarters of the audience on multiple levels.

To Wright’s credit, although he indulges himself in all these tricks and flourishes, he never allows them to distract from the overall purpose to the film. Everything adds to the whole. Likewise, rather than distracting from the accomplishments of his collaborators, he makes sure their work is all positioned for maximum kudos. Downey and Foxx are both, it has to be said, exemplary. Although it is tempting to try and figure what their fortunes could have been had this film been released pre-Oscars (everyone wanted to give Downey a statue last year; Foxx’s performance could have rivaled Ledger’s Joker...) it is far more fulfilling to enjoy them completely as they are. This film is just this film. That’s it. Had the film been released in the midst of award season, it would have lacked the ability it now has to stand on its own entirely. Foxx is mesmerizing, barely recognizable as the chattering, insane artist. His brain is constantly ticking, always one step ahead of himself. Downey on the other hand marries angry frustration with absolute wonder. The score, by Dario Marianelli (Wright’s composer on Pride And Prejudice and Atonement, also) is positively hypnotic, a further example that the best of today’s classical music comes from film soundtracks.

Much credit is also due to screenwriter Susannah Grant, adapting from the real Steve Lopez’s book, for making the entire enterprise accessible to a mass mainstream audience in the first place. It is easy to forget that this is not a straightforward story to begin with, certainly not by Hollywood standards, and that due to its very nature is comprised mostly of internal shifts and changes. She made it cinematic enough that Wright was able to take it and run with it, and do what he does best.

There is an early moment, known within screenwriting circles as “Theme Stated.” This is something that occurs in almost every film. In The Soloist it is when one of Lopez’s reporter colleagues complains that people are uninterested in world events like the war in the Middle East, or anything else. Instead, he argues, they just want to read the local drivel that hacks like Lopez dish out. By the end of The Soloist, this view is both supported and invalidated. The public who follow Lopez’s column have become invested in Ayers. He might not be a world figure, nor might he ever now achieve anything of significance. But his humanity is valid just the same. Recognizing that fact reminds us that humanity is universal, it’s everywhere. That is the very reason we should care about big world events in the first place.

This review was submitted by a movie-lovin' member of the Pegasus News community