As compelling as it is confronting, The Soloist is a musical journey into the heart of a very misunderstood darkness: schizophrenia. In his first US production, British director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) has taken on the incredibly ambitious true story of newspaper columnist Steven Lopez (Robert Downey Jnr.) and his transcendent friendship with the mentally ill music prodigy, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx).
Eschewing sentimentality for the stark, honest and at times intimidating realities of mental illness, homelessness and misguided acts of kindness, Wright and screenwriter Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) certainly pull no punches bringing this story to the silver screen. Nor have Downey Jnr. or Foxx, both of whom provide virtuoso performances, embodying their characters with an awe-inspiring realism. Downey Jnr. seems particularly in his element, his spitfire narration and muttered dialogue surfacing in a rather ironic juxtaposition to Nathaniel’s unintelligible rants.
Another powerful dichotomy is drawn between the seamier side of the City of Angels and the expansive freedom of Ayers’ music. Academy Award nominated cinematographer Seamus McGarvey has reunited with Wright to capture the precariousness of Ayers’ physical and mental existence. Indeed in recreating the harrowing halls of Skid Row, it is as if Atonement’s dystopic Dunkirk sequence was but a historic prelude to this devastating contemporary reality.
And yet with their treatment of music, the pair indulges in stylistic flights of fancy. One quite literally with pigeons soaring over LA, and another a blisteringly bright kaleidoscopic montage used to convey Ayers’ experience of a Beethoven symphony. The result – visually and thematically – borders on phenomenological.
The Soloist blurs the lines between friendship and idolatry, persuasion and prejudice. The film may assault your senses and interrogate your beliefs, but it shall also offer up redemption, refreshingly unvarnished.
3 ½ stars
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