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The Soloist (2009)

Time Out rating

Average user rating

10 reviews

Synopsis

Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx star in this tale of a homeless New York musician from 'Atonement' director Joe Wright.

Movie review

From Time Out London

Read an interview with the director here

One can easily imagine the respective agents of Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Junior tut-tutting that ‘The Soloist’ didn’t exactly turn out as they had imagined it: a tale of two men (one with a mental illness – promising, thought the suits, with memories of ‘Rain Man’ and ‘A Beautiful Mind’) who meet across the social divide, learn valuable life lessons and whose experiences send viewers and Oscar voters into a winning flutter.

But ‘The Soloist’ isn’t like that. What Joe Wright, the British director of ‘Atonement’, has done with Los Angeles Times writer Steve Lopez’s memoir of meeting and getting to know disturbed homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers is more interesting and less predictable: he’s made a film as loopy and willful as its protagonists and isn’t afraid to leave behind its story to indulge more difficult themes and movements in inventive and challenging ways. One long scene is just an abstract dance of vivid colours – synaesthesia made visual – as Lopez takes Ayers to watch an orchestra at the Disney Concert Hall and Ayers is transported, mentally, to a place to which he hasn’t been for years.

It’s not just Ayers (Foxx), with his matted hair and life’s possessions in a trolley, who’s unhinged. Take a closer look at Lopez (Downey Junior). What’s more crazy: standing on the street shouting at traffic, as Ayers does, or cycling in motor-city LA and trying to keep sane as a print journalist, not least when your editor (Catherine Keener) is also your ex-wife? Wright’s portrait of the city is alive to these ideas – that it’s not just illnesses (schizophrenia, in Ayers’s case) that send people crazy. Life can too.

The film has a twitchy, distracted perspective, taking its eye off the story to allow the camera to shoot up into the sky and inside the cabin of a plane; to visit New Orleans during Katrina; to fly above LA with the birds, looking down on the city’s hypnotic grid. The soundtrack picks up chatter, phone conversations, radio broadcasts: a storm of noise that suggests a world spinning too fast for all of us – maybe any of us – to hang on.

It’s not all like this. A straighter narrative unfolds, as Lopez takes Ayers along to join the Lamp community on Skid Row for the homeless and mentally ill and tries to persuade him to move into sheltered accomodation while organising his first concert in years. Flashbacks fill in gaps: we learn how Ayers came to drop out of Juilliard as his mental state deteriorated. Also, Wright’s much-publicised decision to cast from the real Skid Row pays dividends: there’s a credible cast of extras who surely must have influenced Foxx’s unshowy performance. Downey Junior is on sensitive, appealing form too.

Of course, this is still Hollywood. There are journeys, there are crises and there are solutions. But when easy resolution lurks, it soon skulks off. It’s a deliriously imperfect film – and all the better for it.

Read an interview with the director here

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2040: 24-30 September, 2009

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User reviews of this film

MissSherlock said...

Posted on May 24 2010 22:25 Well, if you dont like the story, then please remember, this is a true story, based on real events. I thought the story was gripping and deeply emotional. It emphasises real lives, not just made up hollywood tosh! Downey's character was portrayed marvelously and Foxx's performance was oscar worthy! This story is worthy of 4 or 5 stars, and a definate film to rent for a girly night in! Guys........... not so much

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Jools said...

Posted on Oct 13 2009 22:54 Ho Hum. Tries to be deep but doesn't reach below shallow. Downy Junior plays one of those tiresome, flawed characters with a predictably messy personal life who expresses his frustrations by constantly gurning and punching the air. It does however expose the horrific consequences of the mass closure of psychiatric wards in 1970's America, streets littered with tormented, untreated lost souls: A modern Bedlam.

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Lou said...

Posted on Oct 10 2009 11:26 The worst film I have ever seen. After over an hour nothing seemed to have actually happened and we walked out of the cinema. The first time I have ever walked out of a film halfway through, Dull dull dull.

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mary said...

Posted on Oct 06 2009 11:29 Not everybody's film but did think it attempted to highlight the difficulties faced by those around. Robert D. was believable in the part.

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Paul said...

Posted on Oct 05 2009 15:58 It was interesting to see the LAMP charity in action, poverty in USA cities and what we are probably moving back to if the Conservatives get back in. Whilst the intention of the film was good, it didn't translate into a credible story. The ending tacked on to meet the usual Hollywood need for a clear resolution should have been cut. The music is treated in a cheesy way, cue coloured lights pulsating and Beethoven, throw in a little Bach, but not too much to bore the American audience. Spend your money seeing Fishtank instead.

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NA said...

Posted on Sep 30 2009 16:43 this film was so bad that we walked out half way through. first time iv ever walked out of a film....

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Ben said...

Posted on Sep 22 2009 12:27 The advert for this film on the telly is using Elbows 'One Day Like This' which has become perhaps the WORLDS most overplayed song. There's nothing particularly wrong with Elbow but it's put me off the film. I'm a big Downey Jr. fan so I'll have to try and get over this and go see it; this review has helped with that. Ta.

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dave Calhoun said...

Posted on Aug 26 2009 09:16 Stella - Fear not, it's being released here late next month. Look out for an interview with the director in Time Out the week after next. Thanks, Dave Calhoun, Film Editor

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Stella Jackson said...

Posted on Aug 25 2009 22:39 I want to see this film. Why on earth is it not getting distribution in the UK?

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Norman Lowther said...

Posted on Jun 30 2009 20:59 The trailer for this film is overkill here in Dublin.It is being 'trailed' in Cineworld for over two months now & I am getting bored having to watch it !! For Godsake enough is enough & I am put off going to see it whenever it arrives !! Whats going on ??

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