Film File - The Soloist

After a summer filled mostly with fantasy, it's probably time for some true-life uplifting fare at the cinema box office. 'The Soloist' is based on a real-life story of a journalist's life-changing odyssey through the hidden streets of Los Angeles, where he discovers and builds a most unlikely friendship with a fellow man from those same streets, bonding through the redemptive power of music. Newspaper columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jnr) is at a dead end. The newspaper business is in an uproar, his marriage to a fellow journalist has fallen apart and he can't entirely remember what he loved about his job in the first place. However, one day, while walking through the 'down and out' section of Los Angeles, he sees the mysterious bedraggled figure of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), pouring his soul into a two-stringed violin. For Lopez, it's the perfect human interest story, good for one, maybe two columns. But as he begins to dig deeper into the mystery of how this brilliant and distracted street musician, who was once a dynamic prodigy headed for Carnegie Hall, wound up living in tunnels and doorways, it sparks a profound change in both of their lives. In April 2005, real-life Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote a riveting series of features about Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, an astonishing individual whose life made Lopez famous. As the newspaperman began to dig into Ayers' past as a Juilliard Music Academy prodigy of great promise, and set out on his own challenging quest to bring dignity to Ayers' current life on the street, the articles continued to draw a vast readership. The former musician, mixing his whimsical belief that Beethoven is the leader of Los Angeles with a steely knowledge of how to survive the dangers of the streets, became a media sensation like no-one before. At a time when the first glimmerings of the oncoming recession were just beginning to appear for those who cared to note the signs, the story of Nathaniel Ayers became much more than just a tale about a man down on his luck - it was about the quest for that elusive American Dream that is harboured by those who still see the stars from the gutter. Recalls Lopez: "Readers got very involved in the story and began rooting in some way for Mr Ayers." Letters, e-mails and packages flooded into the journalist's inbox, including violins and cellos, all to show their support for the homeless man whose meteoric ups and downs had become part of their daily lives. When it became clear that this story had leapt beyond the boundaries of Lopez's column, he began writing a book about his remarkable relationship - 'The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, And The Redemptive Power Of Music', which was published in early 2008. Regardless of what you take away from 'The Soloist', you'll likely thrill to the music masterpieces that pepper the film - a situation where the timeless power of Beethoven papers over some of the weaker moments of this inspirational film. As one of the more unusual and heartrending relationships, the story of Lopez and Ayers makes for good cinema - while also allowing director Joe Wright, of 'Atonement' fame, the chance for a cinematic exposition on the complexities of schizophrenia. After the discovery of the musician living rough on the streets, he depicts the harrowing chorus of competing voices in Ayers' head with artful sequences that powerfully convey the dislocation and terror of the condition. Foxx, with his torrents of babbling recalling Dustin Hoffman in 'Rain Man', artfully depicts the thin line between normal and unstable in a riveting performance similar to that which he achieved in delving beneath the emotional skin of Ray Charles two years ago. It is Downey, however, who steals the show in 'The Soloist' in a role where he elects to downplay the sentimentality of his Good Samaritan in favour of his stronger instincts as a reporter grabbing onto the opportunities of a good story. While he tries to bring Ayers back into society and the prospect of something resembling a stable life, those expressive eyes convey the inherent opportunistic imperatives of the true-blue newsman.