"One day I happened upon a big book buried deep in the ground."
"The Soloist" is based off a true story. L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) has a chance meeting with a mentally ill street musician, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx). Lopez discovers that Ayers is a dropout from the prestigious Julliard School of Music, and begins writing columns about Ayers' struggles. Lopez has a difficult time defining his relationship with Ayers, who doesn't want psychiatric care or a permanent residence.
It would've been easy to rewrite history, as movies are so fond of doing, in favor of a tidy story where Lopez rescues Ayers from the streets, but this doesn't happen. Lopez's story is given far more screentime than Ayers', and though it's not as compelling, it serves to deliver an important lesson in philanthropy: you cannot presume that the disadvantaged are the same as the unfortunates. The strength of this atypical message is never lost, though the flim does plenty to obscure it.
"The Soloist" may have been an Oscar contender, but was bumped to spring, and it's fairly obvious why. (It's also amusing that Jamie Foxx has a movie out at the same time Miley Cyrus does, but that's an article for another day.)
Robert Downey Jr. does a good job of being Robert Downey Jr., and while that's always entertaining, his portrayal of Steve Lopez is really nothing new. Jamie Foxx avoids overplaying schizophrenia, but the movie almost treats him like a supporting caracter, so the overall effect doesn't have much depth. Catherine Keener plays Lopez' stressed ex-wife, and while I really like Keener, I'm tired of seeing her typecast as a snarky feminista.
The film's treatment of social issues is equal parts piano and forte. In one scene, Lopez tells Ayers that he can't loiter in front of the L.A. Times building with his shopping cart of belongings. Lopez and Ayers are good friends at this point in the film, so Lopez telling Ayers to get lost is stone cold. The audience experiences guilt if they've ever looked down on a vagrant for being an eyesore. Shortly afterward, the police round up homeless on skid row, arresting vanfulls of innocents for illegal posession of shopping carts and milk crates. Individual arrests like this are real, but the scene happens more or less out of context, and is of questionable scale. As a statement against classism, the first scene would've stood alone without the ham-fisted addition of the second.
The details are equally perplexing. There are not one, but two urine jokes. There is a prick in khaki shorts overselling Christianity to an unreceptive, already-faithful Ayers. There is a firelit music montage, a scene following birdflight when Ayers gets a new cello, large rats in the streets where Ayers sleeps. These details don't add much to an already vivid portrayal of disorder, they only serve to shock or amuse you, and they're annoyingly peppered through the film.
Conversely, there are several details that add real artistry to the film. Overhead shots of cookie-cutter suburbs, ordered parking lots, and clover-leaf freeway interchanges highlight Los Angeles' unwelcome attitudes towards the chaos of homelessness and mental illness. Sound bleeds across scenes: soft music that lingers or voices that are so quiet that you wonder if they're on screen or in the row behind you. Graphics bridge decades too, as flashbacks to Ayers' life are neatly spliced with his modern interactions.
"The Soloist" offers plenty of food for thought, but doesn't offer you quite enough context to digest it. If the overstatements and unnecessary details were removed, the story and relationships would have more room to develop depth and subtlety. As is, this plays like an orchestra full of unobservant soloists. All of the necessary components for a provocative and sensitive story are there, and are completely destroyed by a lack of good blending and dynamics.
More writings for school. I doubt this will go anywhere, since I know next to nothing about Latin American Catholicism. Sam really liked it, so I thought I'd share again.
When the sun began to dazzle him, Juan ended his prayers. He looked to Paloma, who was curled up on a sunlit patch of soil. "Time to hit the road, old girl," he said. Paloma perked her ears, rose, and shook the dust from her silver coat. Dutifully, Paloma padded after her master as Juan climbed into his rig and started the thundering truck.
Juan drove west, following the rising sun's path across the morning sky. He'd been a truck driver for more than twenty years, and he loved his work. Juan was a solitary man, preferred to spend his days admiring the wondrous landscape of the Americas with Paloma as his only company.
Like many in his line of work, Juan's cab was covered from floor to ceiling with photos, candles, and statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe: a moving shrine to the Mother of all. Though his devotion ran deep, few would guess at just how personal his relationship with Guadalupe was.
Five hundred years ago, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan and asked him to serve. Juan agreed to his Lady's request, and in return, She blessed him with long life. Guadalupe warned that the quest would not be easy, and it may take him many lifetimes to find what he sought. Juan obeyed, cast aside his old life, and began the first steps of his sacred quest.
Juan
took jobs in every country in the hemisphere, favoring those that
demanded travel. People everywhere accepted Juan as a drifter: a man
without a family or a home. It was easy, then, to quest for Guadalupe's
lost artifact across the Americas, where Guadalupe promised his quest
would end.
Today, Juan felt a familiar twinge of warmth in
the back of his head. All of his tension seemed to expand and melt
there, covering his skull in a pleasant, tingling sensation, as if he
were bathed in sunlight.
Juan glanced at Paloma, who was staring at some unseen point to the northwest. Paloma's stance was eager and alert, her ears pointed and her legs straight. Her ancient frame seemed almost puppyish as she gazed far ahead.
"Well, should we go see
what it is, then?" Juan asked. Paloma thumped her tail in approval, and
Juan patted her back vigorously. Juan changed gears, sped up, and made
way for the radiant mountain range ahead.
Creative writing is not my forte. I can count the number of creative things I've written in the last 10 years on one hand. I have little snippets and ideas: I make up little stories about people I see on the bus, or take something a friend says and turn it into a crazy children's story, and will occasionally wax poetic while under the influence.
But when I'm forced to write, I can produce, even if the results are laughable. In the case below, I'm a little proud. I wrote this story introduction for my grammar course:
Deborah strolled along the shore, careful to avoid the icy tide. The sky was metallic and the wind whipped mercilessly at her tear-stained face, but walks like this were Deborah's only weapon against despair.
Deborah cared for her ailing mother over the last ten years. She had plenty of time to prepare herself for the inevitable, but when Charlotte passed quietly in the night, it was still a shock, followed by an icy numbness. Deborah didn't have the best relationship with her mother; Charlotte would point out Deborah's deficiencies on a daily basis, leveling double-barrels of unemployment and Deborah's single status against her. In spite of all this, Deborah found some comfort and purpose in caring for Charlotte. Now that Charlotte was gone, Deborah was a woman undone, with her mother's last insults tolling in her ears.
The sound of the ocean helped Deborah escape this dull ringing, and as she walked, she looked for seashells that might echo the sounds of their origin. Deborah owned hundreds of seashells, scattered throughout the shared cabin as if they'd drifted in with the winds. She'd learned the truth about seashells and their sea-echoes when she was still a girl, but these tiny treasures never lost their appeal.
Deborah found a small shell and held it to her ear. She heard a woman's faint sobs instead of the ocean's roar. Deborah dropped the shell and looked around her, but the beach was deserted. Convinced she was just hearing things in grief, Deborah set aside her silly thoughts and picked up the shell again. The woman's sobs grew louder.
"Hello?" Deborah ventured. "Who's there? This is a private beach," she shouted with a note of growing anger.
"Hello?" a soft voice, not her own, echoed from the shell. "Can you hear me? Are you really there? Oh thank god!" the young woman cried, and started sobbing again.
"I must be going crazy," Deborah muttered to herself, inspecting the shell closely.
"No, you've got to believe me, you're not going crazy," the shell answered. Deborah blanched and was quiet, listening cautiously. "Please, help me," the woman in the shell pleaded. "Please, I'm trapped!"
"What, you're trapped inside the shell?" Deborah said, and inspected it again.
"No! I don't know how this works. I've been praying for help, and now I hear your voice, and I guess you can hear me too," the woman in the shell reasoned. "Please, will you help me?"
