| Review:
|
An unsavory fusion of perhaps TV's American Idol, Brother
From Another Planet and Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde in reverse
- that is, Hyde resisting release of his better half - The
Soloist is further evidence, following Kirsten Sheriden's
patronizing August Rush, that UK directors don't have a
clue about issues of race, class or music in this country,
and should maybe not be allowed near American movies again.
The Soloist may also be part of a trend of Hollywood applying
CPR to that increasingly extinct print media, which happen
to be a major source of promotional advertising for their
films, who knows.***
Jamie Foxx, who is no Ray Charles in The Soloist with
decidely unimpressive music that is nothing to write home
about, plays real life self-taught, eventual Julliard prodigy
cellist turned LA homeless psychotic, Nathaniel Ayers. When
LA Times star reporter Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) crashes
his bike and sustains a head injury causing him to go into
existential crisis mode, he is also struck with a sudden
obsession to save the life and art of this paranoid loner
he encounters by accident under a freeway overpass. That
is, by writing a series of stories about him, whether the
barely intelligible lost soul likes it or not. The newspaper
columns eventually morphed into the journalist's 2008 book,
The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, And The
Redemptive Power Of Music. Now while we're on the subject
of talent, why is Downey playing a Latino in a movie, when
there are so many gifted unemployed Latino actors out there,
especially during this current economic crisis. Okay, so
Downey may think he's on a cross-cultural roll after his
tasteless black minstrel stint in Tropic Thunder, but let's
not get carried away, bro. Though even worse in The Soloist,
is British director Joe Wright's attitude regarding African
Americans and music. Best known for serving up ruling class
drawing room dramas on screen like the deplorable, cry fake
rape Atonement and Pride & Prejudice. Wright's perception
of black music - which happens to be America's own homegrown
classical music - is that it doesn't measure up at all to
Europe's own rarified 'good music' classics. In The Soloist,
black music is simply ignored or in other instances rudely
displaced. In one scene, Nathaniel as a child creatively
and emotionally barricades himself away in the family basement,
in order to bliss out on European music while tuning out
the melodies of his own culture upstairs. And in a final
sc ene, the other homeless at his shelter are clearly dancing
to black music, but the muted scene is overlayed with a
European classical music soundtrack.***
Which brings us to the subject of homelessness in this
movie. While the film August Rush depicted those unfortunates
as primarily pathetic, when not selflessly devoted mammies
to the young white protagonist prodigy, in The Soloist,
Wright puts them on display as unpalatable wallpaper - 'hustlers
and thieves' who are dangerous, threatening and animalistic,
or disturbed, selectively the most physically grotesque
train wrecks among those he rounded up, but wallpaper nevertheless.
Does Wright actually believe on some subconscious level,
that the homeless are some sort of inferior genetic mutation.
Except for, that is, the rare genius among them, who is
the only one worthy of being rescued from their midst, as
well as saved from himself. This of course, is nothing new
in movies, where ghetto characters deemed exceptional, more
likely than not are given the task of escaping their own
cultural roots as their major bid for success in life.***
Several items are eventually negotiated in The Soloist,
including a garish Beethoven for dummies interlude during
which traditional European music is conveyed through primary
colors leaping about on screen, get it; Nathaniel's insistence
that Lopez show some respect for a grown man and start calling
him Mister Ayers; and Lopez himself fending off a growing
raccoon population with strategically located bags of coyote
urine on the front lawn. What's missing among these trivial
pursuits, is any recognition in this film of the impact
of poverty and racism on homelessness and mental illness,
or why any of this even exists in supposedly the most prosperous
nation on earth.***
|
