
In 2005, I began to see advertised a new film adaptation of Jane Austen's classic Pride & Prejudice. From the advertisements, it appeared to be an unnecessary, perfunctory adaptation of a novel that had been adapted many a time for the screen, both silver and small, often times inelegantly, as with the clunky 1940 big-budget MGM adaptation ("You have too much PRIDE, sir!""And you, too much PREJUDICE!"). This new version appeared to be suffering from the same wronghead

In that film, and his 2007 follow up Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name, the director Joe Wright carved out a place for himself as one of the pre-eminent directors in England. Here was a young, headstrong filmmaker who was willing to take chances both filmicly and thematically, chances that set him apart from his peers, and fellow "period film" purveyors. Wright was able to bring life to ideas, filling them with emotion and gr

It was with this great regard and anticipation that I brought to Mr. Wright's third film, The Soloist, based again on a novel, this time the non-fiction novel of the same name by The Los Angeles Times' Steve Lopez. The film centers on Mr. Lopez (here played by Robert Downey Jr.) and his discovery of a mentally unstable former Julliard cellist, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), now living homeless on the streets of Los Angeles, and follows their subsequent friendship.
Wright directs the film from a screenplay by Susannah Grant, who chooses to structure the film around Lopez, who then brings the audience into Ayers world, a convention that has grown tiresome, as studios feel it necessary to lure in the audience with the stable, not coincidentally white character that they can hopefully identify with. It's a convention that's insulting in many ways, but also makes for a far less interesting film. This is, or it should be, a parallel story of two men forging a friendship, one providing attention and stability where there was none, and one providing a great skill at communicating through music. Part of the problem is that we cannot identify with Lopez because the screenplay, embellished by Mr. Downey's performance, saddles him with all kinds of tangetical problems, his industry is dying, he's divorced, and he's constantly being covered in urine, both his own and that of a coyote. I suppose this is to make us feel like both Ayers and Lopez have problems so their connection isn't just a one sided affair, but what Ayers suffers from is debilitating mental illness, whereas Lopez just comes off as a wealthy dick.
The other major problem with the film is the music, or should I say the lack there of. For a film about a friendship forged through music, we hear so very little of it, and even less from Ayers himself. After Lopez writes a column about Ayers, and mentions that the violin he plays only has two strings, a reader sends in a cello, and when Lopez presents it to Ayers, he hears for the first time the genius that Ayers has musically. On screen, we can see Lopez is feeling something, which we take, or would if it were written better, as something he hasn't done in quite some time because of the af

That scene lies in stark contrast to the one transcendent moment of the film, when Lopez arranges for Ayers to sit in with him alone on the rehearsal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beautiful Walt Disney Concert Hall. As the orchestra begins its Beethoven piece, we literally go inside Ayers' mind as he listens, and in a Fantasia-esque touch, see colors, dancing to the music, onscreen for minutes. It's perhaps the most astonishing moment I've seen on screen this in several years, and it's juxtaposition with what surrounds it highlights what's so wrong with the rest of the film. It's the only moment in the film where Wright seems to be escaping the screenplay and getting at the feeling of the piece and allowing the audience to experience as the characters do, something he does more adeptly in his previous two films.
Though the screenplay is flawed, Wright is not blameless here. He trusts in the screenplay and while trying to make it fit, isn't suited to the material. Wright and Grant try to shoehorn all kinds of political relevance into the film as well, showing a montage featuring former President George W. Bush, Hurricane Katrina, has characters talk about the death of the newspaper industry, lamenting the massive homeless population in Los Angeles, and in one scene seems to

There's no reason with a cast like this, a director like this, and the abundance of music the story calls for, for the film to be so often lifeless. Wright is a great director, and his first two films are among the best of the decade, particularly Atonement, which in that glutted year of so-called masterpieces, I thought was the standout of 2007. Here however, his material is weak, and with his first two films being derived from Jane Austen and Ian McEwan, it's not terribly surprising that when presented with an American newspaper writer as his source material, he doesn't quite connect with it. I hope that Wright returns to England and searches for the right material, because when he's at his best, unlike those fake birds, his films do indeed soar.
'A' for effort, Jorge.
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