"Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit."
-William S. Burroughs
Homeless man. Los Angeles. Schizophrenia. Three topics that are of particular interest to me.
When I first saw the trailer for The Soloist many months ago, I was excited. It looked like one of those uplifting, Academy Award winning stories that explored the beauty of music and reaffirmed the "enduring power of the human spirit". That's definitely how they were selling it - boasting the credits of director Joe Wright and lead actors Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. But I was soon disgusted with my excitement over such a Hollywoodized presentation of a true story. I wanted to know the real people and events behind the movie. Maybe it was because this was such a local story that I felt personally invested in it. So last year, I looked up Steve Lopez on LA Times.com and read the original articles that sparked this whole thing:
So I saw the movie with my family a few weeks ago when it came out. And I was pleased to see that they treated the story seriously. The movie has a strong sense of reality. Through our protagnist Steve Lopez's eyes, we see a hellish environment crowded with junkies and intimidating figures (which is simply skid row in real life). When Steve tries to help Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, the homeless, mentally ill, musician he meets under a statue of Beethoven, he approaches the problem in a way most people would - with a solution in mind. The problem with schizophrenia and most mental illness is that there is no solution. It's a constant, moment by moment presence that has to be dealth with. Steve's frustration by this revelation can be best expressed by that William S. Burroughs quote.
In one of those articles, Lopez spoke with a Yale professor who described schizophrenia as "one of the worst disorders known to man" - which I instantly agreed with. Life is seemingly pointless with this illness. In a way, it puts all life into perspective. All of us are just distracting ourselves from the futility - tricking ourselves into thinking we're doing something worthwhile. For Nathaniel, his illness is a part of who he is. The label of "schizophrenia" and a suppressant medicine will not take it away. Steve realizes by the end of the movie that all he can simply do is be there for Nathaniel - to love him and to offer an occasional helping hand. These two characters that were painted as soloists in their own lives, come together and form a harmonious friendship.
My parents read in the paper that they used actual homeless and mentally ill people as some of the minor characters which really brought a texture of authenticity to the film. Being so realistic, the story arc doesn't lend itself to dramatic cinema - there are no gradiose, climactic scenes, which is great. There is no ending yet for Nathaniel. He's still struggling with this illness right now. With such a journalistic sensibility, the director could have taken a straight forward approach to the entire production, but he didn't. He still made room for some bold, creative choices which I appreciated. There was a brilliant sequence of colored lights that expressed how Nathaniel experienced music (kind of like how Remy experienced taste in Ratatouille) and it's a couple of minutes long so we can actually enjoy it and share in the experience. LA was shot beautifully. The camera fully captured the concrete jungle and jumbled freeways.
The movie is not great. It's worth watching because it makes the situation with the homeless that much more real by projecting it on the big screen where we can't turn away. The movie ends with some facts about the homeless population in LA. Recently, homelessness has been increasing and evolving.
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My parents read in the paper that they used actual homeless and mentally ill people as some of the minor characters which really brought a texture of authenticity to the film. Being so realistic, the story arc doesn't lend itself to dramatic cinema - there are no gradiose, climactic scenes, which is great. There is no ending yet for Nathaniel. He's still struggling with this illness right now. With such a journalistic sensibility, the director could have taken a straight forward approach to the entire production, but he didn't. He still made room for some bold, creative choices which I appreciated. There was a brilliant sequence of colored lights that expressed how Nathaniel experienced music (kind of like how Remy experienced taste in Ratatouille) and it's a couple of minutes long so we can actually enjoy it and share in the experience. LA was shot beautifully. The camera fully captured the concrete jungle and jumbled freeways.
