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Great music transforms dots and lines on a page into dreams and fantasies, reaches out to all that is eternal and sacred, and captures for eternity the voice of God and all the angels in Heaven. When I watched the opening of "The Soloist", there was nothing more beautiful, and nothing more sad, than listening to Jamie Fox (who plays the homeless street musician Ayers) (in real life a one time Juilliard student until the voices in his head took over his entire life with the exception of the music in his memory) attempting to play the first movement of Beethoven's Third Symphony on a violin with only two strings. In the shadowed street corner where Ayers has marked off his piece of territory within an indifferent city and an even more indifferent planet, the cars go by as if sand in a dust storm. When Ayers is approached by Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez (Robert Downey), Ayers begins speaking in a language that has no subject, no predicate, and seems to be without any purpose nor form, until one listens to the poetry of "pigeons clapping". Then the sky opens up above the city, clear blue and infinite.
The movie is based on a true story about Mr. Lopez's relationship with a homeless schizophrenic. "The Soloist" makes no pretense of attempting to understand the world of those whose universe is locked inside a dark cage where no one is allowed, a world where hallucinations are far more real and threatening than anything in reality. For Ayers, the street is all he knows...he is terrified when he steps outside its boundaries. Even when he is given his own apartment, the walls close in and the voices inside his head corner him. The audience is not allowed inside Ayer's consciousness, but they do see his soul when he begins screaming out and no one is there to hear.
Throughout the movie I did keep asking myself what would have happened if Ayers was just sitting in the corner of shadowed cement talking to the voices in his head, but not playing a violin. Would Lopez have noticed Ayers when he came out of the LA Times building and headed home? I don't know about others, but when I come in contact with someone who is homeless, I go out of my way to avoid contact. I know there is little that I can do to help. Their world is not my world...it is some other world I have no desire to acknowledge. I am the one in the car with the windows closed and the air conditioning turned on high.
Who are the homeless? The homeless include those with mental disabilities; veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome; victims of domestic violence; and persons with drug and alcohol addiction. Many of those with chronic mental illness are at the last stages of life. Because of limited medical attention, the illness progresses into disability, morbidity, and premature death. The average life expectancy of someone who is mentally ill and out on the streets is 41 years. Pneumonia and influenza are the biggest killers, brought on by lack of food, shelter, and clothing. The homeless population is expected to rise considerably in the next ten years.
One thing I did notice was that in the film the agencies feeding, clothing, and housing the homeless were many religious based. I would like to see such atheistes as Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins examine the people who reach out to those who have no defenses against the world, and try to condemn the work they are doing. The mission with the flickering neon light is a light in a totally indifferent universe.
"The Soloist" is also a movie about journalism, a movie about how words can touch the heart of an entire city. But if predictions are right, someday in the near future we will live in a world without newspapers a world without journalists like Steve Lopez who bring forth in their columns realities we would rather turn away from. There are stories that need to be told,and people with the insight and integrity to bring them into language. A society without words, without metaphors, without stories to pass on from one generation to the next, will be a society without a soul.