Midway through The Soloist, Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) tells his ex-wife that he has just witnessed something he can’t describe. He then excitedly tries to do so and fails. She looks at him and simply says, “Sounds like grace.” This puts him at ease. Words couldn’t explain it, but one word could and did.
The Soloist is a movie about grace and how it can express itself in the unlikeliest of places. It’s very easy for a film to be about grace though. Many films could be said to be about grace, including many really bad ones. What this film accomplishes though is truly special. It allows the viewer to experience grace.
The Soloist tells the story of two men who happen into a relationship. Lopez is a Los Angeles Times columnist desperately in search of a story. He is self-centered and does things his way or not at all. We first see him riding a bicycle, the wrong way on a bike path, through a pack of other cyclists, up a hill. Returning home, his answering machine informs him – not once but twice as if rubbing it in – “You have no messages.”
One day, Lopez hears music in a city park and follows it to its source – a man named Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) playing a beat-up violin with only two strings. Ayers – Lopez will later learn – is a Juilliard dropout and once promising cellist who now lives on the street and speaks in manic soliloquies like someone who saves up things to say for years and then spends them all at once. He’s a schizophrenic. He’s musically touched by the wings of angels.
Lopez is a writer. He seeks subjects to fill the blank screen of his word processor. At one point, he sits waiting for Ayers and tape-records a homeless woman as she rants and raves, expressing her thoughts on the state of things. He exclaims, “This is amazing!” Of course, he’s not even listening to her, but he knows it’ll make great copy. Ayers will teach him to listen and to be a great writer.
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