What do you get when you put together a burnt-out Los Angeles Times columnist and a homeless, schizophrenic violin prodigy? As real-life Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez saw it, you've got a story. But when one column about street musician Nathaniel Ayers turned into a series, and a professional relationship turned into friendship, what Lopez also got was a life-changing experience. And one bestselling book and a few years later, that experience is also a movie.

Based on the story of Steve Lopez's friendship with Nathaniel Ayers, as the subtitle of Lopez's 2008 book says, the story at the center of The Soloist is about "a lost dream, an unlikely friendship, and the redemptive power of music." It tackles not only the reality of mental illness but also the problem of poverty, the fractured character of Los Angeles, the struggle to fully commit to relationships, the evasive understanding of how to actually help others, and the power of music, faith, and love. With music at its center, its issues are brought to life and explored through not only the interaction of its characters but also a multitude of artistically evocative scenes that are both hauntingly beautiful and tragically compelling. And where its translation to screen could have easily become an overly artistic statement movie or an underdeveloped two hour soap opera, coming together around the individual human stories at its center, the feel is instead that of something very real, affecting, and believably hopeful.

From a hard spill Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) takes on his bike in the movie's opening scenes to the seemingly irreversible fall that long ago toppled Ayers (Jamie Foxx) from a life of any sort of normalcy, The Soloist is a movie which recognizes life as the precipitous and antagonistic reality which it can so often be. As its story unfolds, we witness both the logical and illogical ways we try to keep our balance, conquer our demons, and shape the world into one which we can endure. Medicine meets music, social programs meet individual interaction, and words meet actions. But as Lopez and Ayers become less the helper and the helped and more two men both seeking something to hold onto, the message that becomes increasingly apparent is the human need to believe in something greater than just us.

From visual sequences to actual dialogue, The Soloist is a movie that is actually very spiritual. In an early scene in which Ayers plays a cello under an overpass, the notes meet his concrete surroundings to almost transform it into a sort of cathedral. Birds fly out over the city as if carried by the music and the sense of peace soaring overhead becomes a contrast to the tangled freeways below. In that scene and others, the harmony and calm of the music silences dissonant voices we hear in flashbacks from Ayers' life and depictions of the busy city in which he now lives. When Ayers' mother tells him that she hears the voice of God in his music, it makes sense. And when Lopez tells his ex-wife (Catherine Keener), "While they are playing, I say, my God, there is something higher out there&ellips; I don't even know what you would call it," and she responds, "Grace," it rings true.

Continue: 1 2