The Soloist

Review

The Soloist brings a new kind of celebrity to its real-life subject, a schizophrenic musician named Nathaniel Ayers, played onscreen by Jamie Foxx. Discovered living on the street by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (here, Robert Downey Jr.), Ayers has now seen his past (virtuosity, Juilliard, breakdown) and present (homelessness, shopping cart, Beethoven obsession) become the focus of a column and then a book and now a movie—­although, as in most biopics of non-famous people, the where-they-are-now end titles leave out the most important bit: “Having been played by Jamie Foxx, Ayers is about to see his life transformed like you wouldn’t effing believe.” Foxx doesn’t sentimentalize Ayers. He lightens his eyebrows, turns his face into a mask, and remains on his own remote wavelength. He’s stunning—the only flaw is his old Ray Charles head-sway. The drama in Susannah Grant’s script is what happens when a middle-class white boy tries to save someone who won’t and can’t be saved: How responsible is he? The movie is a noble enterprise, and Downey is stupendous as usual, but Joe Wright’s direction is too slick to elicit much feeling (Ayers’s visions while listening to Beethoven recall the iTunes Visualizer), and the use of actual mentally ill homeless people unintentionally echoes the central conundrum: You’ve made these people movie stars. Now what? — David Edelstein