Psychological Movie Review
The Motion picture “The Soloist” is about L.A. Times writer Steve Lopez discovering a musically gifted homeless man named Nathaniel Ayers. Desperately needing to catch a deadline Mr. Lopez considers writing a story about Nathaniel. While researching Mr. Lopez begins to discover interesting things about the talented musician. Nathanial Ayers was accepted to The Julliard’s School of music, the most prestige school for music in North America. After one year at Julliard Nathanial dropped out, it turns out that Nathanial had a case of Paranoid Schizophrenia that forced him into a spiral of madness, which soon caused him to become homeless and lose a chance at becoming on of the greatest musicians of his time. Throughout the movie it is apparent that Nathanial does have some sort of mental disorder. The viewer can notice Nathanial’s mental disorder in many ways, the first way is by the way he dresses. His clothes are all miss matched, and are very unusual in everyday life; Nathanial will also occasionally wear face paint in normal occasions. Another way viewers could determine that Nathanial suffered from some sort of mental disorder was by the way he acted, although he had no physical defects, internally he was different. Nathanial would enjoy being homeless and loved to be alone, he would have extreme trouble staying on one topic, and he would also have trouble comprehending simple to complex things. Due to this evidence it is obvious that Nathanial has some sort of mental disorder like Paranoid Schizophrenia, but he is not specifically diagnosed in the movie. Even without a professional diagnosis, the movie does a great job at showing the signs of a Paranoid Schizophrenic, which is what Nathanial is believed to be diagnosed with. In the movie Nathanial shows almost text box signs of Schizophrenia, for example Nathanial has voices in his head that only he can hear, and the voices are real enough to hurt him emotionally.