The Soloist Analysis

“The Soloist” is a movie about the real-life relationship between a journalist and a homeless schizophrenic street musician. The journalist– Steve Lopez a columnist for the LA Times, comes across Nathaniel Ayers on the street and decides to write about him. Between playing bursts of music on a violin with only two working strings, Nathaniel gives a mostly incoherent discourse on the benefits of being homeless and on his efforts to bring music to the city. Steve, in need of a subject for his column, researches Nathaniel’s background. From there, Lopez and Ayers develop a struggling friendship, which leads Lopez to try to help Ayers by organizing an apartment for him, music lessons and even a concert performance. However, Lopez’s attempt to
‘help’ Ayers eventually brings the two characters into conflict. What Lopez then realizes is that he cannot cure Ayers of schizophrenia – all he can do is offer his friendship.
The first connection the journalist has with the schizophrenic homeless is when they first meet.
Lopez took out his hand to shake his, Ayers however, tend to keep his hand to his side and not touch Lopez’s hand saying, ‘I apologize for my appearance, I had a few step backs’, Lopez looked at him and said ‘me too’, pointing to his head injury. This is a significant remark of their relationship which starts to develop by discussing their similarities and nature of life. By visually viewing flashbacks of Ayers’ past, it emphasises his personality, character and his hopes and dreams. An image of young Ayers auditioning to a teacher showing his skills in playing the cello. The teacher was observing him well saying, he definitely had the talent. ‘If he made a full commitment to music, if he really, really gave it all he had, the whole world would open up to him. And he did, he really did.’ His commitment to his playing was shown in a scene at his mother’s salon. The salon was full of customers, extremely noise, Ayers however was in his room, playing and practicing on his cello, ignoring the noise. This showed that he is able to dedicate and make a dedication to his talent and to music just to show how great he is at it. According to his sister, all he did was play with his cello, ‘No more football, no more baseball, just music’. He practiced day and night. ‘The whole world was changing around him, and that’s all he did, music’. This reveals the enthusiasm he has towards playing the
cello.
Ayers tend to have a strong connection to number of things such as: the trolley which was filled with junk that tended to be his belongings. He insists on dragging it around everywhere which indicates his home and his past. He was also attached to his cello instrument. When Lopez showed Ayers the cello that was a gift from a women who had the article about him, he saw the cover of the cello, held his hands together tightly, closed and opened his eyes constantly and started to shake his head. He was overwhelmed. However Ayers and Lopez had an argument due to the issue of playing the instrument on the road. It was a valuable instrument and should not be played on the streets so Lopez arranged him a place where he could play it there. Ayers’ problem is the fact that the place Lopez told him about is filthy and dirty and filled with homeless people like him, ‘they smoke cigarettes, they do it to torment me’. This explains that he couldn’t live in a dirty environment even though he’s homeless himself. He depicts that he is responsible for helping the community with the cleaning, like the scene of him picking up cigarettes off the road, as he is unable to take the nastiness and degradation.
The significance of the cello instrument was shown in the scene where Lopez allowed Ayers to take it for a ‘test-drive’. As Ayers was reaching down to it, he opened the cover, breathed heavily in, and then took out the instrument very gently like holding a baby, extremely careful, ‘laying in there like a pig in a blanket’. He grabs his chair, and starts playing very gently, feeling the rhythm and the beat of the music it made. Lopez leans downwards, amazed by the feeling he got of the cello, the camera leans in on Ayers face as he’s playing. Ayers face was expressionless. Lopez closed his eyes and listened. As Ayers music is playing, the camera starts moving upwards showing images of birds flying in different directions. The birds are symbolic of freedom and peace and the fact that the birds flew in different direction illustrated a sense of harmony and calmness.
The “soloist” of the title can be taken as a reference to Ayers’ isolation as it refers to a singular devotion. This text should be considered a module for ‘distinctively visual’ as it illustrates and demonstrates many themes, techniques and visual features that help understand the meaning and the significance of the movie. ‘The Soloist’, as shown above, discusses many literature visuals that could be easily depicted. It also sets out a lot of example features to help illustrate small meanings. The film uses a lot of camera actions, like up-close angel and zooming in and out, which helps us see the facial expressions and features of each character which sets out different moods, meaning and understanding for each.