THE SOLOIST (2009)

While watching this film I remember a fine flute player who used to play some wonderful old tunes on crossroads at Ahmedabad years ago. He never begged on the road; just played his flute and lost in the oblivion of music with his closed eyes. At the end of the day, he got enough coins to stuff his stomach and sleeps on road. This was quite distant memory when I was a fresher in college. But Jamie Foxx moved me and made that memory sharp with his mind-blowing act as Nathaniel Ayers, a classical music prodigy, playing his violin and cello on the streets of LA while remaining homeless and sleeps near squalor of street. The whole world is changing around him since his childhood and what he all did is- ‘playing Beethoven’. With such a pure facial expressions and class act, I’m damn sure about his Academy Nomination in next Oscar.

Two wonderful actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx when combined together with heart warming abstract human story based on true facts, it’s simply the film you can’t miss. The film is a soaring emotional drama about the redemptive power of music.
Steve Lopez (Downey Jr.) is LA Times journalist who’s searching for a new story for his column and he discovers Nathaniel (Foxx), the man who plays violin on the streets and suffering from mental disorder. As Lopez endeavors to help the man, he forms a unique friendship that transforms both their lives. Both Foxx and Downey Jr. are in complete form and gave their topnotch performances. Its film you must watch for their chemistry.
However, Director Joe Wright and his screenplay writer could possibly make it more uplifting and progressive in scope but anyway that’s not a big deal when you have such touchy subject and graceful performances.

Although the film has garnered a lot of mixed reviews/opinions, I don’t like to scratch much about it like those pricky cynic critics who tarnish sometime a good film with their pseudo verbal blah…blah…blah… This is the film where our own experience counts in unique way and uplifts the human side in us.

“I’ve never loved anything in my life, the way that he loves music,” said Downey Jr. to his wife. So true in all of our case too!!!

Ratings-8.5/10