THE SOLOIST (2009, Blu-ray released August 4, 2009 – MSRP $39.99)
This movie was a struggle for me. Excuse me. I should clarify that statement. What I meant to say was that I had to struggle to stay awake through The Soloist. Maybe it was the film. Maybe it was just me overextending myself lately. Either way, for whatever the reason, I didn’t make it to the end. Thank God my roommate did. I look to him to fill in my blanks…
Jake Zapotoczny: “It was alright. I dunno. It was okay. It was nothing special. Again, like you said, when Downey was onscreen it did hold my attention a lot better than…ah…then…then anything else for that matter. Like I was gonna say, I don’t know if that…if that story warrants a movie. I dunno. Not that it didn’t seem compelling but…It was good but…(edited for SPOILER content – to sum up, he’s unsatisfied with the ending)…I dunno, it just fell short. And I like movies about music. It wasn’t boring it just kind of puttered along like a shitty car. Y’know, it goes. The thing is it goes and you can drive it but it just doesn’t get there faster, I dunno.”
“It’s not like it was a bad movie. It’s just like it was there and… there it was.”
Thanks, Jake!
To be fair, I did go back and re-watch the film afterward. Again, I found it tough to get through. It reminded me of bad theatre in a lot of places. Very pretentious. But I guess the subject matter lends itself to all kinds of Oscar-baiting. Robert Downey Jr. plays a journalist who discovers Jamie Foxx, a homeless Julliard graduate, suffering schizophrenia on the streets, playing his two-stringed violin to himself in the highway underpasses of Los Angeles. Now, this thing is based on a true story. And there is actually a lot to like here. It goes without saying that the performances are out of this world. Downey and Foxx are geniuses. And the film really comes alive when the director eschews his “arty” ideas for the elegant simplicity of allowing the actors to improvise with the real stars of the film: the homeless of LA. These are the best moments of the film. The only ones that felt genuine and real. More of that please, fewer theatrical attempts to get inside the mind of a schizophrenic.
On to the disc itself! The Soloist looks like a million bucks on Blu-ray. I was taken aback by how stunning Seamus McGarvey‘s photography is. He’s able to work wonders with the most banal of settings and subjects. And the transfer does his work justice here. Very film-like. Nice amount of grain. Lots of detail. Simply beautiful! Kudos to Paramount for such a nice job! The extras are plentiful and detail the making of the film as well as giving a look at the real people the movie is based on. I found the commentary track tough to listen to, as director Joe Wright doesn’t speak very much through the course of the film and when he does, he comes off a bit smug. Several shorts focusing on the plight of LA’s homeless round out the disc.
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