"Los Angeles Times" reporter Steve Lopez has been having a bit of trouble recently. He was taken to the hospital with a bruised nose and a bruised face while riding a bicycle. Lying on the hospital bed, Steve Lopez couldn't move his limbs, but his ears were sharp. He always heard someone playing the violin not far away. After being discharged from the hospital, Steve Lopez drove around looking for the person who played the violin, and he did find him. The man was playing Beethoven's third symphony No. 2 on a two-string violin under a statue of Beethoven. The first theme of the movement.
Using a violin with two missing strings to play Beethoven's third symphony, which originally had to be completed by a symphony orchestra, is it sounding the music of the music saint? It's no wonder that many music fans didn't hear what Nathaniel Els was playing when watching the movie "The Soloist."
Since the protagonist of the film has been reduced to a vagabond, why sell it so badly that he can't give him a musical instrument with no shortage of parts? Perhaps the violin with only two strings is a hint of Nathaniel Els' identity? really. Driven by curiosity, Steve Lopez used his professional strengths to investigate that Nathaniel Els was a former Juilliard student, but majored in cello, sophomore year When he left school due to schizophrenia, he became a homeless.
Steve Lopez published Nathaniel Els' story in the Los Angeles Times, drawing sympathy from countless readers. An elderly woman who likes to play the cello, unable to do her old business because of arthritis, graciously mailed her beloved cello to Steve Lopez, asking him to hand it over to Nathaniel Els.
According to the usual screenwriting ideas, Nathaniel Els, who got the cello, was afraid that he would lose the gift of well-wishers by sleeping on the street again, so he obeyed Steve Lopez's arrangement and entered the shelter. There, he resumed his cello lessons, and finally got a seat in the cello section of the symphony orchestra, playing Beethoven's Third Symphony with his partners under the baton of the orchestra conductor.
Because Nathaniel Els is a musical genius, the background music of the movie "The Soloist" will "slip into" classical music from time to time, Bach's six cello suites, Beethoven's triple concerto and Beethoven's 14th string. Music quartet, etc., especially Beethoven's 14th String Quartet, was used in a major scene of the film: trying to use various methods, such as letting Nathaniel Els live in a shelter, giving Nathaniel Neil Els finding a teacher, finding Nathaniel Els an apartment to live in, etc. can't settle the musical genius, Steve Lopez thinks again , he went to the concert hall to discuss, arranged a concert for Nathaniel Els, and specially invited an audience for the concert. However, after walking on the stage with difficulty, Nathaniel Els, who was still at a loss with his beloved musical instrument, finally failed to resist the devastation of his mental illness. , Nathaniel Els leaves the cello, stage, audience, and Steve Lopez, and flees. If you are not very familiar with Beethoven's 14th String Quartet, you may not hear the background music of this scene as the first movement of the work. In order to highlight Nathaniel Els's growing fear at the moment, the film changed the orchestration of the string quartet to a symphony orchestra, and added the faint percussion of the timpani.
So far, the film has stepped out of our usual thinking logic for an inspirational movie, that is, Nathaniel Els, who has lost his life, finally got out of the way with the help of Steve Lopez and a group of well-wishers. Restarts his talent and musical life after the quagmire of mental illness; The Soloist ends because the word schizophrenia appears in a guardian document Steve Lopez asked him to sign , Nathaniel Els broke with the reporter who has been trying to save him throughout the film. A broken musical genius who refuses to go to a mental hospital, he has to go back to the asylum, where Nathaniel Els, who is basking in the sun with the rest of the world, will only meet Steve Lope when he is sober. I said sorry.
When I watched this movie for the first time, I was also very puzzled: since the hero of the film has such an ending, why let Beethoven's Third Symphony run through it? Anyone who has dabbled in classical music a little knows that Beethoven's third symphony, alias "Hero", was created in 1804, and its title is "Heroic Symphony - Made in Memory of a Great Man", referred to as "Heroic Symphony" It is a turning point in Beethoven's creative process and a sign of his mature style. This work, originally dedicated to Napoleon, is one of Beethoven's most famous masterpieces and fully reflects the heroic part of Beethoven's character. Since it gave Nathaniel Els a loser's ending, why does the film use Beethoven's third symphony, which is full of joyful, passionate romanticism, so many times?
It is Zhang Dinghao's new work "The Invisible Thing" that reminds me of the old movie "The Soloist" released in 2009.
Zhang Dinghao's "Invisible Things" is not thick, but the content is very thick. A total of 12 articles discuss the invisible things scattered in the corners of the world and the existence value of these invisible things. The article titled "The End" in the 12 articles mentioned two people, one is the German mathematician Cantor, and the other is the author of a popular science book "The Leaping Infinity - A Brief History of Infinity" related to Cantor. Foster Wallace. As the title of the book reveals, Cantor was a constructor of set theory and transfinite number theory, a mathematician trying to grasp the "infinity". Later, Cantor went mad. How to understand Cantor's madness? The most logical and easily accepted explanation is that Cantor was "a genius who was driven mad by trying to conquer ∞". So, did Wallace "accord" to public opinion to adopt this statement? no! It stands to reason that genius being driven mad is excellent material for writers, but Wallace only briefly explains the reasons for Cantor's madness in the footnotes of the book - Wallace believes that madness is not related to being a mathematician. Cantor's life has nothing to do with it, and it is best explained in a footnote; moreover, the work and background that attracted Cantor are so beautiful that Cantor, who pursues the truth in that atmosphere, does not need us to compare him to madness. as Prometheus.
In other words, Nathaniel Els, looking up at the statue of Beethoven and playing Beethoven's Third Symphony with a broken violin, seems to us to be in a state of madness, but he himself is experiencing the most abundant life in the world. emotion. Even though enjoying this emotion required Nathaniel Els to pay the symphony of Beethoven's 14th String Quartet, which was both melancholy and manic, Nathaniel Els was willing.
So, when asked which part of "The Soloist" struck me the most, my answer was that when his ex-wife asked him incomprehensibly why he was helping a homeless man over and over again, Steve Lopez was full of With tears in his eyes, he replied, "Nothing can move me as much as the music moved him." This sentence is probably the explanation of why the film is named "Solo".
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