-commentary on the film "Soloist"
"Soloist" was written by Joe White, the director who became famous by "Pride and Prejudice" in one fell swoop. "Soloist" premiered in North America in April 2009. The release date lags far behind its shooting period, and the schedule is also the coldest weekend before the summer vacation. It seems that this has mapped out the maverick of the film.
Robert Downey Jr. plays the "Los Angeles Times" columnist Steve Lopez in the play, and Jamie Fox plays Nathaniel, who is extremely talented in music but suffers from schizophrenia. The story and characters of the film do have their own lives in reality. The story itself is not too fancy and gimmick, it is the story between the two men. The themes reflected in the film are the eternal themes we all experience: about salvation, about love, and about art. But in many cases this is the part that we gradually lose in the post-industrial civilization of the metropolis.
1. The brilliance
of music and love Lopez, a columnist looking for some fresh material, ran into Nathaniel in Pershing Square in Los Angeles. A man dressed in a different suit was pulling a violin on Beethoven's statue, and a trolley in the distance was stuffed with rubbish he picked up. This is the first shot of the protagonist of the film and all his belongings.
The first meeting between Lopez and Nathaniel seemed pleasant and relaxed. Lopez felt that he could write some stories about Nathaniel, so he collected his information and gradually developed the idea of helping Nathaniel.
In the twenty-fifth minute of the film, Nathaniel, who was practicing the cello at night, saw a burning car slowly driving into a residential house outside the window. He felt that terrible things were approaching, the terrifying things in reality. Approaching his young mind. He put these performances into the music, a deep but powerful cello solo. Perhaps this became the precursor and initial source of his later schizophrenia.
Mother came to Nathaniel’s bed and told him, “Do you know what I heard when you played? I heard the coming of God.” At this time, Nathaniel smiled innocently, as if he was with God. The angel who engages in dialogue, but he relies on spiritual music and beautiful vocal strings. His mother's love made him see the weight and brilliance of music to him. Beauty is a kind of art, and music is a kind of beauty. Nathaniel told Lopez in the tunnel in Los Angeles.
People are not allowed to defile things in Nathaniel's world. In order to pick up a cigarette butt that had been thrown away in the tunnel, he could ignore the potential danger that the shuttle car would pose to him. He is such a simple soloist. In the tunnels of the metropolis where the loudest noises fill people's eardrums.
Lopez later sent Nathaniel to the Lamp Community (Lamp Community) in Los Angeles, an institution that accommodates the homeless and the mentally ill, and took him to a concert about Beethoven and invited a The musician taught him the cello. Lopez wanted to save Nathaniel’s mental crisis so that he would not be in a dangerous situation on the streets of Los Angeles. However, the situation is not always under Lopez's control. For his help, Nathaniel clashed with him because of extreme maladaptation. However, Lopez did not give up giving Nathaniel love for this, and they also shook hands at the end to make peace.
Lopez wrote Nathaniel’s story in a column in the Los Angeles Times. A reader who suffered from arthritis read the newspaper and was moved by Nathaniel’s music story. He accompanied him for half a century. The cello was given to Nathaniel. Nathaniel looked very happy and opened the piano case carefully. "You have to rub rosin on the bow, just like feeding a parrot. The bow needs rosin, just like a police car needs a prisoner." Nathaniel said to Lopez. For a musician, a musical instrument is his real and entire world. Nathaniel improvised a piece for this.
2. Metropolis under post-industrial civilization
With the remarkable effect of knowledge and technology in the social process, American sociologist D·Bell put forward the concept of post-industrial society in "The Coming of Post-Industrial Society". As a category that belongs to industrial civilization, even though we have gained countless conveniences in the process of industrialization, many problems caused by industrial civilization have also appeared. The first to bear the brunt is the deterioration of the human spirit and environment. In the process of civilization, we who are full of wisdom will also be in an awkward situation created by ourselves. This is a kind of fatalistic paradox.
Facing the cold metal faces, the increasingly noisy and congested urban traffic, and the slums on the outskirts of metropolises, the string of longing for light and warmth that sustains our existence has been removed. This is like the two-string violin played by Nathaniel at the beginning of the film, with the other two missing.
The chord appears tired and incomplete at this time. This also happens to symbolize the reality of Nathaniel and our entire metropolis life. At work, after get off work, the increasingly stylized lifestyle tests our imagination. Life itself becomes a routine performance. Even if the core of the post-industrial social structure has changed compared with the pre-industrial society, it is undeniable that the erosion of human beings and the natural environment by human industrial civilization has always existed. This has brought us long-term trouble. Those lonely souls like Nathaniel are always wandering in the metropolis. They are deep in the metropolis, but standing outside, watching the state of existence in our lives.
Nathaniel was always looking for his Beethoven, the world-renowned German composer. He saw Beethoven playing his sonata in the opposite window. Nathaniel dreamed of his dream paradise, with the sun shining during the day and the cool and quiet at night, and everyone around him was smiling kindly.
In addition to the artistic effects pursued by the film itself, the director also pushed the lens to the real world in the metropolis where we live. Politicians rely on war to seek their interests and inflated liberalism. For this reason, some countries cannot extricate themselves from the turmoil of war, let alone having their own art and the happiness of stability.
Los Angeles, as a metropolis in the world second only to New York, brings together a culture of multiple elements. Highly developed material civilization, citizens with their own perfectly decorated homes and cars, can go to cafes to release their leisure time on weekends. However, in stark contrast are the suburban slums, where Nathaniel stayed in the beginning. As an uncivilized, backward and dirty slum, there is no shortage of geniuses full of dreams and hopes. They watched and became aware of people’s living conditions and prayed for shelter in the world of art to give people warmth and hope in life.
3. A path to soul salvation
Nathaniel, who is extremely talented in music, was sent to a music school to study piano, and was admitted to the prestigious Juilliard School of Music in the United States, and followed Musicians in the Conservatory of Music study and participate in performances in the concert hall. Everything about Nathaniel seemed so smooth and successful. But unexpectedly, during the rehearsal of a concert, unclean sounds began to appear in his mind, and these sounds bothered him. He began to run and avoid. However, auditory hallucinations have been haunting his nerves, with good and bad times.
Some people say that the genes of artists are different from those of ordinary people. When these differences are in the process of life formation, if there is a slight change in the genetic combination, it can push a great artist to another extreme: neuroticism. Perhaps Nathaniel is a variation of a seed of life. But more of it is also a kind of social imposing that Nathaniel can't get rid of the status quo that is far away from music and heaven. So he wandered the streets of Los Angeles with two different personalities on his back.
Nathaniel was lucky and found a broken violin in Ohio. This calmed his uncoordinated voice. He had a dream, he was looking for his missing two strings. This is undoubtedly a symbol and metaphor. The lack of strings is not only Nathaniel himself, but also the ordinary life of Lopez and his wife divorced, and it can cover his wandering metropolis Los Angeles, and even the living conditions of people in the context of modern civilization.
Lopez found his way of salvation in Nathaniel. Nathaniel also saw his true status here in Lopez and got an extremely precious friendship and love with Lopez's help, which is a kind of inner salvation for Nathaniel. With Lopez's help, Nathaniel's sister was able to reunite with his long-lost brother. And Lopez also reunited with his wife Mary.
Lopez didn’t know if he had rescued Nathaniel, but after interacting with this musical genius, he learned that “being loyal to one’s faith is a noble. This kind of faith is more than anything else, and never give up. At the same time, without questioning the faith, it can take you back to the harbor.”
Nathaniel narrated the chapters in his Beethoven and Beethoven concertos. Nathaniel saw the symbolic notes in the cello surrounding him, swimming in the criss-crossing overpasses of Los Angeles, shuttled through the riverfront parks and squares in the city, beating people's eardrums that were becoming numb, and flying over the city like birds. It flies like a group, gathers the evaporated mist together with the clouds, and finally disappears in an inner stream in Chengbi.
I believe that tonight those children of God can be all right, they are like mortals in their sleep. Nathaniel told us this. It is written at the end of the film: 90,000 people are still homeless on the streets of Los Angeles suburbs. This also seems to indicate that the road to salvation is not over.
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