‘The Soloist’ not a feel-good film

Newspapers have a new BFF, and it's the movies.

We looked pretty good in "State of Play" defending the people's right to know, and in "The Soloist" we're at our best again, shining a light in the darker corners of civic life.

Of course, one of the things illuminated in "The Soloist" is our own poor health - the movie is in part a tribute to the worth and struggles of our industry. (I think Hollywood sees itself in our plight, as it has its own problems competing with free content.)

Anyway, it loves newspapers, and so do I, and so I was engrossed in "The Soloist," while others around me yawned their way through its melancholy 117 minutes. Fair warning: There are probably notes to this dirge that only a newspaperman can hear.

Did I mention it's also intentionally atonal, this dirge? "The Soloist" is a tough movie built around the difficult friendship between Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (ex of the Inky) and the homeless man whose life he chronicles.

It begins when Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) strikes up a conversation with a street musician named Ayers (Jamie Foxx), who's ranting and plucking on two strings of a busted violin.

The man babbles, but Lopez gets his name, hears the word "Julliard," and does a little digging. He unearths (and reports, in a series of columns) the compelling biography of a boy genius whose promise was cut short by madness, a biography that also tells the story of urban homelessness. (As does this movie, with rare emotional restraint.)

The title is meant to be ironic. Ayers is the trained cellist playing to an empty street, but Lopez is himself a loner - divorced, somewhat estranged (so says the movie) from his own son.

Ayers has his music, Lopez his writing. He lives with detachment but writes with feeling, and his columns are readable and moving, especially those about Ayers - the series' hits such a nerve that the city's political leadership is mobilized to pour more resources into homeless services.

Lopez gets an award, but he doesn't feel good about it - this ain't the feel good movie of '09. He recognizes that his success has done nothing, really, for Ayers. He knows he owes Ayers something in return, but stops short of giving him what he needs most - a friend.

This is not to make Lopez a heel. Lopez feels, and we feel, the burden of being a friend to someone lost to mental illness - someone just lucid and independent enough to refuse treatment.

"The Soloist" takes us to L.A.'s skid row (and a non-profit service agency called Lamp), and most of the people we see there are not actors, even those with speaking roles. They are the homeless, and their group-therapy confessions are real. There is an amazing scene here of a woman explaining why she doesn't take medication to cure her of the voices she hears in her head: The voices comfort her.

"The Soloist" was ticketed for a holiday release, then delayed, and you can see why. It doesn't have a commercial bone in its body.

There is no healing moment, jackpot payoff, triumphant recital, magical reconciliation. Ayers is sometimes thankful, sometimes irrational and violent, and that will never change.

Through Lamp counselors (these are great scenes), Lopez learns the best he can do for Ayers is get him into a clean, safe room, without the pre-condition of treatment or medication.

Hey, I told you - it's not "A Beautiful Mind," and there are some missteps here. But it's an unusually honest movie about homelessness and about newspapers. Every time Lopez visits the office, you see someone carrying out a potted plant, or you catch the tail end of some boilerplate layoff speech about staff reductions.

Ah, the soloists, linked again. Newspapers and classical music, vestigial remnants of an ancient culture. Kept alive by subscription, love, and maybe madness. *

Produced by Gary Foster, Russ Krasnoff, d*rected by Joe Wr*ght, wr*tten by Susannah Grant, mus*c by Dar*o Mar*anell*, d*str*buted by Paramount P*ctures.