What happens when a newspaper reporter befriends a homeless man suffering from schizophrenia?
Interesting things when the homeless man suffering from schizophrenia happens to be a first class cellist and someone the newspaper man can exploit for a human interest series in the L.A. Times.
Some of my psychotherapist colleagues have written that this film has things to teach mental health professionals, but I am not sure what it is.
The street worker at the homeless shelter says he doesn't believe in diagnoses and he doesn't appear to be a fan of medications. He proposes that the kindly but frustrated newspaper man just be the man with schizophrenia's friend.
Some naive laypeople, watching this film, will think that if people with schizophrenia just had more friends, the world would be filled with music and creative art and feel good bonhomie.
This would be a perverted message which would set community mental health back decades.
The soloist is one of those feel good movies which depicts the ravages of the disease of schizophrenia, but communicates a simplistic and sentimental message.
While Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. do a great job depicting the characters and may even be Oscar quality, and the story is worth telling and watching, the social value of this being a depiction of real life schizophrenia and how our society deals with it, leaves a lot to be desired.
If there was a Steve Lopez around to befriend all the people who suffer from schizophrenia and if they were all as talented as Nathaniel Ayers, the world would be swell, but in fact, it is the rarity of such occurrences which make this film a curiosity.
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