A few weeks ago I went and saw The Soloist, a film I had been eagerly waiting to see since this fall when I saw the trailer for it in theaters.  I cried watching the trailer.  So I was really looking forward to this film.  The day before I went to see it I happened to catch Terri Gross’ interview with Steve Lopez, the LA Times journalist played by Robert Downey Jr.  Her interview added another layer of depth to the story for me, and helped fill out some of the story that gets lost in this two hour film.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, The Soloist is based on the true story of a friendship between Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man with amazing musical ability and Steve Lopez, a journalist for the LA Times.  Originally from Cleveland, Mr. Ayers learned the cello as a young boy and was later accepted into Juilliard.  By the time columnist Steve Lopez meets Nathaniel his life is on a very different path.  Homeless and suffering from schizophrenia, Nathaniel was living on the streets of Skid Row in the heart of LA.  Mr. Lopez came across Nathaniel playing the violin in the street and was taken with his skill.  Over the course of the next several years Lopez would write about Nathaniel for the LA Times, telling his compelling story and bringing awareness to the reality of life on Skid Row in a city that likes to ignore such things.

There are a few departures from the truth in the film version of the story.  This is always the case with true stories.  The medium of film often demands tweaking some story elements for the sake of the medium, but Mike King makes a good case for why these particular points of departure were unnecessary over at his blog.  One element of the story that they got spot-on was the portrayal of Skid Row.  Back in college a group of guys from our dorm spent a few weekends working at Central City Community Church in the heart of Skid Row and the poverty we encountered there was just as stark and shocking as it is portrayed in The Soloist.  The later it is in the month the more people line the streets until it becomes a tent city of homeless refugees in the heart of LA.  The actors portraying the homeless in The Soloist are playing themselves and I really appreciated that the filmmakers included the homeless in telling this story.

This film is powerful.  It’s moving.  And yet it left me with one really huge lingering question… is it a beautiful story because Nathaniel Ayers is such an amazing musician or is it beautiful because Nathaniel Ayers is a child of God?  Can we come to embrace the homeless in the way that Steve Lopez embraced Nathaniel, even if there is nothing extraordinary about them?

My prayer is that we will.

If you’d like to see the real Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ayers check out the following videos.