'Soloist' Film Transcends to Evoke Divinity in All

The Soloist is one of those films that make you flinch with its reality, yet its ideas and emotional impact stay with you for days after.

The theme of the divinity in us all runs through the film like a silver thread that gleams and disappears for stretches of time until it can be seen glinting once again. Music is the bridge that connects the film's ideas.

The film tells the story of the Los Angeles Times journalist, Steve Lopez (played by Robert Downey, Jr.), and his subject, Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man played by Jaime Foxx. A former musical prodigy who made it all the way to Julliard until he had a schizophrenic breakdown, the character intrigues Lopez, who writes about him in his city column and then becomes his friend.

Loving his mentally ill neighbor becomes a challenge, to say the least, when he tries to deal with his paranoia, lead him back into a career and help him find housing. Ayers resists his friend's help as much as he accepts it.

There was much of the "there but for the grace of God go I" feeling about the film, since Lopez is working at a company that is shedding employees in waves of lay-offs. Now journalists are not only just as good as their last story -- they're only as good as the company's stock price that quarter. My friend Valli Herman, who was laid off from there last fall, can attest to that.

The theme even continues with the homeless animals who are native to the Los Angeles area that have been displaced by housing. Raccoons pop up all over. Lopez gives up trying to get rid of them, allowing them to eat worms from his lawn.

Yes, times are tough all over, but the kicker at the end of the film is a line stating that 90,000 homeless live on the streets of Los Angeles. That's enough to fill a stadium. Even more frightening is that the numbers are increasing by the day. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, an estimated 1.5 million people will become homeless within two years due to economic problems -- not mental illness, alcoholism or drug abuse. That's a stunning figure, and one that ultimately will impact us all.