Deborah Ross

Keeping it real

The Soloist<br /> 12A, Nationwide

issue 26 September 2009

The Soloist
12A, Nationwide

The Soloist is ‘based on a true story’ and the book by LA Times columnist Steve Lopez entitled: The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, which is exactly the sort of thing I’d race past in Waterstones. (Well, dawdle past, but while picking up my speed a bit; I’m not really a racer.) I didn’t have high hopes for the film either. With a book title like that, why would I? Oh boy, I even thought, it’s going to be one of those uplifting friendship movies accompanied by emancipating, emotionally soaring music and you know what? I would have been totally, 100 per cent spot-on (as usual!) if only I hadn’t been so entirely wrong. The Soloist is a fantastically decent, serious, intelligent and moving film about what most would refer to as ‘mental illness’, but may well just be a different way of being.

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