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LOOSELY BASED on the true story of a journalist who befriended a homeless, schizophrenic man who also happened to be a really talented musician, The Soloist is a somewhat messy and slightly clichéd but nonetheless interesting look at our need for grace, and the surprising places it can come from. It also has a surprisingly high quotient of God-talk. The story concerns Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.), a columnist for theLos Angeles Times who bumps into a rambling, violin-playing street person named Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) one day – and thinks there might be a story there, after Ayers says something about having attended Juilliard once. One column leads to another, readers respond to the story, and before long an actual relationship of sorts grows between the two men. When one reader sends a cello to the paper as a gift for Ayers, Lopez arranges for Ayers to play the instrument at Lamp Community, an organization that specializes in helping the mentally ill. Lopez also arranges for Ayers to take music lessons from Graham Claydon (Tom Hollander), a professional cellist who also happens to be a pious Christian. The religious signals sent by this movie kind of go all over the place – but it’s better, I think, to have a movie stir things up and engage our minds and hearts than to make things too tidy. It is not clear, for example, why Lamp Community or one of its neighbours would have a large neon sign that quotes Romans 6:23 (“The wages of sin is death,” etc.), or why the film would focus on this sign two or three times. It is also unfortunate that Claydon’s good intentions are obscured by a sort of cluelessness in his dealings with Ayers. But the film also makes an explicit point or two about the power of grace to lift people up, and a key sequence set among the homeless makes interesting use of the Lord’s Prayer, as recited by Ayers. Add to this a scene in which an atheist interviewed by Lopez comes off looking kind of silly, and you have a film that is more pro-faith than not. • • • The Nativity Story was considered something of a box-office disappointment when it came out two and a half years ago, but that isn’t stopping other filmmakers from tackling the same subject matter. Two more movies on the birth of Jesus are now in the works. Fox Searchlight recently announced that it would produce a film version of Black Nativity, a gospel musical written by the late Langston Hughes that was one of the first plays written by an African-American to premiere on Broadway when it opened in 1961. Variety says the studio may be planning to release the film as early as this Christmas, which would make this an awfully fast production. The film will be directed by Kasi Lemmons, an actress whose previous directorial credits include Eve’s Bayou and Talk to Me. |
Meanwhile, MGM has announced several key cast members for Mary, Mother of Christ, which the studio has been developing for the past two years. The film will star Camilla Belle as Mary, Al Pacino as Herod the Great, Peter O’Toole as Symeon, Jessica Lange as Anna the Prophetess and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as both Gabriel and Lucifer. Written by Benedict Fitzgerald (The Passion of the Christ) and Barbara Nicolosi, founder of the Act One screenwriting school, Mary, Mother of Christ will be directed by Alejandro Agresti, whose last film was the time-bending love story The Lake House. • • • Swedish director Mikael Håfström – whose last film was the Stephen King horror movie 1408 – has been tapped to direct The Rite, based on the new book by Matt Baglio about an exorcism school in Italy. The script is by Michael Petroni, who was recently hired to write the film version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Baglio has been quite open about the fact that his work on the book convinced him of the reality of demons, and brought him back to the Catholic church. Whether the movie will honour those intentions is anyone’s guess, but here’s hoping. • • • Why let your kids watch cartoons on TV when they can be making cartoons at church? The Breath of Life Animation Festival is returning to Cedar Park Church in South Delta next month, and like last year’s festival, it will include workshops on claymation, hand-drawn animation, flip books and similar things, followed by a screening of short films. The festival is organized by Ken Priebe, a contributor to theHollywood Jesus website and a faculty member at the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts – who literally wrote the book onThe Art of Stop-Motion Animation. In addition to all the other activities, he says this year’s festival will include a presentation on ‘Animation as an Act of Worship.’ The doors open at 1pm June 6. May 2009 | ||||||
By Peter T. Chattaway
