Right from the start of the movie you can tell that the writer is using the movie to further some of her political beliefs. Yes, I realize that a film is often made of the inputs of multiple writers and cast members, but for the sake and ease of this review, let's just assume the strong likelihood that there is one primary writer. Furthermore I have read that the screenplay was penned by Susannah Grant, so I will use the pronoun "her" when referring to the writer. As I was saying, Robert Downey Jr's character Steve Lopez makes some unneeded and unnecessary ignorant comments about Governor Schwarzenegger that come from left field, sarcastically saying that the governor is "doing a bang up job," and mocking Schwarzenegger's background as a bodybuilder (the greatest bodybuilder of all time might I add). If you know how I roll, you know the movie just pissed me the fuck off by spewing that bullshit. Typical ignorant people, usually liberals, tend to blame one political head, usually the president but in this case Governor Schwarzenegger, for all of society's current woes. Dumbasses, you think one man is going to solve every fucking problem in the country? Governments, both federal and state, are comprised of thousands of people, and you are blaming one guy for the country's or state's problems? Use some basic logical thinking to realize that one political leader cannot magically solve all of society's problems.
A little bit later in the film, and definitely from out of no where, Steve Lopez mocks a member of the group Atheists United. During the mocking, Lopez asks the Atheists United member, "What else do you not believe in?" To which the socially inept Atheists United member responds, "Science Fiction." What the fuck? No one says that shit! That's fucking ridiculous, atheists don't have a core basic disbelief in science fiction. Sure, it's fiction, so by definition of the word "fiction" people in general shouldn't believe in it. However, there is truth in fiction and past science fiction writings have spawned the ideas for many of today's inventions. The writer's theistic beliefs have caused her to make up lies about atheists in order to make atheists look bad. Nice job asshole.
Not too long into the movie, Robert Downey Jr.'s character Steve Lopez finds Jamie Foxx's character Nathaniel Ayers beautifully playing the violin in down town L.A. (By the way, in real life, bums are rarely talented at anything except for sucking at life). The plot of the movie revolves around Steve Lopez befriending and helping Nathaniel Ayers and encouraging Nathaniel to use his musical talents. Nathaniel was an extremely talented musician when he was younger and attended the prestigious Julliard Academy. However, Nathaniel naturally and organically (not through external sources like drugs) becomes schizophrenic and drops out of school. The scenes of Nathaniel losing his mind were excellent and pretty scary. Whether or not someone becoming schizophrenic is actually like that, I'm not sure, but it was definitely a frightening interpretation of it.
Current day, Nathaniel is bat shit crazy and almost gets himself run over by nearly causing a few car accidents. He also violently attacks a few people in the movie. He is a danger to himself and others. Yet strangely enough, the writer of this movie seems to want to make the point that Nathaniel and mentally ill people in general should not be medicated! WTF? In the movie, the leader of the homeless shelter, David, shows resistance to medicating Nathaniel, giving vague ambiguous reasons like it's Nathaniel's choice to be medicated (unless he's a danger to himself and others, which he had already proven he was) and rhetorically asks if medication is really what Nathaniel needs right now. If medicated, this schizo homeless man could possibly show significant mental improvement which could improve his entire life. Why would you want to deny him that? Other parts of the movie show homeless people in the shelter complaining about how they don't like the medicine they are given to control the voices in their heads. I LOVE the medicine that the homeless are given to control the voices in their heads because then there are no voices instructing them to shank me in the neck. Why is the writer ragging on mental health medicine so much? There is medicine out there that can help these people. Furthermore, in the final minutes of the movie, Steve Lopez says something to the effect that Nathaniel might not be any better mentally than when Steve first found him, and that maybe Steve's friendship helped him, but Steve is not sure. With that said, the writer doesn't present any alternatives to medicine or solid arguments of why Nathaniel shouldn't be medicated. Nathaniel should be medicated so he doesn't hurt himself or others, and so he can possibly get off of the streets and live a semblance of a somewhat normal life! The writer is the crazy one in this case for promoting her foolish and dangerous personal ideologies that mentally ill people shouldn't take medicine when there is a clear physical component causing their mental illness.
Other than that, there are a couple scenes about homeless that are way over the top and pretty ridiculous. Both involve enormous homeless camps that look like a cross between a giant homeless rave, a riot, and a Fight Club tournament all at the same time. Sure there are blocks and blocks on Skid Row lined with homeless people sleeping. Go watch the excellent "Bum Fights" series to see this. However, there are not huge nightly homeless rave/riot/fights like the movie portrays. If they existed, their existence would be easily provable. There is a finite amount of real estate in L.A. and many people would have surely found these enormous, chaotic homeless events and recorded them, and this phenomenon would have appeared on the internet or the news by now. They don't exist, and that's why no one has ever seen them.
In conclusion, the film is decent because of the good acting and you may want to see the movie just for that reason. You may also like it if you live in Los Angeles, because the movie setting is definitely focused on L.A. The movie also brings attention to the homeless problem, which ostensibly sounds good, but the writer's resistance to using medicine for the mentally ill may actually cause more harm than good. If you can ignore the writer's illogical and ignorant political and religious beliefs that are sometimes injected into the film, then you might want to check out "The Soloist."
0 comments:
Post a Comment