Unable to meet his inspirational hero Beethoven, he stays around his sculpture.

The movie makes serious interventions to depict that some relationships do not work where policies, jobs and time exist. They are so divine that they are reluctant to help themselves inside “policies and system.” Human relationships of friends or family are very delicate and pure in its own form. World’s laws, rules and system have corrupted it with artificial bonding and unreal intimacy.

The movie ‘The Soloist’ directed by Joe Wright based on the book by Steve Lopez entrenched my heart in troubling thoughts for several days. I prefer to write down some of the aspects of the story that had thrown light on certain unnoticed matters. I would like to make comments only on the anecdote rather than the movie’s technical sides.

The opening of the movie is very specific in reflecting the busy nature of a city. How less often does a city care about a homeless person lying on the street. How deeply “office people” are drowned in their job. People who have a future to purse is mindless of the little humans around them. Meanwhile the protagonist Steve Lopez is always in a hunt for stories. Even though, no other columnists in his newspaper company have followers and admirers like him, the ‘’ no messages” in his voice mail box pointed out that he led a very lonely personal life. It is as simple as that there is none to visit him in the hospital when he met with an accident. Yet, he doesn’t seem to be bothered by his lonely life. His passion for his profession keeps him engaged. As in every newspaper man’s life he is accompanied by a voice recorder documenting his thoughts and plans about his prospective columns.

The other side of the movie revolves around the life routines of a homeless man, Nathaniel – the soloist. He seems to be affected with schizophrenia. Steve found Nathaniel while playing his violin and finds a story to put in his next column. Interestingly, the movie illustrates how addictive is man to opportunities. The soloist doesn’t seem to believe in ‘opportunity’. He enjoys playing violin and he is fantastically good at it. He has no expectation of a standing ovation or applause from a big crowd. He plays the string to find happiness for himself. So, life is itself an opportunity. You can’t sell your life. Hence, there is no selling or buying of opportunities. The Soloist unveils the hypocrisy in going in search of opportunities.

The soloist kept on talking without pauses and periods the day the protagonist met him. After many days of constant conversations and building a consistent relation with Steve Lopez, he gradually learnt to place pauses and periods at the right places. A homeless who never had anyone to talk with had forgotten to converse with the right flow of emotions. These are desperate times when pauses and periods in sentences go meaningless. Because sentences no more become conversations for the homeless from the day, they are alone.

Further, the anecdote chooses to portray lives of many homeless people like Nathaniel. The choice of words and the style of homeless remains inconceivable for the office people. Their hunger is not only for food but also for happiness – which is something the privileged class never understands. Their sense of happiness is not defined by promotion or recognition. It is purely derived from pursuing their own enjoyment like relishing music or talking to oneself or maybe staying silent in a corner. Often, people with a “condition” talk to each other without words. The ‘’abnormal’’ people seems to have very “normal” life with their alike. Normality is different for each individual.

Sometimes arranging a bed and an apartment does not help them. They don’t want to be normal like the other people. The soloist ran away from his home to sleep on streets. There he found himself away from commitments and burden of recognition. He chose his world. He chose his comfortable zone. Later, he was shown to be very hesitant to accept Steve’s offer – an apartment to live in, for himself. He believed that it was better to live on the open earth, rather than living in concrete boxes. What if my home is not your home?

The most striking portrayal of the movie is the attachment protagonist develops to the soloist. Is it out of sympathy or empathy? It is all up to the audience to decide. Perhaps, a small line between sympathy and empathy. Meanwhile, the anecdote clearly characterizes both of them by reflecting that one reached the peak of his happiness from writing and expressing his observations in a column, the other savored the taste of his happiness by playing strings anywhere he felt comfortable, mostly footpaths and tunnels.

The soloist is guided by the obsession he has to Beethoven whereas the protagonist is driven by his obsession for the soloist. But the obsession is a deep personal attachment. It makes us realize that unknowingly we objectify the people we have personal relationships with. We call it by the nick name possessiveness. The soloist questions this objectification in a very different manner without taking it into a much-complicated level. Two persons in whatsoever relation they might be in - friends, partner or business, one cannot objectify the other for any reason. Two private individuals have their own decision-making capacity to take decisions for themselves. These are revelations that a person with a “condition” had while the columnist who the world expects to know everything under sun never had seen this side of friendship. It was not his fault. It is a flaw with which we are all brought up. It is a misunderstanding many of us forget correct. No legal document or medical prescriptions authorizes a person to take decision for the other person one is related to. The movie makes serious interventions to depict that some relationships do not work where policies, jobs and time exist. They are so divine that they are reluctant to help themselves inside “policies and system.” Human relationships of friends or family are very delicate and pure in its own form. World’s laws, rules and system has corrupted it with artificial bonding and unreal intimacy.

Steve’s marriage life is adorable, though the partners live separately for some reasons hidden. It has a depth unseen. While his wife is troubled by the love, he shows to Nathaniel which she never received from him when they were married. It was after separation they had realized the value of such a relationship. Whichever relationship it might be objectification destroys the natural process of maintaining the same. It is well flavored in the statement from the movie “just be a friend and show up.” Being a friend or husband or wife is an honor. Let it be any position one needs to adorn concerning a relation. Finally, taking the soloist as a lesson, his courage and humility changed the attitude of the protagonist to his friend as well as to his wife. “The dignity of being loyal to something you believe in” is the dialogue the protagonist delivers towards the end of the movie. Those words contain the crux. The way Steve changed calling his friend from the first name Nathaniel to his second name Ayers with a prefix ‘Mr.’ enlightens that freedom to decide things for oneself is paramount in any sort of relationships.

The movie is an eye-opener to the mental conditions of the homeless also counting the “normal” people messing up their relationships. The reality is that whether poverty or homelessness drowns a person, he still has the liberty to make a choice on every small thing concerning him. The privileged is not the custodian of the unprivileged - in the name of charity or sympathy. Giving Respect to the high class while showing Sympathy to the low class are heinous ways of treating human beings. Remaining a friend to a person, indiscriminate to the class he belongs to, is the most dignified act.