The Soloist tells the story of a Los Angeles homeless man, staying pretty close to the true story. The film counts the cost of helping a homeless person with serious mental illness.

The homeless man, Nathaniel Ayres (played by Jamie Foxx), is a gifted violin/cello player who is drifting because of schizophrenia and broken family bonds.

LA Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) writes a column about Ayres after watching him play the violin on the sidewalk. Normally he would move on to the next story. But he is pulled back to Ayres. He writes some more columns and tries to help him, only to find that Ayres doesn’t want anyone’s help. He is mentally ill and has cut off past relationships. He tests Lopez over and over, perhaps unconsciously trying to find out how much he really cares. They make small steps of progress, but this Hollywood version captures some tough truths about mental illness and the homeless.

“Often these people are very hard to love,” says Carter Wolf, executive director of the Horizon House in Indianapolis, Ind. Horizon provides a day shelter for the homeless, sometimes something as simple as a shower or a meal, or possibly some steps toward getting a job. Wolf estimates that about half the homeless have some kind of debilitating mental illness, often mixed with drug and alcohol abuse.

They usually seem antisocial at first. “The serious mental illness is reflected in what seems to be inappropriate behavior. He’s aggressive, he’s a bully, he’s lacking social skills,” Wolf says. “These people are soloists in their lives. They don’t trust other people.” That can help explain the broken family bonds, as parents or brothers and sisters get worn out trying to help.

Wolf remembers a man with an obsessive-compulsive problem. “The only thing he could do is give his name when he came in. He wouldn’t talk to anyone,” Wolf said. “He wouldn’t see a professional. He was almost paranoid about it. It was a long, slow relationship with one person at first, then eventually all of Horizon House.” Eventually the man moved into an apartment and can now work at a part-time job. The key to his success was the personal relationships and staff perseverance at the Horizon House.

The movie shows the debate between the medical model and social model. One side calls for the right medication, while the other side calls for personal compassion and friendship. In real life, the homeless person needs both.

Christian rescue missions also find that a commitment to Christ can yield substantial healing, yet still fall short of perfection. Serious mental illness is a result of the fall of man, and the effects of the fall remain even in the midst of the love of Christ, family support, and appropriate medication. Sometimes success is sobriety. Sometimes it is using appropriate medication for the mental illness or pursuing a sheltered kind of work with social-work support. Wheeler Mission in Indianapolis, for example, has a pallet-making shelter work option for men who have sobered up and entered the mission’s discipleship program.

In The Soloist movie, the columnist becomes frustrated when he realizes that Ayres won’t cooperate with any quick medical fixes. “You’re never going to cure Nathaniel,” says his editor and estranged wife Mary. “Just be his friend and show up.”

That was a good line of wisdom from Mary. (In real life at the real Los Angeles Times, Lopez is married with a young child. He struggles to balance family life, work, and this unplanned social work project.)

At one point in the film, the Los Angeles mayor finally reads enough of the columns about the homeless. He shows up and promises $50 million to clean up the problem. Yet the subsequent police raids on the homeless camps seem to suggest that government-directed utopian schemes can do more harm than good. This is a nice touch in a time when the Barack Obama administration in Washington is promising to fix so many social problems with taxpayers’ money. Still, the movie really doesn’t offer a deep political message, just a subtle caution about government’s capacities.

What Hollywood got right is how personal friendships are crucial for mentally disabled homeless persons. Great advances in medicine have offered breakthroughs in recent years, but science doesn’t have all the answers.

The movie also shows the strengths of the rescue missions, which were helping the poor long before they became a government concern in the 1980s. The mission director in the movie offers the columnist a balanced view of the seriously mentally ill, steering away from quick-fix solutions.

The Soloist is not exactly entertaining, but it is educational. Some foul language warrants a PG-13 caution. Yet anyone concerned about the homeless will want to see it. The book, written by the real-life Lopez, is even better.

—Russ Pulliam

Russ Pulliam is a contributing editor to the Witness. He is an elder in the Second (Indianapolis, Ind.) RPC.