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In addition to the authenticity, Wright does Lopez one better by bringing some artistry to the story that seems lacking in Lopez's journalistic prose style. Some of it works. Some of it doesn't. When Lopez and Ayers visit a rehearsal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the picture fades out and we get abstract colors splashing across the screen in time to the music. It's a bit unpleasantly disorienting. A perfect example of an occasion where Wright's artistry works happens while Ayers is performing beneath an overpass. The sound of Ayers' music fills the theatre and we get a sweeping shot from a 100-foot STRADA crane that rises from the street below past the overpass and into the sky. We're seeing the beauty of LA in a really impressive sequence featuring that shot and an aerial view of pigeons flying above the busy highways of LA. For the briefest moment, this is some really profoundly beautiful stuff. It's a pity there couldn't have been more moments like that in the film.

The Verdict

While Lopez's book captures the complexity of Ayers situation and does a very admirable job of addressing issues of homelessness and schizophrenia, Lopez's style lacks the kind of poetry that would really bring the reality of Ayers' situation with any kind of substantial artistry. Wright's film treatment of the story may not have an appreciation for the complexity of the issues (or of human nature, for that matter) but his lens picks-up much of the beauty that is lost to Lopez's journalistic prose. Had the film bent just a bit more in the direction of Lopez's innate understanding of what makes the story compelling in the first place, it would've ended up being a superior work. Instead, we end up with two distinct versions of Ayers' life, neither of which end up being completely satisfying as individual works. In spite of all of this, Ayers, his editors, Wright and the film's producers are doing an admirable job of bringing attention to a side of the human experience which often gets ignored.

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