My review is on the movie August Rush. It is one of my favorite movie. It stars Kerri Russell and Robin Williams in it. It even has that little boy (Freddie Highmore) who plays from the Spiderwick Chronicles and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This movie is full of heart and soul. There is beautiful music in it. And I do not know where they found all these adorable children to play in this movie, they are cute. Especially the little black girl. I think she has the best lines in the whole movie.
And she has a singing voice to match. I am sure people enjoy this movie purely because of the high quality soundtrack and professional (good looking) actors. This movie directed by Kirsten Sheridan; written by Nick Castle and James V. Hart, based on a story by Paul Castro and Mr. Castle; director of photography, John Mathieson; edited by William Steinkamp; music by Mark Mancina; production designer, Michael Shaw; produced by Richard Barton Lewis; released by Warner Brothers Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Stared by: Freddie Highmore (August Rush), Keri Russell (Lyla Novacek), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Louis Connelly), Terrence Howard (Richard Jeffries), Robin Williams (Wizard) and William Sadler (Thomas Novacek). This movie is so moving. This movie tells about August, introduced as Evan Taylor, has absolute faith that music will mystically reunite him with his parents, who he is certain must be somewhere out there, although he has no clues to their identity.
As we learn early in the movie, those parents, Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an Irish rock singer with a musical sweet tooth, and Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell), a classical cellist fell in love at first sight and conceived him on a rooftop overlooking Washington Square but were kept apart by her conniving, ambitious father (William Sadler). Months after their night of love, the pregnant Lyla is hit by a car and gives birth prematurely. In the most preposterous of the many ludicrous plot twists in a movie whose continuity is flimsy at best, her father forges her signature on adoption papers, gives the baby away, then tells her it died.
Louis and Lyla abandon their performing careers and morosely search for they know not what. In the meantime, Evan flees from a group home in New Jersey to New York City, where he falls in with a band of runaways living in the old Fillmore East Theater in the East Village. Here, Wizard (Robin Williams), the Fagin character in the movie’s “Oliver Twist”-inspired subplot, reigns as their cunning surrogate father who collects and distributes their earnings from panhandling.
When Evan, who has never touched a musical instrument, picks up a guitar for the first time and plays it like a pro, Wizard christens him August Rush, a rock-star-worthy name taken from the side of a truck, and seeing a potential gold mine exploits August for every penny he can earn. After the boy demonstrates the same talent on a church organ, there is no stopping his meteoric ascent. In six months he is conducting a symphony orchestra performance of his original composition on the Great Lawn in Central Park.
August believes, really believes, that music has the power to bring people together, and finds a sympathizer when he comes upon a church choir where the preacher turns out to have connections at Juilliard. So, yes, August is discovered as a child genius, and quickly earns the right to conduct his own symphony at an outdoor concert in Central Park, where he proves himself an expert conductor and his mother is the cellist and his father is nearby, both of them still under the spell of their long-lost love, and he turns around to see Lyla and Louis standing hand in hand.
August Rush is a “feel-good movie” with a bit of a fairy tale element with the story of the forlorn orphan seeking out his parents and finding a world of instant success along the way. The only thing that I did not like about this movie is the ending, it left me wanting more. As for the grand finale, well it was totally disappointing. It was as though they cut the entire ending.
It is not that I have no a romantic imagination; but to set a story in total reality then to expect the audience to believe in the unbelievable with no justification, explanation or any other “action” is asking too much of this viewer. Lyla and Louis “followed the music” to August/Evan’s concert (their son), suddenly found themselves holding hands next to one another in the front row and never uttered a word to each other. That was it. Louis was at no point told that August/Evan was his son and as far as I felt lead to believe – Lyla did not give two jots about Louis anyhow.
But, it is still interesting and at least the music is enjoyable. About the music of this movie, I found it out, this movie used songs: “Moondance” written by Van Morrison, Performed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, “This Time” written by Chris Trapper, Performed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, “Bari Improv” written by Mark Mancina and Kaki King, Performed by Kaki King, “Ritual Dance” written by Michael Hedges, Performed by Kaki King, and “Raise It Up” written by Impact Repertory Theatre, Performed by Jamia Simone Nash and Impact Repertory Theatre.
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song: “Dueling Guitars” written by Heitor Pereira, Performed by Heitor Pereira and Doug Smith, “Someday” written and Performed by John Legend, and “August’s Rhapsody”. The final number with Lyla and Louis begins with Lyla playing the Adagio-Moderato from Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor. Except for “Dueling Guitars”, all of August’s guitar pieces were played by American guitarist-composer Kaki King, performing as his hands for the movie. Composer Mark Mancina spent over a year and a half composing the score of August Rush. The heart of the story is how we respond and connect through music. It is about this young boy who believes that he is going to find his parents through his music. That is what drives him. ” The final theme of the movie was composed first. “That way I could take bits and pieces of the ending piece and relate it to the things that are happening in (August’s) life. All of the themes are pieces of the puzzle, so at the end it means something because you have been subliminally hearing it throughout the film. ” The score was recorded at the Todd-AO Scoring Stage and the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Brothers.
The soundtrack has songs from new and established acts. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song (“Raise it Up”). This movie was phenomenal. Truly inspiring. It teaches us that we can find love through music. We can find happiness through music. As Robin Williams said in it, “Music is god’s way of telling there is more out there than just us. ” This film is perfect for all ages. I thought it was good. It was a good story. I enjoyed the flow and blending of music, and it shows how God can link events and people together to accomplish what He wants.
The only problem was the premarital sex, which was even when they first met. Even though it does not show, it is known by her pregnancy. Other than this, the music was great, and the idea of not giving up hope was great. One of the most poignant recurring themes may be the message to baby-boom parents from their own children. The characters most often urging abortion on the expectant mother were aging boomers, and they are not attractive moments. In August Rush, Lyla’s father tells her that her baby was killed in an auto accident and gives the child to an orphanage to protect her career.
The film, as noted, also shows a powerful belief in the family, and perhaps unintentionally, the nuclear family (dad, mom, child). This is a great insight as well. Though the family is also not ultimately transcendent, as August Rush might lead us to think, we may say that the family is perhaps God’s greatest earthly gift to us. It is simply impossible to enumerate the ways in which we are blessed on a daily, even hourly, basis by our families, even if they are not families of considerable health. Just having a family is immensely meaningful.
The support that one has in being part of a family is not often consciously thought of but is precious beyond quantification. The film shows us what it means for people to live without the structures of family and most clearly to live without parents as an abandoned boy. August Rush seeks true transcendence and fails to find it. But we may commend it for its pursuit and enjoy for its depiction of two of the choicest gifts God has given humanity: music and family. This movie shows us for the hundredth time that the people around us are not living atomistic lives, at least not all of the time.
