August Rush

August Rush
Promotional poster
Directed by	Kirsten Sheridan
Produced by	Richard Barton Lewis
Written by	Nick Castle James V. Hart Paul Castro
Starring	Freddie Highmore Keri Russell Jonathan Rhys Meyers Robin Williams Terrence Howard William Sadler Alex O'Loughlin
Music by	Mark Mancina Hans Zimmer (theme)
Cinematography	John Mathieson
Editing by	William Steinkamp
Studio	Southpaw Entertainment CJ Entertainment
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	November 21, 2007
Running time	113 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$25 million
Box office	$65,278,569 (worldwide)

August Rush is a 2007 drama film directed by Kirsten Sheridan and written by Paul Castro, Nick Castle, and James V. Hart, and produced by Richard Barton Lewis.

Deciding to run away to New York City, musical prodigy Evan Taylor begins to unravel the mystery of who he is, all the while his mother begins searching for him and his father searching for her.

Plot

In 1995, Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell) is a cellist in an orchestra under strict rule of her father (William Sadler). Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is the lead singer of "The Connelly Brothers", an Irish rock band. Lyla and Louis have a chance meeting during a party after their respective concerts, and sleep together on a rooftop, while a man with a harmonica and guitar plays an instrumental version of "Moondance" on the street below.

After a rude awakening by Louis's bandmates, Lyla returns to her angered father in the morning and heads back to Chicago. Louis waits for Lyla as they had agreed, before eventually heading to the hotel Lyla was staying at, but Lyla doesn't acknowledge him. He turns to his music in the hopes she'll hear it and reconnect with him, but becomes discouraged. Meanwhile, Lyla eventually realizes she is pregnant. After an argument with her father regarding the baby and her career as a cellist, Lyla runs out into the street and is struck by a car. Due to the accident trauma, she gives birth prematurely, and her father secretly puts her son up for adoption, forging her signature on the paperwork and allowing her to believe that the baby died as a result of the accident.

Eleven years later, a young boy Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) is living in a boys' orphanage outside New York City. Evan has the savant-like ability to hear music wherever he is. He is convinced that his parents will find him, which makes him the target of ridicule among the older kids at the orphanage. He meets Richard Jefferies (Terrence Howard), a social worker who gives Evan his card. Soon after, Evan runs away to New York City, "following the music" in the hope it will lead him to his family. In the process, he loses Jeffries' card, and wanders the city until finding Arthur (Leon Thomas III) performing in Washington Square Park.

Louis now lives in San Francisco, having left his band on the same night as Lyla's accident. He has a chance meeting with one of his former bandmates, and is invited to his birthday party. Louis is hesitant because he has not spoken to his brother Marshall (Alex O'Loughlin) since the band broke up, but he ultimately chooses to go. At the party, his brother is playing clips of the band performing. Louis confronts his brother and the words come to blows, and Louis's girlfriend (who realizes she never knew anything about who Louis used to be or really is), leaves him.

Lyla now lives in Chicago with a violinist roommate, and also gave up performing, but teaches music to children privately. Her friend and roommate encourages her to rejoin the New York Philharmonic, but Lyla is unconvinced. She is called to her father's deathbed and he admits to her that her child survived the accident, and is alive somewhere in New York. Upon hearing this, Lyla abandons her father to his fate and decides to return to New York.

Evan has since followed Arthur back to his home in a condemned theater, and has been taken in by Maxwell "Wizard" Wallace (Robin Williams), a vagrant musician who teaches homeless children music and employs them as street performers. He was the one playing the guitar and harmonica during Louis and Lyla's night on the rooftop. Evan tries playing Wizard's prize guitar "Roxanne", and while his initial approach is unconventional, he is so good that Wizard gives him his old spot in Washington Square Park, and Roxanne, both of which had until then been Arthur's. Wizard also gives Evan the stage name "August Rush" and begins trying to market him to clubs and event promoters. Seeing the posters that Jeffries has posted for the runaway Evan, Wizard destroys all the ones he finds, hoping to keep Evan and his gift for his own gain. Arthur comes to resent being replaced by August as Wizard's favorite.

Louis decides to reconnect with Lyla, and after learning her full name and whereabouts, flies out to Chicago to find her. He waits for several hours at the door to her apartment. When he asks one of the occupants of her apartment where Lyla is, the woman mixes up Lyla and her roommate, and says she's on her honeymoon in New York. Louis, crushed, ends up in New York and decides get his old band back together.

After a meeting on the street between Jeffries, Wizard and Arthur, the derelict theatre Wizard and his "children" are living in is raided by the police. Wizard distracts them and allows August to escape, with a warning not to tell anyone his real name. After evading the police, Evan takes refuge in an inner-city church where Hope, a young girl at the church (Jamia Simone Nash) introduces him to the piano, and to written notes. He picks up this skill so quickly that Hope, seeing her room covered in August's handwritten music and hearing him play the church's pipe organ, gets the attention of the parish pastor (Mykelti Williamson), who enrolls August at the Juilliard School. August's nonconformist approach to the curriculum nevertheless impresses the Julliard staff, and a rhapsody begins to take shape from his notes and homework assignments.

Once in New York, Lyla goes to Jeffries' office for information and, after initially being turned away by the desk clerk, eventually meets with Jeffries, who is able to identify Evan as her son. She decides to stay in New York to search for him, renting a studio apartment in the city. She also decides to take up the cello again, and accepts the offer she'd been given to perform with the Philharmonic at a series of concerts in Central Park.

August's gift is considered astounding among all at Juilliard, and he is selected to perform the rhapsody he's been composing at the same park concert as Lyla, the youngest student ever selected for this honor. Wizard intrudes during a rehearsal and, claiming to be his father and under threat of revealing August's real name, pulls August out of the school, putting him back in Washington Square playing Roxanne and planning to send him all over the country.

On the day of the outdoor symphony concert, and also of Louis's first performance after rejoining his old band, August is still forbidden by Wizard to attend his own concert. August meets Louis, who is wandering through the park with his own guitar, and they play together, neither of them knowing their blood relationship to the other. August tells him of his dilemma and Louis tells him not to give up on his music, and that if he had a concert, he wouldn't miss it for the world. August decides to leave Wizard and go to his concert anyway, with some help from Arthur, who also rebels against Wizard. August flees through the subway tunnel and towards the park where the concert is underway, following the sounds of Lyla's cello concerto performance. Wizard is last seen playing his harmonica alone in the subway.

Louis is heading towards the airport when he notices Lyla's name on a banner for the concert. He jumps out of the van he had been riding in with his bandmates and begins running towards the park. Meanwhile, Jeffries notices a misplaced flyer for August Rush, sent to Jeffries' office after August had been removed from Julliard, identifies August as Evan, and heads for the concert as well. August arrives in time to conduct his rhapsody, with Hope on stage singing and Arthur in the crowd watching August's performance. Lyla, having finished her part of the concert, begins walking away from the park, but is attracted back towards August's performance. Louis also arrives at the park and spots Lyla, reuniting with her at the front of the crowd. August finishes his rhapsody and, turning around, smiles at Lyla and Louis, realizing that they are his parents. The film concludes with August saying "The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen."

Cast

• Freddie Highmore as Evan Taylor / August Rush
• Keri Russell as Lyla Novacek
• Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Louis Connelly
• Robin Williams as Maxwell "Wizard" Wallace
• Terrence Howard as Counselor Richard Jeffries
• William Sadler as Thomas Novacek
• Jamia Simone Nash as Hope
• Mykelti Williamson as Reverend James
• Leon G. Thomas III as Arthur
• Alex O'Loughlin as Marshall
• Bonnie McKee as Lizzy
• Timothy Mitchum as Joey
• Becki Newton as Jennifer

Music

• "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
• "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
• "Something inside"
  Written and Performed by John Legend
• "August's Rhapsody"
  Written by Mark Mancina

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. King's hands are used in close-ups for August Rush.

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's about this young boy who believes that he's going to find his parents through his music. That's what drives him."^[1] 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've been subliminally hearing it throughout the film."^[2] The score was recorded at the Todd-AO Scoring Stage and the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Brothers.^[3]

Reception

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In a review by USA Today, Claudia Puig commented that "August Rush will not be for everyone, but it works if you surrender to its lilting and unabashedly sentimental tale of evocative music and visual poetry."^[4] The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the film positively, writing "the story is about musicians and how music connects people, so the movie's score and songs, created by composers Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer, give poetic whimsy to an implausible tale."^[5]

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 37% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 110 reviews. "Consensus: Though featuring a talented cast, August Rush cannot overcome the flimsy direction and schmaltzy plot."^[6] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 38 out of 100, based on 27 reviews.^[7]

Pam Grady of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "an inane musical melodrama." Grady said "the entire story is ridiculous" and "Coincidences pile on, behavior and motivations defy logic, and the characters are so thinly drawn that most of the cast is at a loss."^[8] Edward Douglas of comingsoon.net said it "does not take long for the movie to reveal itself as an extremely contrived and predictable movie that tries too hard to tug on the heartstrings."^[9]

Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars, calling it "a movie drenched in sentimentality, but it's supposed to be. The movie also came to a very sudden end leaving it unfinished."^[10]

Jamila Gavin compared the film to Dickens' Oliver Twist and Coram Boy.^[11][12]

Shawn Johnson used August's Rhapsody during her Floor Exercise performance during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Awards

Despite the mixed reception, August Rush was praised for its music. The song "Raise It Up" was nominated for Best Original Song at the 80th Academy Awards, but lost to Once.

References

External links

• Official site
• August Rush at the Internet Movie Database
• August Rush at Rotten Tomatoes
• August Rush at Metacritic
• August Rush at Box Office Mojo
• August Rush at Allmovie
• Scoring Session Photo Gallery at ScoringSessions.com