PG | 1h 54min | Drama, Musical | 2007
This film begins, fittingly enough, with sound rather than an image. The first sound you hear is the voice of protagonist, Evan (Freddie Highmore), “Listen. Can you hear it? I can hear it, everywhere. In the wind. In the air. … All you have to do is listen.”
That opening shot is from above. Evan is facing a sunny sky but his eyes are closed. He’s spinning slowly amid a gentle breeze, in rapture, anxious to shut out all his senses save one: his hearing. The open field he’s in is spread around him like a green ocean, its tall grass swirling around him like waves. In the background, he hears a flood of sound rushing toward him, all around him: beautiful notes, lovely chords.
That’s how his search begins. Only, he’s searching for what he knows is already his.
Kirsten Sheridan’s film is about learning, loving, losing, searching for, and finding music, and through music, ourselves.
Concert cellist Lyla (Keri Russell), and guitarist-singer Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) meet and fall in love, by pure chance. She becomes pregnant with their child, who grows up to be Evan. But circumstance separates the three of them.
Lyla’s domineering dad, opposed to anything that distracts from her concert career, exploits her hospitalization following a road-accident, to palm baby Evan off to child services. Grief-stricken, and believing her dad’s lie that the baby had died, Lyla stops performing, preferring to teach instead. Louis, unaware that they have a child at all, takes up a corporate job, forgoing life in a band.
Meanwhile, Evan grows up a closeted musical prodigy, weathering soulless orphanages, before breaking loose to search for his parents. That leads him to street-musician Wizard (Robin Williams) who takes destitute kids under his wing, nurtures their musicality, but otherwise lives off their pickings from street performances.
Lost, lonely, and now christened August Rush by this new family, Evan befriends fellow child-musician Arthur (Leon Thomas III), but hopes that his music will one day lead him to his parents.
Sheridan’s fairy-tale plot, in contemporary New York of all places, is rarely believable. That’s the point. It isn’t meant to be. It’s meant to carry the music on a pedestal, from the first scene to the last. It’s meant to be an unapologetic celebration of harmonies, melodies, silences, rhythms, and beats. In interviews Meyers has said that the movie isn’t about actors or their conversations; there’s little dialogue, anyway. Instead, it’s about actors making space for the biggest character in the script: music.
Director Sheridan, editor William Steinkamp, cinematographer John Mathieson, and composer Mark Mancina together conjure several magical moments; Evan in a bustling square, losing himself in the sounds of the city is just one.
Expert Musicians
Mancina’s approach is eclectic rather than purist; some tracks are a mix of rock and classical, others a mix of hymn and soul.
American guitar-virtuoso Kaki King’s small, but expert hands are the perfect “body double” for close-ups of Highmore’s tiny, but novice hands. For the set piece guitar tracks, “Bari Improv,” and “Ritual Dance,” King slaps and damps strings with fiery brilliance, using two-handed fretting and tapping. Every harmonic, hammer-on and pull-off, every strum and slide showcases her mastery. Brazilian guitarist Heitor Pereira performs, with Doug Smith, the other track, “Dueling Guitars” with no less finesse.
You’ll struggle to suppress an urge to ask for an encore.
Highmore barely speaks but conveys volumes with his eyes, his lips. He moodily hammers his fingers and palms on the fretboard and strings as his dream of finding his parents threatens to elude him. But when he’s hopeful, he radiates joy, gazing up at the giant church-organ pipes, smashing out wondrous tunes that rise up to the angels, looking down on him from their stained-glass windows.
To achieve some level of visual credibility, actors had to train (Highmore on guitar, organ, and conducting and Russell on cello) for parts which showed them playing an instrument, even if the actual performances were by real musicians. Meyers, a self-taught singer-guitarist, sang and played guitar for some of his songs. Thankfully, Sheridan doesn’t demand technical brilliance of her actors, but dwells on the emotion they create and convey.
Scriptwriter Nick Castle has said in interviews that he was struck by how his real-life musical-prodigy nephew, otherwise uncommunicative, seemed to be “in a different dimension” when listening to or playing music. That awe is mirrored in the character of August Rush, who bears within him virtuosic prowess, even before formal training, that most musicians achieve in only fractions, even after years of formal training.
Through her movie, Sheridan is saying that to be gifted isn’t enough; we must find a way of gifting in return. At its best, music is an expression of gratitude for life, a gift that, if nourished, becomes its own thanks. This is much like parents who are committed to love their child is their sign of thanks for the gift of life they received.
Evan says, without a shred of doubt, that the music he hears comes from his parents. If it brought them together, it’ll bring him back to them too. It’s like someone calling to him, and writing it down is like calling back to the ones who gave him the music.
At one point Evan innocently asks the Wizard if only some of us hear this music.
The Wizard answers simply, “Only some of us are listening.”
