I don’t know which I like more, this cover, or this one.
August Rush is the story of a 12 yr. old prodigy who was orphaned at birth. He has this uncanny perception of music and he believes that if he just listens to it, or follows it, the music will lead him to his parents.
There is nothing I love more than a movie about a genius, or a genius+orphan, or a genius+orphan+musical ability, and whaddy know, August Rush aka Evan Taylor has all three. I’m a sucker for sentimental movies. I’ve got loads of them, like Nodame Cantabile, Searching for Bobby Fischer, or Piano no Mori.
His parents come from two entirely different worlds. When they met each other, the Avril Lavigne song “Skater Boy” was playing in my mind. His father is an Irish guitarist who’s a lead singer in a band, while his mother is a sheltered cellist. Needless to say, they come from two entirely different worlds, however, their meeting could be called serendipitious. If I was a romantic, I’d say the music called them together.
There is a sense of fragility that surrounds the movie. It comes to my mind, because the coincidental meetings of characters are tenuous at best. You could say that the movie is entirely composed of coincidences that can so easily break apart. A happy ending is predicted, but nothing at all connects the side-characters, besides August Rush. He is the pivotal point, and before you come off and say that this movie sucks because it is the grand-daddy of coincidences, just bear in mind that that is not the point.
The point here is music in all its delicate, rampant, glory. The way which music connects all people from all walks of life and brings them together. August Rush, is the child of music because he hears it everywhere, in the streets amid all the chaos of subway trains and car horns, and in the fields, among the silence of the wind and the brushes of grass. He conducts it, understands it, and brings it home in such a way that we poor deaf mortals can finally understand it.
Make no mistake, you have to be a pretty uncritical person to watch this movie. I watched it with no expectations, so it pretty much exceeded what I did expect. I admit, some actors were iffy, and the movie seeks to be this utter sentimental, heartwarming, tear-jerking mix which it achieves at a messy extent, but I chose to ignore all that and just enjoy it. I understand what August Rush was going for, and I’m sorry it was brought down by some deficient elements. Wth, I love the soundtrack, and if there was a piano version of it I’d have downloaded it by now.
PS: I never knew you could play guitar by just tapping.
Oh, and Yay, I bought the whole Season 1 of Taken.
