Just let the music play

I made a mistake in last Friday’s column about the soundtrack album to the movie Once. I wrote that Falling Slowly, performed by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won the Academy Award for Best Original Song over three nominees from the Disney live-action fantasy Enchanted and an Eddie Vedder composition from the Sean Penn directed Into The Wild.

It turns out that that was not the case. Falling Slowly did win over Happy Working Song, So Close and That’s How You Know from Enchanted but not over Guaranteed from Into the Wild. Vedder’s song won the Golden Globe for Best Theme Song but it was not nominated for the Oscars. The other nominee was Raise It Up which was performed in the movie August Rush by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

I have seen Meyers before. He is a great-looking guy with enough acting chops to carry off diverse roles in Velvet Goldmine and Bend It Like Beckham. But the first time I heard of August Rush was when I found out about my error. So I asked, what is August Rush and was rewarded with such a delightful surprise.

Directed by the still unknown Kirsten Sheridan, August Rush is a love story about an Irish rock singer and guitarist and a young cellist. They meet and fall in love during a wild party night in New York, make love and agree to meet again the next day in Washington Square to run away together.

The girl Lyla played by Keri Russell of Felicity is stopped by her father from making the date. The boy Louis, played by Meyers, goes home disappointed. Then there is the baby. Lyla got pregnant from that one-nighter, but her father who is determined to make a star cellist out of his daughter told her that the baby died. The experience turns the lovers against their music. She stops playing the cello and he leaves his band. Their lives are never the same again.

Okay, you may say that in this day and age in New York, these two could have at least exchanged phone numbers. They could have found other ways to get in touch given the fact that they both had some celebrity. People do not stay broken hearted for 11 years anymore. But that is not what August Rush is about. The movie is over the top melodrama with all the ingredients originated by Charles Dickens and processed to inanity by soap operas from everywhere.

When you think Dickens, you think of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield and all those poor orphans. The orphan here is Evan, the son of Lyla and Louis who was actually given up by her father for adoption. He is played by Freddie Highmore, the current heartthrob of the pre-teen set. He was in The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Golden Compass and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now 11 years old, he has grown into a handsome boy whose bright, dimpled smile literally lights up the screen.

Evan grows up believing that music is what will unite him with his parents. Lost in the streets of NY, he is taken in by the sleazy Wizard Wallace. Played by Robin Williams with a Bono wardrobe, this is the story’s Fagin. He keeps kids in an abandoned theater and then makes them perform in street corners for pennies. He sees a star in Evan, whom he names August Rush.

August is not only a future star, he is a child prodigy who naturally gravitates towards writing music and even gets into Julliard on a scholarship. In fact, it is the music that he hears in his mind coming from everything and from everywhere that holds the film together. Hearing it grow into a full-blown composition is even more suspenseful than watching all those coincidences and snags that take August closer to or further away from finding his parents.

Sheridan goes the whole hog with the melodrama bit. Corny, sentimental, predictable, unbelievable etc. etc. are the words some people would use to describe August Rush. But there is a sincere, earnest quality in her style that like August, you also start believing that music can bring unity to all opposing forces.

So I go back to that question, how come, I had never heard of August Rush before? I found no release date for the Philippines. That means nobody out here picked it up for distribution, which is really just unfortunate. I hate watching pirated copies or downloading free flicks from the Net but then distributors, who sometimes do not know any better, should not be allowed to deprive us of feel-good experiences like August Rush.

Have a blessed Easter.