August Rush is a film for those people who love music. And when I say love music, I mean REALLY love music. This, in fact, may be the best movie ever made about the love of music.

As a story, it is really a kind of modern fairy-tale. That is to say, the things which happen in the story are often very different from a story we might expect from real life. For that reason, many people who may watch this movie may scratch their heads and say, "I don't get it." This is because the story is a fable. And yet for the person, as I have said, who really loves music, they may watch the end of the film with tears of joy streaming down their cheeks.

I knew absolutely nothing about the film when a friend said, "Let's watch this." I said "Okay," thinking, by looking at the cover on the DVD, that the story was going to be maybe like Bridge To Teribithia or something. The cover shows a young boy holding a guitar and a background of the moon behind him. So I thought it was going to be a children's story about some young boy who has some great thing happen to him in his friendships or with his family or maybe he falls in love with a girl. Wrong. Oh, he does have something indeed happen to him, but it is not really about friendship or romance, although friendship definitely plays a part. It is more about connecting to something out there in the universe which is undefined, and yet absolutely muse-like compelling.

The story is about a young boy who is orphaned at an early age, and he wants to be found by his parents. We've all seen that story line in "Annie" and other scripts. This boy discovers that he has a special gift when it comes to music. It is as if music has its own language to him, and he intuitively knows that language by heart, and he can use it to express himself with it as easy as he can breathe. Simultaneously two other story lines are taking place. Two young lovers have been split apart by destiny, and are searching for each other. The girl, herself a gifted musician, discovers after several years that the child she had with her lover, and was taken away from her, might be located if she can just search him out. We know that the child she is looking for is the young boy. At the same time, her lover, also a gifted musician, searches the internet and finds that he may reconnect with the girl. Fate, both good and bad, takes a hand, and the rest of the story is about how music brings these three musicians closer, and yet also threatens to keep them forever apart.

It is, as I have said, a sort of fairy tale, so you have to like fairy tales to invest yourself in the story. There are all sorts of improbabilities which emerge from time to time that vex the credibility if this were a "real-life" story, but if you surrender to the wonder of the miraculous, it becomes a charming tale that will tug at your heart and make you say, "Man, I'm glad I watched this thing."

One of the central tasks of the film is to show how music works for those who love it so much they are breathlessly immersed in its beauty. And while at times that task becomes lost in some wisps of ambiguity, on one important level it works to great accomplishment. You have to struggle mentally to connect some of the dots, though, so don't expect to be spoon-fed as to how all this works. Much of it is an inner thing you either get- or you don't get.

The fine acting of the young actor Freddie Highmore, who plays Evan Taylor- "August Rush", is the glue that holds it all together, and under the guidance of director Kirsten Sheridan, that glue is strong and it holds everything else in place. Actors Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and veteran actor Robin Williams all give fine performances in the key supporting roles.

A musician friend of mine, a virtuoso conductor from Mexico City, was once asked if he liked a certain kind of music, or if he liked several diffrerent kinds of music. He simply replied, "I don't care what kind of music it is; if it is GOOD music, I like it." This film is about what good music, in all varieties, really is. If music is an important part of who you are, you should see this film.


Five Stars/ *****

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12