A brilliant young cellist has a chance encounter with the singer in a rock band on their respective post-performance highs in Manhattan. Separated by the cellist's overbearing father/manager, they are force to go their separate ways. When the cellist gives birth to a son nine months later, the father forges her name to adoption papers and tells her the baby is dead.
Ten years later the cellist is teaching music in Chicago and grieving for her dead baby. The rock singer left the band and is living in San Francisco, but is still grieving for his lost love. And a little boy living in a children's home runs off to Manhattan to find his parents, because he can hear them in his head.
The ensuing story is driven by the force of love that binds people, and by music as a language that communicates by resonating with us and within us in ways we're not usually conscious of.
There are wonderful sequences that intercut the cello and the rock band in ways that are pure magic.
The whole movie is has a magical fairy tale quality (with a little Charles Dickens thrown in), but it's beautiful and satisfying. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Keri Russell give wonderful performances as the rock singer and cellist, and young Freddie Highmore is charming as Evan/August.
"August Rush" gets two thumbs up in our house.
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