The first three films that Rota approached musically: Zaza, Under the Sun of Rome, and The Glass Mountain have the correctness and magnificence of Puccini, but still in these did not yet appear Rota's cinematographic signature. Rota faced the challenge of communicating in bits of the song he understood that the image accompanied by the necessary notes becomes something new that has the forcefulness of an archetype, that is a powerful message that travels and is irremediably contagious, a wheel that starts and does not stop, just like his name: Rota. His teachers Ildebrando Pizzetti and Alfredo Casella never imagined the projection that Rota's music would have through the cinema at that time few academic composers considered making music for the film as a profession, as they heard with sadness how their great scores were reduced to an infamous "pedacería" during the editing process. At the age of eight he composed his first work and was admitted to the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome as a child -only two cases are known in which a child has been admitted to this conservatory-, he also studied literature at the University of Milan. Nino Rota learned music in a family of musicians in his home, which was very close to La Scala, they continually received distinguished visitors such as Stravinski, Toscanini, Giordano, and Castelnuovo Tedesco. The Harry Lime Theme was played by Anton Karas on the zither, and ever since Nino Rota saw that film, that theme was his obsession and salvation, his magic incantation to involve the viewer completely in the most powerful artistic event of the 20th century: the cinema. This simple harmonic scheme by Mackie Messer: C-Dm-G7-C-AmDm-G7-C, had already been used in the cinema as the theme of the movie The Third Man (1949). Something similar happens with Nino Rota, for in the music he composed for about 34 films, we constantly hear the most famous song that Kurt Weil composed for The Threepenny Opera: Mackie Messer (1928). In reality, the reason why this Gregorian chant was used in this way by Rachmaninov we will never know, but it gave rise to the most intricate harmonic links ever known. It was discovered that Sergei Rachmaninov, the great composer, always included in his works the line of the Dies Irae, a sacred Gregorian chant that conjured the perfect realization of the composition. Nino Rota won an Oscar for the music of The Godfather II (1974). If any young parentless child were to take "August Rush" seriously, he or she would almost certainly wind up deluded by the most unlikely of dreams, and making a terrible racket, besides.Nino Rota stood out for his precociousness: at the age of five he composed an oratorio, and at thirteen he composed a lyrical comedy: Prince Porcaro (1925). The lesson of such triteness, though, is possibly dangerous. Eventually, his gift for music leads him to bigger stages and the chance for a family reunion. Rush soon falls in with Wizard and proves to be a music prodigy, beginning with playing guitar in a strange banging fashion that (impossibly) produces refined sounds. Dressed like Bono and working as what amounts to a pimp for child street musicians, Williams' wacky and creepy character is his biggest misstep since putting on a clown nose for "Patch Adams." Illogical circumstances and an absurdly overbearing father lead her to think the baby was lost during birth, so just over a decade later, she and her past lover are living lonely, separate lives.Ģ Really, all you really need to know about "August Rush" is that Robin Williams plays a street musician named Wizard. It leads to a single night of romance for these two: one a classical cellist, the other an Irish rocker (you can guess who's who).įate keeps the couple from meeting again, though Russell's character ends up pregnant. His mother (Keri Russell) and father (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) met on one fateful evening 12 years earlier when they were both drawn to a lone street musician playing Van Morrison's "Moondance" at the arch in New York's Washington Square Park. Meanwhile, interspersed flashbacks fill in his parents' story. He sneaks from his orphanage, where social worker Richard Jeffries (Terrence Howard) is hoping to place him with a family, to New York City, where he soon picks up the name August Rush. Wide-eyed and impossibly innocent, this bite-sized Mozart embarks on a journey to find his parents with messianic certainty. "Enchanted" Is Fairy Tale Fun > Terror In "The Mist" Bob Dylan's Many Faces "Margot" Has A Mean Streak "August Rush" Hits A Low Note Without any tangible evidence, our protagonist senses his parents are still alive and that he just needs to make music loud enough so they can hear him (sort of like the ethos behind a Coldplay album). "August Rush" thus proceeds in fairy-tale fashion, though it's more unrealistic than surrealistic.
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