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francesderwent · 4 years

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part three: fatherhood and faith in August Rush

/ part one // part two /

A day before the concert at which both Lyla and Evan are due to perform, Arthur sees August’s name on a poster, and Wizard turns up at Juilliard. He rails at the Juilliard professors for daring to think they had anything to teach Evan, for believing that they could give music to him when music is “out there”. Evan says he doesn’t want to go, he likes it here, the professor says Wizard doesn’t have any right, but Wizard says, “I have every right, I’m his father.” And when Evan stands frozen, wishing to contradict this, Wizard whispers to him, “I know your real name, Evan…Evan.” Evan doesn’t want to lose this new family – but he doesn’t want to be sent back to the group home, where there is no music at all. He tells his professor, “He taught me everything I know,” and he lets Wizard lead him away.

The next day finds him playing in the park again, while Wizard argues on a nearby payphone, trying to eke out as much money as he can from whoever’s on the other line in exchange for August’s performing. Arthur reassures Evan; Wizard isn’t that bad, he’s just been in a mood, and Evan’s the only one who could make him feel better. Arthur couldn’t get Wizard’s favor, so he did the next best thing and won himself second-place by leading him to the chosen one. Evan knows better to be satisfied by Wizard’s favor, now, and he plays morosely, putting all his frustration into the music.

Louis walks up and puts a handful of change into Evan’s guitar case. He asks about Evan’s guitar, and Evan looks nervously over at Wizard, but Louis reassures him, “Don’t worry, I’m a musician, too.” He hands Evan his own guitar, and Evan passes him the one he got from Wizard; they sit together on the grass and experiment. They improvise a duet, Louis in a typical combination of strumming and fingerpicking, Evan in his signature style of hitting the strings. It’s both like and unlike Louis’s unwitting duets with Lyla, like, because the two different styles weave in and out of each other, allowing both to shine, and unlike because they’re both guitarists, both improvising. It’s fellowship and mentorship embodied in the music, rather than complementarity and romance. Evan comes back to life; he smiles again.

Louis asks him how long he’s been playing; “Six months,” Evan says, matter-of-fact. “Six months??” Louis repeats, “How’d you learn to play like that in six months?” “Juilliard.” “Juilliard,” Louis says, no doubt thinking about his lost love who graduated from there herself. “I have my own concert tonight,” Evan says. “Reckon I should believe you?” Louis asks, teasing. “Yeah,” Evan says, simply, but then adds, “but I can’t go.” “Why’s that?” Louis asks. Evan says, “It’s kind of a long story.” He’s closing himself off again, hiding. Louis says, “Well, if I went to Juilliard and I had a concert tonight, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” “Yeah,” agrees Evan wistfully, “but what if something bad would happen if you did it?” Louis smiles, and tells him with the certain authority of experience, “You never quit on your music, no matter what happens. Because anytime something bad happens to you, it’s the one place you can escape to and just – let it go. I learned that the hard way.” You can’t escape the perturbations of love by giving up love; you can only find peace by turning from failed love to true love, from fallen human love to divine love. “Anyway, look at me,” Louis says gently, “nothing bad’s gonna happen. You gotta have a little faith.” Evan stares back at him thoughtfully, and then plays two notes in answer. Louis laughs – he understands. “I’m Louis”, he says. “Ev – August. August Rush,” Evan says, remembering only halfway through to use his new name. Louis makes him feel safe; being found and known for who he is by this man is not something he naturally fears – he has to remember to hide. Wizard yells for August; Louis admits he has to get going. “Bye,” Evan says. “Yeah…” Louis says, looking at him with his head cocked, wondering and worrying and caring. He reaches out and tousles Evan’s hair, which Evan allows placidly.

Louis didn’t recognize Evan on sight, like Lyla did – granted, he didn’t know Evan existed, but there is a sense in which he is inherently more “distant” from Evan than Lyla is. He didn’t carry him for nine months, and so his “recognition” of him is different. Evan is an individual to him, in some ways an equal; they speak the same language; Louis gives him advice like he’s a peer, teaches him from his own experience, leading by example. But he is not distant from Evan in the way that Wizard is; he cares about Evan for his own sake, he’s not trying to manipulate him or string him along emotionally. The distance is for the sake of allowing Evan to flourish as himself. This is fatherhood. Before Louis even knows he is a father, let alone Evan’s father, he gives Evan the first true image of fatherhood he’s had.

Furthermore, Louis’s last word to Evan, “nothing bad’s gonna happen, you gotta have a little faith” is the antithesis to Wizard’s system of pessimism, fear, and self-protection. It seems like naivety; Louis doesn’t know what Evan’s situation is, and what if something bad does happen? Bad things happen to people all the time. But here’s the kicker: good things happen too. And faith is believing that, ultimately, good has more weight – even when you can’t see it, even when the bad is right in front of you weighing you down. There’s a great quote from Ratzinger in Introduction to Christianity:

[The word “credo] signifies the deliberate view that what cannot be seen, what can in no wise move into the field of vision, is not unreal; that, on the contrary, what cannot be seen in fact represents true reality, the element that supports and makes possible all the rest of reality….Man’s natural inclination draws him to the visible, to what he can take in his hand and hold as his own….He must turn around to recognize how blind he is if he trusts only what he sees with his eyes. Without this change of direction, without this resistance to the natural inclination, there can be no belief. Indeed belief is the conversion in which man discovers that he is following an illusion if he devotes himself only to the tangible…and because our inclination does not cease to point us in another direction, it remains a turn that is new every day; only in a lifelong conversion can we become aware of what it means to say “I believe”.

I think a part of what it means to turn from the tangible to the spiritual is to turn from despair because it feels like all we see is suffering, to faith and hope because the divine plan is real though unseen. To say, despite the lack of empirical evidence, that if you choose love no matter what, nothing really bad’s gonna happen, nothing so bad that it will make the choice a mistake. Louis gives Evan an example of faith, and he gives him encouragement and kindness, with no ulterior motive. Because of this encounter, Evan is given the strength to choose faith himself.

When Wizard is counting their earnings in a subway station at the close of the day, Evan tells him he’s leaving, and he’s not coming back this time. Wizard scoffs. Why would Evan leave? To find his parents? “I bet they don’t come, because they can’t hear you,” he says cruelly. Evan stands poised, ready to run, but caught in Wizard’s lies and the fear that comes from them. And then Arthur hits Wizard, hard, with the guitar that used to be his – he’s giving up his own hope that Wizard will be his father in order to set Evan free. And Evan runs, but even when he’s gotten away from Wizard, the man’s words weigh him down. He’s underground and he can’t get to the surface.

This is when a faint music starts to echo through the vents above him. Lyla and Louis are both playing, just as at the start of the film, each of their pieces weaving in and out of the other. Lyla is pouring everything into her playing, her love for her son and her pain at missing him and her wish to be reunited with him. And Louis, who doesn’t know that he has a son, is singing to Lyla. But unlike in “This Time”, where he returns to their moment over and over, wishing every time that it’ll be the last and he won’t have to go back again, he’s reflecting on what brought Lyla to him in the first place. Instead of focusing on the loss, he remembers the hope: “you wanna reach out, you wanna give in, your head’s wrapped around what’s around the next bend…something inside you is crying and driving you on”. He comes to the conclusion that though their love was imperfect, there was something truly good in it, and he doesn’t regret that goodness, he wouldn’t take it back: “‘cause if you hadn’t found me, I would have found you.” In freely affirming the love he had for Lyla, he also affirms the fruit that was borne of it; in affirming the goodness of an imperfect love, he affirms the goodness of Evan’s very existence. He opens his heart and sings to Lyla, he doesn’t regret being found by her, and he would go out of himself to find her if he had to do it all again, and Evan’s deepest wish is fulfilled: he is found. His mother’s love for him, and his father’s affirmation of his existence find him in the music, and they draw him out of the dark.

Wizard is left alone, underground. He pulls out his harmonica, and plays a melody, letting it rise into the vents, hoping that Evan will hear it. It is the melody that Louis and Lyla heard the night they fell in love – Wizard played a role in the intertwining of all of their stories, and he played a role in Evan finding his way back to his family. In the mercy of God, great things were done through this broken man. But no one hears him, now; his role is complete. Everyone else has learned to play a new song, and he’s trapped in the past by his refusal to hope for something greater.

At last, Evan takes the stage in the park to conduct the rhapsody he composed, the piece he wanted to play to as many people as possible so that maybe his parents would hear. It’s the response to all the music he has heard in the world around him, in the fields and in the city and in the church, unified into a whole; he takes what sounds like chaos to the untrained ear and turns it into beauty, so that we, too, can hear it. Lyla, who is walking across the grass in her white dress, pauses, listening, and then turns around and strides back towards the stage. Louis hears the music in his cab with his band, but it’s not until he sees the poster, recognizes August’s name, and then sees Lyla’s name below it that he moves. He jumps from the cab and runs through the streets toward the concert, Lyla’s “marriage” totally forgotten. Lyla is looking for Evan; Louis is looking for her.

Evan is facing the orchestra, Lyla can only see him from the back, but she’s mesmerized by the music. Louis catches sight of her across the crowd. She walks forward as if drawn by an unseen force; he weaves through the crowd parallel to her. She steps out in front of the people, stares up, her entire person attuned to the music, and she knows. This is her son, who has been in her heart for so long. She’s found him. Louis steps up beside her silently and takes her hand; she looks up at him, and there’s no surprise. Of course he is here; of course he was drawn, just as she was. Everything is falling into place; they are, all of them, where they belong now. She smiles at him, and looks back up at Evan; Louis follows her gaze, and realizes what he recognized in the boy he met in the park. Wonder fills his face. This is his son – this is the fulfillment of his love, the fulfillment that he’s been searching for his whole life, without knowing it.

Abruptly, Evan looks up into the sky, listening. He pauses in his conducting, and slowly, slowly turns around, while the orchestra continues to play behind him. He’s apprehensive. What if there’s no one there? What if what he heard isn’t real? But he’s hopeful as well.

In front of the crowd stands a man and a woman, holding hands. The woman is looking at him with such love in her eyes and in her smile, like nobody has ever looked at him before. And yet it is recognizable. Nobody but his mother could look at him like that. Can it be true? He looks at the man – Louis, from the park, who told him to have faith. Louis nods. It’s true. Evan laughs.

He’s been found.

Because I’m a tiresome person, I’m going to spell it out one more time: music is love. The belief that you come from love, the cry of your heart that says the meaning of your life is love, is true. Because August Rush is a fairytale, it shows us this in a fairly literal sense. Evan believes that his parents loved each other and that they love him, and they did and they do. But Lyla and Louis’s love is not perfect – and even if it were even less perfect, so flawed that it was no longer love at all, Evan would still be right. We all come from love, because we all come from God. Even when mothers do not want their children, like Lyla wants Evan, and even when fathers do not affirm the love they have for their children’s mothers, like Louis affirms his love for Lyla, God wants us, and God affirms the love that is built into creation. Even if created love is imperfect and incomplete, it can still bear fruit, and that fruit always bears witness to the love of God which is at the origin of everything. Love always speaks of the one who gave us love. It might be hidden by suffering and fear, it might be mediated to us by selfish and broken people, but love is there and it is real, invisibly and powerfully.

You just gotta have a little faith.

#august rush #meta whine and rant #most dialogue is from memory?? so sorry if it's wrong #catch me crying about this pitifully while writing it

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