Shine

Okay, so I did some reading after this driven by idle curiosity about the account. The real Helfgott didn't spend 15 years abandoned in a room with a piano, he didn't have to stand in the rain outside of a bar before they would let him in. He was pretty well known in the local scene as a pianist, his father was not a Holocaust survivor and David had been married before. Father and son were never really estranged and David was present at his funeral. But just the same, the 'objective' point-of-view that purports to explain him, or any of us at any time based on a few facts, is in the end no less hypocritical than any attempt to pass dramatization as 'the real story'. This matters. Someone can be present at a funeral without being truly present, and someone can feel forgotten and alone even when they're factually surrounded by people, estranged from a parent even when formally this was never so. The film is at a simple emotional level where the attempt to conquer a maddening complexity (music, life) snaps the tethers of mind and in due time the reconfiguring of this damage into blossoming art. The moral is that we must keep trying and hope for the best, perhaps the worthiest lesson even if it appears slightly trite in the context of a more or less happy ending. Still, why feel the need to invent all those things, knowing you are doing so? When the violence inflicted on the son could be inferred by a more ambiguous tension instead of an outright beating. Because, it seems, we can only choose to accept the lesson if at the center we find a good soul worthy of the saving. In other words, it is not the fact that he gives a great last recital that matters, but that he plays at all; not that a genius was salvaged because he might never have been that, but a human being. And this is what rankles so much Helfgott's critics who find him borderline incompetent in his playing - he is cheered on in concerts because he is the character from this film. Ideally we would be able to discern all these points here instead of one harmony: the truly damaged but kind soul, the inability to place blame for that damage on any ogre father or Holocaust, and being able to somehow experience his music (the real Helfgott recorded for the film) as a trained ear would, fixated flourishes followed by distraction and incompetence according to critics, musically extending the damaged self. For a more demanding film on the same subject of madness and transcendent musical genius see a little known film on a medieval composer called Death in Five Voices: all about the dissonance between different voices trying to harmonize a story and this carried in the music itself.

There were just too many problems in this film for me to rate it as great. Geoffrey Rush did a great job, as did the young actor who played the early Helfgott. The story was interesting, and the cinematography well done. Overall, it was a good film, but it had a few glaring issues I cannot overlook. First, if we are to feel sympathy or understanding for Helfgott's condition, it would be nice to know exactly what it is. Is he schizophrenic? Not sure. I find the label of "madness" to be far too vague, and nearly cliché. Second, as a little research on Helfgott confirms, the filmmakers were not accurate in many aspects of the story. According to his own family, Helfgott never broke down while playing the "Rach 3", nor was his father an abusive taskmaster. Third, there were just too many confusing and/or vague moments throughout the film. There was a scene of David receiving electroconvulsive therapy, at one point, with absolutely no explanation of what was going on. His relationship with his father, once he left home, was confusing at best. Similarly, Gillian tried to help David write a letter to his old music professor, but we never heard any more about that, either. Loose ends and apparently superfluous scenes made the film sometimes hard to follow, and left me with an empty feeling at the end. Lastly, I take issue with the implication that overbearing parents and intense mental and emotional labor can lead one to mental illness. Schizophrenia, in particular, is not something caused by your relationships or activities. It is organic. Things can't "drive you mad," in that sense. Certainly parents can cause mental and emotional damage, but if that was goal of the film, it should have been more clear.

My parents bought me this years ago because I play piano. I thought the description of it looked dumb, so it has sat here for years. Last night, I had absolutely nothing else to watch, so I watched it. There are a lot of really major problems with this movie, most of which killed my ability to enjoy it. First, close-ups of someone playing the piano should be done with an actual pianist playing a piano. The old cliche of some "actor" banging away randomly at keys while the soundtrack plays perfect music just bugs me no end. Second, the concept of the "Rach 3" (ick) having the power to break someone is about like the Monty Python sketch about the joke that kills whoever hears it. It may make nice fiction to those who don't understand the performance of music, but it's actually also very annoying. Third, the overall tone of the movie is uneven and jerky. The overbearing father is too much of a cliche, the actor plays it like a cartoon character. Mommy Dearest meets Prodigy's Father, I'd say. I'll skip a lot of other problems, and jump right to the horrifyingly bad ending. I was about to leave the room to get some food, expecting to come back and watch the ending, but they started to roll credits! Did someone forget to end the story here or what? Maybe to some people this movie was excellent, and wonderful, or a "celebration of the human spirit". To me it was a perfect example of something the critics didn't understand, so they figured it must be beyond their comprehension, so they rated it highly. Bottom line: it was pretty bad, deserving of the obscurity to which it has now descended. I wish I had left the movie off and watched CNN instead.

"Shine" is a pure joy to behold. Produced in Australia, it tells the true story of piano prodigy David Helfgott. Helfgott suffered a major nervous breakdown on the threshold of an imminently great career. The story shows him through a psychologically trying childhood, to his teenage years when he perfected his skills, to a stay in a mental asylum, and his subsequent return to stardom. Noah Taylor and Geoffrey Rush (in a well-deserved Oscar-winning turn) played Helfgott during his teenage and adult years. Armin Mueller-Stahl is also excellent as the abusive father (in an Oscar-nominated performance). However, the film stalls on several occasions. This is bad considering that the film is only 1 hour and 45 minutes long. Lynn Redgrave's role is terrible, she is totally wrong for this film. "Shine" is a prime example of a near miss. The film is very good in almost all aspects, but these problems keep "Shine" from being the masterpiece it should have been. 4 out of 5 stars.

"Shine" purports to tell the story of David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush, who plays the adult Helfgott), a promising pianist who overcame mental illness, with the help of his wife, and returned to performing. The 1996 film is actually a fictionalized version of Helfgott's life - but even had it not been based on a true story, it remains a powerful, intriguing film. David is the child of German émigrés who now live in Australia. His father Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is a self-taught pianist who teaches David his same love of piano and classical music. There is love there, but as portrayed in the movie, Peter is a rigid man who gives his son mixed signals. He drives his son to succeed as a pianist, teaching him that winning is everything, and yet, when David has opportunities that would take him away from the family, Peter won't permit it. The reason for this is that Peter and his wife lost relatives in the Holocaust. Peter is also given to physical abuse toward David when he loses his temper. David finally gets away from him and attends the Royal Conservatory in London, where, with the help of his teacher (John Gielgud), he wins an important competition but then suffers a severe nervous breakdown. The rest of the movie deals with the road back, which leads him home to Australia and to his wife, Gillian. Gillian is actually his second wife, though the first marriage isn't mentioned in the film. The dominant performances belong to Rush and Mueller-Stahl. Rush does a brilliant job of showing us the likable but stuttering David who speaks rapidly and repetitively, expressing himself through music. Mueller-Stahl as the tortured Peter is fabulous, a man who is both monstrous and pitiable. In a small role, John Gielgud of course makes a fine impression as an elderly teacher, a wonderful pianist himself, who believes in David's talent. The best scene is David playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #3 - Helfgott's own recording of the piece is used - and the aftermath. What I missed in this film is music - there was a lot of talk about David's promise, but until the Rachmaninoff not much playing. Helfgott's work today has been deeply criticized for being - well, lousy. A review in The New York Times of one of his concerts is horrible. The reviewer, however, mentions that Helfgott occasionally showed vestiges of excellent technique. I think it's safe to assume that his playing nowadays is more erratic than it was in his earlier years. There are several examples of Helfgott's playing in the movie: "La Campanella," "Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 In C Sharp Minor," "Flight of the Bumble Bee," Rachmaninoff's "Prelude In C Sharp Minor, Opus 3, No. 2," the previously mentioned Rachmaninoff 3, and Liszt's "Sospiro," and it is all quite stunning. Rush does the fingerings himself. One of the comments also claims that Helfgott's wife has Helfgott perform on no medication so that he'll seem crazy - it's common for performers on medication for mental problems to have to cycle off of it before performing. I don't think the commenter has any idea what Helfgot is like on his medication - certainly in the film, he acts strangely. "Shine" is highly recommended for its fantastic performances, beautiful music, and its inspiring story.

This highly over rated Australian film about the life of David Helfgott by David Hicks that won Geoffrey Rush an Oscar probably because of the powerful and Misguided self-loathing Jewish Lobby of the American Academy Motion Picture Board. We are lead to believe that Helfgott has an oppressive and deprived Jewish upbringing when in fact it was more like a German upbringing and in fact it has been widely rumoured that the Helfgott family where not only German and not Jewish but also very wealthy. This totally contradicts the film. The Jewish barmitzva depicted in the film is totally unauthentic as is the exaggeration of the mental state of David Helfgott. In real life Helfgott is an eccentric character with a bit of a stutter who is a highly competent classical pianist. The film celebrates his life with an over exaggerated emphasis on Helfgott's achievement of overcoming his supposed mentally challenged and anti-social personality. The film is ridiculous as it is fictitious.

This is a nice story, but it is very troubling how the movie suggests that David's mental state, which is obviously schizophrenia, is somehow cause by his father's abuse. Schizophrenia is an organic brain illness. No one know exactly what causes it, but it is not caused by parental abuse. It seems that nearly every summary of the movie states outright that David's father creates David's "nervous breakdown." This belief takes us right back to Freudian psychology of the 1950s, when the belief was that schizophrenia was a reaction to "refrigerator mothers." The movie "A Beautiful Mind" was more realistic in depicting how schizophrenia strikes seemingly out of nowhere and is a diabolically difficult disease to ameliorate in any way. It is a disservice to all of us to suggest otherwise. Again, it's enjoyable to be swept along in the story, but if you take away the premise about the cause and cure of Helfgott's illness, the movie feels a little hollow.

A well-intentioned dud, the kind of movie that has critics raving around Oscar time before it falls off everyone's radar. "Shine" chronicles the true story of David Helfgott, a piano virtuoso who suffered a mental breakdown early in his life while under the thumb of his demanding father--who, for the purposes of melodrama, is not just embittered and jealous but abusive as well. Solid performances can't compensate for the jumbled, stop-and-start narrative which skitters over most of the real story, leaving it off-screen. Films about domineering dads go back a long way, to "Fear Strikes Out" and beyond, but the clichés have remained intact. This father-son relationship doesn't work because director Scott Hicks and screenwriter Jan Sardi (working from Hicks' original treatment) are too literal-minded about the material, which seems dramatically heightened anyway. There are moving moments, and Geoffrey Rush is worth watching in his Oscar-winning portrait as Helfgott, but the picture itself is rather cold. Seven Oscar nominations in all. Rush also won the BAFTA out of eight nominations, as did the film for Best Sound. ** from ****

When I originally saw this film in the mid-90's, I was absolutely devastated throughout the first forty-five minutes. So much so, I was pretty much uncontrollably weeping, much to the chagrin of the friend I went with. Time has softened the film a lot for me, but it still remains a powerful, tender and somewhat inspirational film about a piano prodigy who has led a pretty tragic life. Geoffrey Rush is unbelievable as the piano prodigy David Helfgott, and although the film is kind of sewn up a little quickly with the Vanessa Redgrave subplot (what about Helfgott made her so in love with him in a short period of time as to want to marry him?) it is a very well done film that I highly recommend to just about anyone, but especially musicians and music lovers. --Shelly

This is the worst movie I have ever seen. It's unpleasant, long, and really boring. Maybe if the story was interesting (maybe if it actually had a story) it would be a good movie. But absolutely nothing interesting happens in this movie! It's just the story of someone who's average and boring but good at the piano who has a nervous breakdown. That's the entire plot- and it makes 105 minutes seem like three hours. The movie is well done production wise, but other than that it is truly awful. Quality: 9/10 Entertainment: 0/10 Replayable: 0/10