SHINE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Fine Line) Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, Lynn Redgrave, John Gielgud. Screenplay: Jan Sardi. Producer: Jane Scott. Director: Scott Hicks. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (brief nudity, sexual situations, profanity) Running Time: 105 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It has been a long time since a film inspired as profound a case of "What am I missing?" in me as SHINE. This Australian drama has been a fixture on year-end top ten lists, won a Best Picture nod from the National Board of Review, and picked up a New York Film Critics Association Best Actor for star Geoffrey Rush. So I sat myself down to watch SHINE, and I waited to be transported. And I waited. And I waited. And it never happened. SHINE is an extremely well-crafted film, but it doesn't pay off at a gut level. Director Scott Hicks' restrained approach to an uplifting story ends up choking much of the life out of it.
SHINE is based on the true story of David Helfgott, who is an emotionally troubled 40-year-old (Geoffrey Rush) when first we see him. The film then flashes back to David's youth in Perth, Australia, where he is a piano prodigy under the strict supervision of his domineering father Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl). David's raw talent is apparent to all who see him, but Peter refuses to allow David to leave home for an opportunity to study music in the United States. The teenage David (Noah Taylor) accedes to his father's wishes once, but a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London is too much to pass by. Disowned by his father for his disobedience, David leaves for London and studies with Professor Cecil Parkes (John Gielgud), but his latent eccentricities become a full-fledged collapse which institutionalizes him for nearly twenty years.
There is a lot to like about the first half of SHINE, which focuses on the relationship between David and his father. Peter Helfgott is a great character, a Holocaust survivor whose obsessive control over his family masks a deep fear of losing them. Armin Mueller-Stahl brings out both sides of the complex Peter -- the loving father who embraces David in the middle of the night and the tyrant who beats him and forces him to repeat "I am a very lucky boy" -- making him a sympathetic figure in spite of his cruelty. Noah Taylor carries his half of the relationship as well, making his desire to master the incredibly challenging 3rd Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff an effort both to make his father proud and to prove his own talent without Peter's guidance. Perhaps the film's best sequence involves David's performance of the "Rach 3" at the Albert Hall, wild hair and sweat flying in slow motion as his ultimate artistic triumph becomes a mute pounding of keys.
The screenplay by Jan Sardi explores several other relationships of David's, but it soon becomes clear that none of them are as compelling as the relationship between David and Peter. There is a briefly-explored friendship between David and Socialist author Katharine Prichard (Googie Withers), the teacher-student interaction with Professor Parkes, and eventually a romance involving an astrologer named Gillian (Lynn Redgrave), yet there is little passion to any of them. Even the death of one character cannot evoke much emotional response, and David's match with Gillian is apparently the result of complementary astrological charts instead of a genuine connection between them. SHINE may be about David Helfgott, but Peter Helfgott is the real soul of the film, and when he disappears from the narrative there is nothing to drive it forward. Geoffrey Rush's performance as the adult David is superb, a portrait of mental illness which is vivid and lacking the obtrusive kookiness of many screen depictions of such conditions; his mile-a-minute monologues full of puns and streams of consciousness display a brilliant mind imploding upon itself. There simply isn't much to the second half of SHINE which leads us to a conclusion. David begins to re-enter society and to play music again, but the process of his healing is taken almost for granted.
The real fault for SHINE's failings lies with director Scott Hicks, who discovered David Helfgott's story and decided to turn it into a film. Hicks' background is in documentary film-making, and it seems that his instinct is to let David's story tell itself. Most films about characters struggling to triumph over adversity play to the broadest possible emotional canvas, and it is admirable that Hicks has chosen not to bludgeon his audience insensible with feel-good signifiers. However, he takes SHINE several miles too far in the opposite direction, and finds himself with a film which drifts when it should be building to an emotional resolution. SHINE is a good-looking, good-sounding and thoroughly professional production with a pair of excellent performances by Armin Mueller-Stahl and Geoffrey Rush. It is also too sedate by half, a story of shattered genius which opts for a dim glow when it needs a dazzling shine.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Rach concerts: 6.
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