SHINE
A film review by John Schuurman
Copyright 1997 John Schuurman
Directed by Scott Hicks. Written by Jan Sardi. PG-13
This movie is about fathers and sons and the pain we pass along as the generations go by. The film is based on the true story of Australian pianist David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush). In it we never actually meet Helfgott's father's father. All we see is his severe portrait on the wall (a portrait that is virtually a character in the film judging by the furtive way the camera and the characters give it worried glances). And all we hear is the one story about him -- told several times. The story is told as a ritual exchange between David and his father, Peter Helfgott. Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl) tells the story. It seems that he loved music as a boy. He saved and saved his money and bought a wonderful violin. He asks his son: "But what happened to my violin?"
David's ritual answer, "The father smashed it."
"You are a very lucky boy, David. A very lucky boy. Say it."
"I am a very lucky boy."
Presumably, this exchange is to impress David with how much different (and better) his father is than his grandfather was. But we don't believe it. This is the sins of the father visited upon the children to the next generations. This is just smashing of another sort.
The defining moment in this exquisitely painful and hopeful movie is when this story ritual is broken by David. He refuses to furnish the expected answer -- instead he turns away, the father slumps off -- and the cruel cycle is stopped.
This is how it happens: David (played beautifully by Alex Rafalowicz as the boy and by Noah Taylor as the teenager), the son of Peter Helfgott, the son of his father Helfgott, possesses a prodigious gift for playing the piano. But he is also possessed by his father and is as smashed by the father's monstrous love as was the storied violin.
Peter is a Polish-Jew who survived but lost all of his family in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. Both a child of that dark night and of his father, Peter is now driven by the demons of fear and pride and sorrow.
The universal cry of survivors of the Holocaust is "Never Again!" Peter Helfgott lives out that wail in an oppressive and feverish attempt to never again lose his family. And yet, pride and anger drive him to try to conquer the very world to which he fears losing them. He rants, he bellows, he loves far too deeply. He hugs and he beats his son with the same sad but ferocious ineptitude. He at once drives the young David to "Win, you must always win, David," and at the same time when opportunities come for the boy to study abroad in the great music schools, he denies his permission and blessing. Finally, when David determines to go despite Peter's threats of eternal punishment, he disowns David and bans him from any further contact with the family.
And all the while David is going quite mad. He goes to the Royal College of Music on scholarship where his genius further emerges under the care of his tutor, played joyously by the ninety-two year old Lord John Gielgud. While at the Royal College he takes on the riotous "Rach 3", Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto for Piano in D minor. That massive piece proves his glory and his undoing. He collapses and breaks down while in performance of it.
When we see him as an adult. He is back in Australia, his speech is full of chattering non-sequiturs, his behavior is bizarre but disarming (if you don't have to clean house after him), and though quite harmless, he has been institutionalized for years (no family).
It is only after twenty or more years of estrangement that his father Peter enters his life one last time. He again tries to exert the old control, again the suffocating embrace, and again the story of the violin. "You are a very lucky boy, David. Do you know what happened to my violin?"
Averted eyes. Silence. And a turn away. And only then David can begin anew. Still crazy, but with some understanding women, able to put together a life.
David chatters throughout the film about his "ridiculous tragedy."
I guess it is both ridiculous and a tragedy. But it is a very old one -- and dug in very deep. It is one that makes me tremble. The sins of the fathers handed down. Fathers to sons. Fathers to sons. How to stop the cycle? What can arrest the methodical twists of this history? Can we really change?
David's surname "Helfgott" means, "With the help of God." David calls it a ridiculous name. It seems to me it is our only hope.
For more reviews by John Schuurman see http://www.mcs.com/~wcrc/movies.html
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