Shine is a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Chris Haywood, and Alex Rafalowicz. The screenplay was written by Jan Sardi, and Scott Hicks directed the film. The degree to which the film's plot reflects the true story of Helfgott's life is disputed (see below). The film made its US premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival.[1]
Plot
As the film opens, a man (Geoffrey Rush) wanders through a heavy rainstorm finding his way into a restaurant. The restaurant's owner tries to determine if he needs help. Despite his manic mode of speech being difficult to understand, she learns that his name is David Helfgott and that he staying at a local hostel. She returns him to the hostel and despite his attempts to engage her with his musical knowledge and ownership of various musical scores, she leaves.
We flashback to David's childhood, where David is competing in a local music competition. Helfgott has been taught to play by his father, Peter (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl), a man obsessed with winning who has no tolerance for failure or disobendience. David is noticed by Mr. Rosen, a local pianist who, after an initial conflict with Peter, takes over David's musical instruction.
As a teenager, David (played by Noah Taylor) wins the state musical championship and is invited to study in America. Although plans are made to raise money to send David and the family is initially supportive, Peter eventually forbids David to leave, accusing him of wanting to destroy the family. Crushed, David continues to study and befriends local novelist and co-founder of the Communist Party of Australia, Katharine Susannah Prichard (Googie Withers). David's talent grows until he is offered a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, England. David's father again forbids him to go but with the encouragement of Katharine, David leaves and is disowned by his father.
In London, David enters a Concerto competition choosing to play Rachmaninoff's 3rd Concerto, a piece he attempted to learn as a young child to make his father proud. As David practices, he increasingly becomes manic in his behaviour. David wins the competition, but suffers a mental breakdown and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he receives electric shock therapy.
David recovers to the point where he is able to return to Australia, but is still rejected by his father. David relapses and is readmitted to a mental institution as a young man. Years later, a volunteer at the institution recognizes David and knows of his musical talent. She takes him home but discovers that he is difficult to control, unintentionally destructive, and needs more care than she can offer. She leaves him at the hostel from earlier in the film. David has difficulty adjusting to life outside of the institution, and often wanders away from the hostel. At this point, the film resumes chronologically with David wandering to the nearby restaurant.
The next day David returns to the restaurant and the patrons are astounded by his ability to play the piano. One of the owners befriends David and looks after him. In return David plays at the restaurant. It's through the owner that David is introduced to Gillian (Lynn Redgrave). David and Gillian fall in love and marry. With Gillian's help and support David is able to come to terms with his father's death and stage a well received comeback concert presaging his return to professional music.
Awards
Shine won the Academy Award for Best Actor (Geoffrey Rush), and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Armin Mueller-Stahl), Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Music, Original Dramatic Score, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
It also won a BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for "Best Actor". The AFIs gave it significant recognition as well, with nine nominations total. Interestingly, several different academies recognized multiple actors in the film for a "Best Supporting Actor" award nomination. There was, of course, Stahl's Academy Award nomination (he also won the AFI Award for Best Supporting Actor), but the BAFTAs and Screen Actors Guild Awards nominated John Gielgud and Noah Taylor (adolescent David Helfgott) for Best Supporting Actor, respectively.
Title
The film's title Shine connotes David's brightness while coming from a history of darkness. Several previous alternate titles included "Flight of the Bumblebee" and "Helfgott".
Criticism
The movie has attracted reproach on two main grounds:
Margaret Helfgott's book
Critics allege that certain events and relationships in David's life are portrayed with wild inaccuracy, sometimes even fabricated, resulting in damage to the reputations of real people. Helfgott's sister Margaret Helfgott, in her book Out of Tune,[2] stresses in particular the case of Helfgott's father Peter Helfgott, who was, according to her, a loving husband, over-lenient parent and very far from the abusive tyrant portrayed in Shine. Peter Helfgott's decision to prevent David from going overseas at the age of 14 was not made with the vindictive spirit portrayed in Shine, she claims, but a reasonable judgment that he was not ready for such independence. Helfgott's mother might agree; on seeing Shine, she said she thought that a great evil had been done. Margaret Helfgott further claims to have been pressured by David's second wife Gillian and by the publishers of the film to stop making trouble for them by telling her story. Although Margaret Helfgott has possession of letters between Helfgott and his father, the copyright is held by Gillian Helfgott who has prevented their contents from being published.
Scott Hicks published a letter to The Wall Street Journal when Margaret Helfgott’s book first came out. The following are excerpts from Hicks' response to the reviewer for The Wall Street Journal of August 27, 1998:
My primary source was not David Helfgott's wife Gillian, but David Helfgott himself.
In Shine I made a film that speaks for itself, and I stand by the research that was conducted in preparation for it, drawn from numerous interviews with friends, relatives, teachers, medical people and colleagues of David's. A number of these people were adult observers of Peter Helfgott and his family when Margaret and David were very young children.
I maintain that all of the actions of the character Peter Helfgott have their origins in real events. In fact, some people who knew David Helfgott's father have commented to me that it is, if anything, a rather kind portrait. Certainly, I was told of abuses far more serious than those shown in the film, which I chose not to include in order to spare the family as well as the audience. When David's sister Susie read the script, she thanked me sincerely for my discretion about these events, which I have never discussed publicly. Susie continues to dispute Margaret's view of events, and has said publicly that her sister views the past through "rose-coloured glasses."
Margaret Helfgott's first words to me were, "My father was a saint," a view she continues to campaign for, but which is not shared by other members of her family. I believe she chooses, for reasons of her own, to block out the memories of the years she has described in her own letters to family members as "traumatized."
David's brother, Les Helfgott, has repeatedly told me and others that his father hit him, on one occasion actually knocking him unconscious. Les was omitted from the screenplay at his own request. When I gave him the script to read, he asked to be included in it again, but added that he gave the film his blessing, regardless. I gave Les, David's sister Louise and his mother Rae the opportunity to preview the film privately and discuss it with me. Afterward, Les Helfgott wrote to thank me, saying, "Any fears we may have had regarding the film have now gone. You have done a brilliant job of Shine." Several weeks later, Les and Louise were my guests at the world premiere of the film, joining in the celebrations publicly with me. This was a strange way to show the concern and anger that Margaret's book would now have us believe they feel.
Louise was also our guest during filming, and actually appears briefly in the film. Louise is the author of a play about Peter Helfgott (which she told me was workshopped at the Australian National Playwrights' Conference in Canberra) that is more explicit in its depiction of her father than is Shine.
Margaret Helfgott is, of course, entitled to her memory, despite consistently denying her brother David's right to his. It is tragic that she is unable to share her brother's joy at recapturing fragments of his lost career while overcoming the difficulties of his past. Perhaps this is a reflection of a decades-old jealousy instilled by the intense spirit of competitiveness her father fostered between Margaret and David, as she herself describes in her book… She remains devoted to the memory of a complicated man who, whatever his merits, left behind him a family legacy that one psychiatrist who knew the Helfgotts described to me as "a bottomless pit of need."
Australian writer John Macgregor did much of the research for Shine, and wrote its 'treatments' (versions of the story preceding the actual scripts).
In the midst of the controversy, his letter to The Australian was published in November 1996:
The ever-gallant Scott Hicks asked me not to write this. But with Margaret Helfgott's letter about Shine "annihilating" her father's character" (15/11), coming on top of numerous claims by other aggrieved parties who were once in David Helfgott's charmed orbit, I really have had enough.
I was involved with the Shine story from its inception: I did much of the early research, and wrote many drafts of the "treatment" (or pre-script). I spent months talking to most of those who had known David Helfgott, from childhood on. I can take no credit whatever for Jan Sardi's superb script - however my connections with some of these people, and the story in general, have lasted 10 years.
There is one glaring omission from Margaret Helfgott's public statements: much of the Shine story was drawn from David Helfgott's own elephantine memory. And whatever eccentricities David may have, he has never been remotely delusional.
David has been "diagnosed" by many experts - always differently. Even if we accept Margaret's somewhat distasteful public diagnosis of "schizo-affective disorder" (which is itself only a polite term for schizophrenia), the notion that this has "purely genetic or pre-natal" origins is itself - to use her own term - "medically inaccurate". Virtually all forms of mental illness can be precipitated by a stressful youthful environment.
Peter Helfgott was a hardline Stalinist (Stalin was "the greatest man ever born") who treated his elder son with great mental and, at times, physical cruelty. Why Margaret Helfgott has chosen to forget all this is in the realm of family psychology, and thus beyond my competence. However the facts are not - particularly as I (and Scott, and Jan) dug them out quite painstakingly, and verified them with many separate sources - within the family and outside of it.
In her first round of media complaints in August, Margaret Helfgott claimed her father had been "misrepresented for dramatic effect". She is correct. If Peter Helfgott's pathological cruelty had been given its literal cinematic due, Shine would have been a relentlessly depressing movie.
Margaret claims that "a scene depicting her father beating David into submission was 'totally fictional'". This would be news to the only living witness to that encounter. And I would be interested to hear from the "concerned relatives, friends and former music teachers" who have written to her defending her father's name. They kept their admiration for the man very quiet during our research.
The rot seems to be spreading. In August 1987 David's brother Les told Scott and myself that his father had once bashed him to the ground "for playing pinball". Now Les has joined Margaret in telling the world that Peter Helfgott never laid a hand on his children.
Lastly, to Dr Chris Reynolds, the former club proprietor who claims (fairly) to have helped "rescue" David more than a decade ago - and who is now upset at being "written out of the story". Dr Reynolds is telling the media that he offered every assistance to Scott Hicks when the Shine project began, but was told to "get stuffed".
Scott recalls their final phone conversation quite differently - and there the matter would rest. But unhappily for Dr Reynolds, there was a third party witness. I was standing next to Scott in his Perth hotel room when he phoned Dr Reynolds to gain his involvement in the script. Scott's many entreaties fell on deaf ears - indeed Dr Reynolds terminated the conversation by saying, "Talk to my lawyers." He was "written out of the story" at his own insistence.
Scott, by the way, is polite to a fault, and would never say "Get stuffed" to anyone (even if he were thinking it). His final words to Dr Reynolds were a request to phone him back if he changed his mind. It has been 10 years since we have heard from him.
There are those who resent David's success, and those who missed the opportunity to get on the Shine bandwagon early. They may continue to come forward, but let us hope they come bearing facts - not half-understood grudges and third-rate fictions.
Pianistic ability
Critics also claim that Helfgott's pianistic ability is grossly exaggerated. In a journal article[3], the New Zealand philosopher Denis Dutton speaks for many critics who claim that Helfgott's piano playing during his comeback in the last decade has severe technical and aesthetic deficiencies which would be unacceptable in any musician whose reputation had not been inflated beyond recognition. Dutton claims that, while listening to the movie, he covered his eyes during the parts where Helfgott's playing was used in order to concentrate entirely on the music, and not be distracted by the acting. He felt that the musicianship, when perceived in isolation, was not of a particularly high standard. Despite being widely panned by professional piano critics, Helfgott's recent tours have been well attended because, according to Dutton, Shine's irresponsible glamorisation of Helfgott's ability has attracted a new audience who are not deeply involved in the sound of Helfgott's playing, thereby drawing deserved public attention away from pianists who are more talented and disciplined.
Others point out that the point of Shine was not Helfgott's technical ability but his ability to continue playing at all given the plethora of external and internal factors stacked against him. It has moreover been pointed out that the early career triumphs documented by the film are factual.[citation needed]
Music
Music credits
- WITH A GIRL LIKE YOU
Written by Reg Presley, © 1966 Dick James Music Limited
Performed by the Troggs, (P) 1966 Mercury Limited
- WHY DO THEY DOUBT OUR LOVE
Written and performed by Johnny O'Keef
© 1959 Victoria Music / MCA Music Australia Pty Ltd, (P) 1959 Festival Records Pty Ltd
- POLONAISE in A flat major, Opus 53
Composed by Frederic Chopin, Performed by Ricky Edwards
- FAST ZU ERNST - SCENES FROM CHILDHOOD oPUS 15
composed by Robert Schumann, Performed by Wilhelm Kempff
(P) 1973 Polydore International GmbH Hamburg
- LA CAMPANELLA
From Violin Concerto in B minor by Niccolo Paganini
Transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt, Performed by David Helfgott
- HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY No. 2 in C sharp minor
Composed by Franz Liszt, Performed by David Helfgott
- FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLE BEE
Composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff
Arranged by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Performed by David Helfgott
- GLORIA, rv 589
Composed by Anotonio Vivaldi, Arranged by David Hirschfelder and Ricky Edwards
© PolyGram Music Publishing / Mushroom Music
- SOSPIRO
Composed by Franz Liszt, Performed by David Helfgott
- NULLA IN MUNDO PAX SINCERA
Composed by Anotonio Vivaldi, Arranged by David Hirschfelder and Ricky Edwards
© PolyGram Music Publishing / Mushroom Music
Performed by Jane Edwards (Soprano)
Geoffrey Lancaster (Harpsichord) and Gerald Keuneman (Cello)
- DAISY BELL
composed by Harry Dacre
Arranged and Performed by Ricky Edwards, © Mushroom Music
- FUNICULÌ, FUNICULÀ
Composed by Luigi Denze, Arranged by David Hirschfelder and Ricky Edwards
© PolyGram Music Publishing / Mushroom Music
- PIANO CONCERTO No. 3 in D minor Opus 30
Composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arranged by David Hirschfelder
Performed by David Helfgott, © PolyGram Music Publishing
- PRELUDE in C sharp minor Opus 3, No. 2
Composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff
Performed by David Helfgott, (P) 1994 RAP Productions, Denmark
- SYMPHONY No.9 in D minor Opus 125
Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven,Arranged by David Hirschfelder and Ricky Edwards
© PolyGram Music Publishing / Mushroom Music
- APPASSIONATA SONATA, No.23 in F minor Opus 57
Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, Performed by Ricky Edwards
- PRELUDE in D flat major, Opus 28 No.15
Composed by Frédéric Chopin
Trivia
Geoffrey Rush resumed piano lessons - suspended when he was 14 - in order to act as his own hand double. [4].
Nicole Kidman has an uncredited cameo in a bar scene.
References
- ^ http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?f943c058-5936-47dc-ab5c-91df436a68fb
- ^ Margaret Helfgott and Tom Gross, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine, ISBN 0-446-52383-6, pub. Warner Books (1998)
- ^ Denis Dutton, Philosophy and Literature 21 (1997): 340-345 [1]
- ^ Playing for their lives - interview with actors Noah Taylor and Geoffrey Rush - Interview
See also
External links
