SHINE

*** ^{out of} ****

Even SHINE can't tarnish Helfgott's redemptive tale

It would have been difficult for director Scott hicks to fail to provoke an emotional response with the story of pianist David Helfgott, and SHINE succeeds because this story is an undeniably engaging one. A a film, however, SHINE should be a beginner's study in indelicately wrestling the audience into emotional submission.

There is no subtlety here. the child Helfgott (Alex Rafalowicz) is raised by father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) whose survival from his own Holocaust losses, including his parents, becomes a justification for a most dour and suffocating affection. denied a violin as a child, Peter Helfgott is determined that his children succeed musically. Initially, Peter teaches them himself and pushes them hard, and he is obviously displeased when David fails to win a competition. "You must always win," he urges, for "In this world, only the strong survive. The weak are crushed like insects.

But when David's talents threaten to take him away from the family home, Peter's fear of losing his family again is heightened. Peter constantly grills his sob to admit, "I am a lucky boy," and reminds him how quickly he is to have a family and how quickly it can be taken away.

Perhaps the truth is uglier than the fiction, but in this fiction the emotional and physical abuse is made more than evident, and so is its toll on the child, that it is almost unforgivably manipulative. SHINE showcases theses abusive parts well, but the loving moments barely register.

In SHINE, Helfgott's relationship with his father is the definitive one, and everyone else is reduced to the common narrative purpose of failing him: his mother watches silently while Helfgott endures abuse, and weeps silently when he makes a triumphant return to stage; his sisters are there to tell the institutionally-confined Helfgott that they will no longer be able to visit him; motherly writer Katharine Pritchard dies on him just prior to a competition. despite the constant failures by others, the child's "genius" at the piano, his only apparent emotional release, nevertheless blossoms. Peter's warning that "Everything will fail you except music" rings true indeed.Viewers will leave SHINE impressed not only by Helfgott, but also with Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3. Peter is determined that his son learn it, but two of his piano teachers warn about the emotional toll that this "bloody" concerto will unleash on the delicate David. With the distinction of having the most notes per minute, this is undoubtedly a difficult piece. SHINE transforms this concerto into mythic proportions however. When Helfgott tells his London Royal College of Music mentor Cecil Parkes (John Gielgud) that he will play the Rach 3 during the annual competition, he responds, "The Rach 3? Why you have to be mad to attempt that!" Helfgott, expectedly, asks, "Am I mad enough?"

In its own blistering minute, SHINE describes the Rach 3 as "monumental," the "Everest of mountains,"requiring "all fingers to be giant"" with its "big, fat chords" and each hand struggling against the other for supremacy." Indeed, performing the Rach 3 sound like the guarantee of a nervous breakdown, the musical equivalent of Chinese water torture.

This is a mistake. Difficult yes but spirit breaker? Presumably other pianists (and with such puffery it becomes a mild surprise to learn that at least twenty recordings of the Rach 3 exist), equally skilled though to their movie misfortune less eccentric, have completed it non the worse for wear except for tired fingers.

By deifying the concerto, Hicks introduces the unfortunate possibility that it was this Everest of concertos that destroyed Helfgott, not his artistic sacrifice which exhausts him. Isn't it the personal contribution that sets Helfgott's interpretation apart from those pianists as technically proficient, or even more so? This is the preferable thought, that Helfgott gave his all this one performance and this is what breaks him, but instead Hicks assigns greatness to the concerto.

When Helfgott finishes it, and barely, he passes the gauntlet, becoming even more deserving of our stamp of genius. Now, SHINE was not intended to challenge our various conceptions of artistic genius, but it does rely on these to a fault. Since the film's audience is made aware of his history of abuse and his genius, his predilection for public nudity and breast-mashing is played for laughs. Maybe the real Helfgott does challenge social conventions, but in SHINE these are excused because of genius and abuse. Such an excuse doesn't play as well after the movie.

Geoffrey Rush's stream of consciousness jabberings, frequently peppered by "daddy," and other childhood associations, is giddy to watch. The tougher job is given to Noah Taylor in whom we see the gradual breakdown.

Helfgott's marriage is handled with alarming clumsiness. When Helfgott proposes marriage to Gillian, an astrologer (Vanessa Redgrave) already engaged to an investment adviser (do investment advisers ever stand a chance against artistic geniuses?), he tells her to consult the stars. She does, entering their birthdates into a computer, and she ponders over the results. The next scene shows them being wed, so apparently the astrology software gave its approval, and this was all that was required. Did love enter into her calculations? Why does one need software to confirm what is in your heart? Or was this a product placement for a new Microsoft product?

Despite all this, SHINE succeeds because the source is undeniably four-star material. SHINE is redeemed by Helfgott's story, but it remains an all-thumbs treatment of a too-human story: no pianissimo, all big, fat chords.