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Shine

The story of the Australian pianist David Helfgott

Shine
Cert. 12

Mention Rachmaninov's third piano concerto to a concert pianist and expect a gasp. 'Not the Rach 3!' It is the keyboard equivalent of reading Joyce's Ulysses or playing against the New Zealand All-Blacks - dangerous to attempt and downright inappropriate for the immature.
I learned this from watching Shine. The concerto is central to the film which tells, largely in retrospect, the true story of Australian pianist David Helfgott. You see him as a little boy in the 1950s, clad in those itchy short trousers, playing Chopin in a church hall competition. But the dominant character in the film is his father, Helfgott senior, a Jew who lost his faith, his sisters and parents in the holocaust, and resolved to lose nothing else. He loves his children passionately, but fears so much the losing of them that his imprisons them as securely as he nails up the garden fence. The violence of his passion drives them all from him, and all but destroys his pride and joy, his brilliant son.
Having defied his father in leaving Australia, David takes up a scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London. The pivotal recital of the Rach 3 in a competition, by the sweating and tormented young David triggers the massive mental breakdown for which the cinema audience has been waiting. For years in the Australian mental institution he is denied access to the ivories. The man who was robbed of a childhood becomes a child running and skipping about half-clad like a toddler, chattering and rhyming half-sense.
His eventual redemption comes in the form of (inward groan) a female astrologer, whose accepting love liberates him. One of the film's messages is that New Age beliefs are healing, while traditional paternalism destroys.
Helfgott senior, who totally disowned David when he left home, and ignored his plea for help, visits him once, declaring his enduring love for his son. He talks repeatedly of a precious violin he once had which his own father smashed, and fails to recognise that he himself has smashed something far more valuable and fragile. Will there be a reconciliation? You will just have to watch the film! There is a lesson here about parenting, perhaps especially for Christian parents who are tempted to be over-protective of their children to the point of suffocation. Note also the stark contrast between this father and the father we meet in Luke 15. With fabulous music and extraordinarily good acting, this is painful but compelling viewing which is highly recommended.

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