Scott Hicks made a splashy impression at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival with his Australian art house “Shine,” a film that stirred a major bidding war among distributors; Fine Line got the U.S. release rights.
Based on the true story of David Helfgott, whose troubled life cut short a brilliant career, Scott Hick’s film is a remarkably powerful biopic by Hollywood standards, even if occasionally it gets too manipulative and borderline exploitative.
Steering clear of relating familiar screen episodes of “great suffering artists,” “Shine” found a fresh, stirring way to tell its story, without cliches.
As a little boy, David (played by Alex Rafalowicz) is forced to learn how to play the piano by his monstrously domineering father, Peter (German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl), a seemingly bitter Holocaust survivor who was denied the opportunity to play music during his own childhood.
Showing great promise as a teenager, David wins a scholarship to study in the U.S., but his resentful father forbids him to leave home. Later, through the encouragement of an elderly writer, Katherine Susannah Prichard (Googie Withers), David defies his father and leaves for London to study at the Royal College of Music. After mounting pressures, and Katherine’s death, David suffers a nervous breakdown, which leads to electro-shock therapy. Committed to an institution, David is forbidden to ever play the piano again.
As noted, “Shine” succeeds better than most biopics about artists overcoming adversity, because it doesn’t condescend to any of its characters. The mature David is an eccentric but fully rounded and wholly grounded man. The central father-son melodrama is more complex than the usual simplistic power play.
In the lead, Geoffrey Rush overacts, what with his compulsive motormouth frenzy. He shows the kind of histrionic virtuosity that tend to impress Oscar voters.
Armin Mueller Stahl as the psychotic stage-father gives a stellar performance, one that counters the overly sentimental elements of the story.
Impressive for a feature debut, the production should please music lovers, since most of the music is played by Helfgott himself. In general, the film’s emotional force is such that it was appreciated by all kinds of audiences.
Intertextuality
Thematically, Shine resembles Fear Strikes Out, Robert Mulligan’s biopic of American baseball player Jimmy Piersall. It is based on Piersall’s 1955 memoir Fear Strikes Out: The Jim Piersall Story, co-written with Al Hirshberg. That 1957 film starred Anthony Perkins as Piersall and Karl Malden as his father,
Cast
David (Geoffrey Rush)
Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl)
Gillian (Lynn Redgrave)
David as a child (Alex Rafalowicz)
David as a boy (Noah Taylor)
Googie Withers (Katherine Susannah Prichard)
Cecil Parkes (John Gielgud)
Sylvia (Sonia Todd)
Ben Rosen (Nicholas Bell)
Oscar Alert
Oscar Nominations: 7
Picture, produced by Jane Scott
Director: Scott Hicks
Screenplay (Original): Jan Sardi, based on the story by Scott Hicks
Actor: Geoffrey Rush
Supporting Actor: Armin Mueller-Stahl
Score (Original): David Hirschfelder
Editing: Pip Karmel
Oscar Awards: 1
Actor
Oscar Context
In 1996, “Shine” competed for the Best Picture Oscar with the literary adaptation “The English Patient,” which swept most of the Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, the Coens’ violent comedy “Fargo,” the Tom Cruise starring vehicle “Jerry Maguire,” for which Cuba Gooding Jr. won Supporting Actor, and Mike Leigh’s British drama, “Secrets & Lies.”
The Original Screenplay Oscar went to Joel and Ethan Coen for “Fargo,” and “The English Patient” won Dramatic Score and Sound.
