Shine-y crazy people...
reviewed Sun, 05 Jan 1997
I
saw Shine today, in a remarkably stinky theater.
It
wasn't quite the transcendent experience for me that it seems to have
been
for other critics, but it's still quite a good film. For those of
you who don't know, it's the true story of David Helfgott, a child
prodigy
pianist who suffers a total nervous breakdown at the peak of his
career.
Much like Blanche DuBois, he depends on the kindness of strangers,
especially
after his father disowns him for daring to leave home to perfect the
talent
that his father forced him to develop in the first place. Noah
Taylor
and Geoffrey Rush are both excellent as, respectively, the awkward
adolescent
David and the loony adult David who babbles almost continually and
often
unintelligibly. Armin Mueller-Stahl is also terrific as David's
controlling
father, who loves him but visits the sins of his father on his
children.
He makes Mr. Helfgott a complex, comprehensible character instead of a
monster.
I had a couple of problems with it. First of all, you
never really
get inside David. The movie keeps you at arm's length.
Second,
maybe I'm just revealing my total ignorance of classical music, but
what
the hell is the deal with Rachmaninoff's 3rd concerto? It's the
piece
that touches off David's breakdown, and throughout the movie, everyone
keeps exclaiming in awestruck tones, "Not the Rach 3! No!
He's
not ready! You must be mad to try the Rach 3!" It
made
me think of Monty Python's Killer Joke, like everyone who comes in
contact
with it dies or goes nuts or something. It's just a bit hard for
me to believe that there's a piece of music out there that's so
difficult
to play that pianists end up in a mental institution for attempting it.
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