Shine (1996)
Director: Scott Hicks
Writers: Jan Sardi (screenplay), Scott Hicks (story)
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Justin Braine
Genre: Biography
This is the kind of movie I look forward to watching, an uplifting tale about the triumph of the human spirit.
I went into this blind, I'd never heard of the movie or of David Helfgott. I should've loved this, but I didn't. As much as I usually like Geoffrey Rush, I couldn't stand his take on a mentally ill person. It was annoying and somewhat comical when comedy wasn't appropriate. He was not believable to me, I was very aware of an actor 'acting odd'. I've seen other actors do the same kind of performance with the same rapid fire, confused speech and it never works for me. I thought that he might be someone high on drugs in the first scene, either that or he just drank 10 cups of coffee.
The odd thing is the teenage David Helfgott, Noah Taylor was really good in this. His performance was nuanced. I was hoping so much that Rush's adult David would be a small part of the film. Unfortunately we see him quite a bit in the third act and for me the third act was the weakest.
The other thing that I didn't like about
Shine was that the entire story felt rushed and abbreviated. It was like there was a 2hr 30min long story here, but the film was cut down to 1hr 45mins in the edited room, leaving only a framework of the story. I didn't even know for sure what was wrong with David. I seen him collapse at the piano during his big performance, then he was in a mental hospital. All the scenes were so brief without any center to them.
And then he just seemed to pop into different people's lives...I still don't know why a rich and successful Lynn Redgrave would marry him? When we just had seem him jumping on a trampoline with his genitally flopping in the air, as small children watched him. To me, that would signal that he wasn't well enough to care for himself and he sure isn't ready to be married or be around children! Or maybe the Australians think that's funny? Maybe they do as there was another scene just like that earlier in the film.
I didn't buy into the movie and I didn't care about David. It could've been a good story if another director made it.