Shine has been called the ‘best film you’ll see in 1997’ but its dramatisat= ion
of the truth has been questioned.=20
Mike Hutchinson
ADELAIDE, Western Australia, May, 1986: Kerry Hicks had a memorable birthda= y t hat year. She and her husband Scott were expecting friends for dinner, to c= ele
brate. The scene was set for a convivial but hardly unusual evening.
Until, that is, Scott, an established film-maker, read in the local newspap= er=20
of an eccentric pianist who had survived a mysterious “illness” to return t= o t he recital trail. The man was playing in Adelaide that night. Hicks felt he= ha
d to attend. He listened and marvelled.
The result, 10 years in the making, was Shine, the unlikely story of a dera= nge
d pianist, which is already on course to become one of the most talked-abou= t m ovies of 1997. With its bittersweet theme of destructive and redeeming love= , S hine tells the tale of childlike genius David Helfgott. But the story behin= d t he story – the making of the film – is almost as compelling. The narrative = inc
ludes some potent cinematic myths: a director with a dream, a virtually unknown star,=
an
unseemly wrangle over distribution rights, and controversy over the film’s=
ve
rsion of the truth.
“Something – I don’t know what – compelled me to skip Kerry’s supper that n= igh
t and attend that recital. I’m glad I did,” says Hicks. “She’s since forgiv= en=20
me. I remember I came away from the recital feeling like you do when you’ve= se
en a good film. It was an extraordinary experience.” What intrigued him is = evi
dent from his biopic. David Helfgott is no thin-blooded interpreter of the = pia
no reperto ire. He hums, grimaces and laughs while he performs. His interpretations ar= e n ot purist: notes or lines occasionally go missing.=20
He was “like Groucho Marx on speed”, Hicks recalls.” I was captivated by th= e m ix of man and music.” Helfgott has also been known to wander down to the au= die
nce and kiss and hug anyone within reach. It is as though he has lost whate= ver
restrains our innermost impulses. Despite, or because, of that he plays li=
ke=20
an angel.
So, Hicks found himself face to face with a conundrum. What lay behind this= ex
traordinary anomaly – a shambling, virtually incoherent idiot-savant who pl= aye
d Rachmaninov, Chopin and Liszt so beautifully? Who were the key figures in= hi
s life? Where had Helfgott disappeared to for a decade? Shine offers a few = ans
wers.=20
Helfgott, born in 1947, was one of four artistic children of Polish-Jewish = Hol
ocaust survivors, who fled to near-poverty in Perth, Western Australia. His= do
mineering father drove his son to succeed at the piano, but dissolved in an= ger
when David’s talent took him to Britain on a scholarship. At graduation, H=
elf
gott tackled the technical and emotional demands of Rachmaninov’s Third Pia= no=20
Concerto,=20
collapsed, and entered a 10-year netherworld of psychiatric wards and hoste= ls.
On the road again to recovery and recitals, he married and rebuilt his life= .
After that ground-breaking 1986 comeback tour, it took Hicks – now 44 – man= y m onths to gain Helfgott’s confidence and that of his equally extraordinary w= ife
and manager, Gillian. Hicks regularly travelled the 600km between Adelaide=
an
d Perth to interview the pianist and hear him play.
This sounds simple, but it was an achievement because of the way Helfgott t= alk
s. Hicks constructed a screenplay, Flight of the Bumblebee. It wouldn’t do.= It
was mundane, too “TV movie”. In came screenwriter Jan Sardi to craft somet=
hin
g finer, the screenplay that came to be filmed as Shine.
It was now 1991, five years since Hicks had first met Helfgott. Shine was s= til
l only halfway to celluloid. The script was no longer literal: it took libe= rti
es, just as Helfgott takes liberties with music. According to Hicks, the fi= lm=20
depicts “being eaten alive by a piano”, by the formidable bulk and terrible= ma
w of an open concert grand on stage. “No wonder they go crazy,” Hicks excla= ims
.
So far, Shine was on paper, and in Hicks’s head. He had not yet found finan= ce,
turning to Jane Scott, producer of Jane Campion’s debut box-office wonder =
My=20
Brilliant Career. Scott raised the necessary $6 million; she and Hicks resi= ste
d the pleas of financiers to involve more big-name stars. Hicks saw that th= at=20
would loosen the emotional grip of the film.
He was right. Three actors play David Helfgott – child, teenager and adult = – e ach virtual unknowns. The youngest David, victim of a father who loves not = wis
ely but too well, is Alex Rafalowicz, struggling to conclude a competition = pie
ce as the piano rolls symbolically away downstage.
The teenage David, who escapes his concentration camp of a home to study at= Lo
ndon’s Royal College of Music, is played by Noah Taylor.=20
Geoffrey Rush, a graduate of the Lecoq school of mime in Paris, plays Helfg= ott
as an adult. Rush learned every stammer, repetition, gasp and “whooah” of =
Hel
fgott’s deranged but systematically scripted soliloquies. Nothing was impro= vis
ed. Aware that nothing convinces less than a film “pianist” whose hands flu= tte
r meaninglessly over the ivories, Rush honed a credible piano technique. Th= e s oundtrack=20
is played by the real-life Helfgott, but it never shows.
Rush explains: “I’m not a pianist … but if you play Hamlet, you’ve got a = swo
rd fight at the end of the play.” If you can’t convince in that, you’ve thr= own
away the final act. So with Shine. At various stages, the adult Helfgott h=
as=20
had a caffeine addiction – scores of cups of tea a day – to put the PG chim= ps=20
in the shade, and smoked like Marlboro Man. He played the piano, and, bizar= rel
y, swam le ngths of the pool, for hours on end. His nervous energy was, and is, prodig= iou
s.
How to do him justice? Rush clearly succeeded. The story goes that after He= lfg
ott saw the final cut of Shine for the first time, he bounded up to Hicks, = tri
lling the single word, “Brrrilliantissimo!” So, Hicks had his film. He had = Hel
fgott’s approval. What he didn’t have was a distributor. The movie’s first = pub
lic screening was at the United States’s Sundance Film Festival in January.= Th
e result?=20 “All hell broke loose,” recalls Hicks. “Suddenly there was this feverish fr= enz
y to lay claim to the film.”=20
Other controversies were to follow. Helfgott’s father, played with devastat= ing
emotional force by Armin Mueller-Stahl, is at the centre of the film: the =
pow
er of his performance comes from the anguished contradictions apparent in t= he=20
desperate, but severe tenderness the elder Helfgott shows his son. He bulli= es=20
and terrorises, because he wants “to keep the family together”.=20
Travesty, cry members of the late Peter Helfgott’s family (he died in 1975)= . D avid’s sister Margaret wrote to Australian papers condemning Shine’s “unfai= r a nd inaccurate” portrayal.=20
The film’s second controversy involves another change that has been made fo= r d ramatic effect. In life, a far-sighted doctor, Chris Reynolds, brought Helf= got
t out of his twilight world. Shine, however, credits Helfgott’s emotional a= nd=20
musical renaissance to a lesser character. In life as in fiction, Helfgott = is=20
a holy fool (and the first to admit it) whose relationship to experience is= in
discrimina
te. Hicks defines the pianist as “a force of nature”. “A near genius” is ho= w H elfgott’s teacher at London’s Royal School of Music, played in Shine by Joh= n G ielgud, described his pupil.=20
The question is, how many of those who go, and will go, to his concerts, do= as
a result of seeing Shine? How many will hope for a mid-concert hug and a k=
iss
? Does his personality overshadow the music? Is he something of a freak sho= w?=20
And does it matter?
“Many people are attracted to his music who wouldn’t otherwise attend class= ica
l concerts,” says Hicks. “But that’s wholly positive.”=20