Nominated for many Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Actor (Geoffrey Rush, who won), and Best Picture, Shine was, I thought, supposed to be good. Was I dissapointed. First of all, how can a man be nominated for Best Actor, then only be in less than half the film? I think the actor who played the younger version of David Helffgot (Noah Taylor) did a lot better job. Shine is the true story of Helffgot, a child prodigy piano player, who is hounded by his father for years, and finally collapses and ends up in a mental hospital. The whole movie seemed to move kind of fast for me. First he's young, pushed by his father to win at all costs. The he's a little older, pushed by his father to win at all costs, but when David gets a chance to study in America, his father says no. Then David gets accepted at the Royal College of Music in London, and goes there against his father's wishes. Then he decides to finally learn what is considered the hardest piece of music to play, the Rach 3. And in movie time it seemed to take about a week for him to learn it, then perform it, then collapse. Suddenly he looks like he aged 20 years, and is in a mental institute. And what the hell is up with Lynn Redgrave's character? She shows up, and a few days later marries David, after checking his astrological signs on her computer. Shine should have been a very moving, touching film about the struggle of one young man against the world. Instead it turned out to be not very interesting, and not very moving.
