Virtuoso performance by Geoffrey Rush as a disturbed virtuoso pianist.

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2014)

Viewed at RIGA, Arsenals Forum IFF, September 20-28, 1998. SHINE (1996) written and directed by Scott Hicks stars Geoffrey Rush as an emotionally disturbed virtuoso pianist in Australia, freaked out by the impossible demands of a father who constantly abuses him with the memory of his own disturbed childhood in Europe and the loss of family in the concentration camps. The cruel father of the child prodigy pianist, passing on his genocide complex to the next generation, is heavyweight German actor, Armin Meuller-Stahl (b. 1930) who is in everything these days, and it ends with a rousing piano rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Flight of the Bumblebee" when the hero, after a long stint in an institution, recovers his senses to some extent ... The true story of David Helfgott (may God help him) -- very absorbing with tour-de-force performance by Mr. Rush. After this he'll be in everything! (And he was).
Shine was one of the big films of the year and earned Rush the Academy award for for Best Actor plus a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting role for Mueller-Stall. Also nominated for Best Picture and best Original Screenplay. It included the last screen appearance at age 82 of British born actress Googie Withers who was a big star way back in the thirties (for example, in Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes"). Another elder British giant, John Gielgud, had a cameo at age 94! -- and passed away in 2000. Aussie director Scott Hicks, not very well known outside of Australia, also made "Snow falling on Cedars", a 1999 drama with Ethan Hawke defending a wrongly accused Japanese American in a murder case during the wave of anti-Japanese prejudice in America following Pearl Harbor.