a favourite

Rating: Null/10 (10 November 2002)

This is one of my favourites. Rush is remarkable in this role as David Helfgott, the famous Australian pianist.
There have been some comments by other users claiming that a great deal of information is missing, however it would be impossible to show every fact of a man's life in 90 minutes. This is a problem with film, that continuity and believability issues are difficult to forgive. However the director/writer has selected the information that he thought was most important with regard to portraying Helfgotts life as humanly and as cinematographically as possible, and we as viewers will have to trust him on that. Personally I think he did a great job, and simply seeing Rush as David was far more inspiring and moving than spending time finding out about the particulars of his illness, or indeed accurately biographing his breakdown piece by miserable piece. In fact I applaud the shape and timing of the manuscript which was based upon conversations between Helgott and the director/writer Scott Hicks.
Another user, who labelled the film 'pretentious', being himself accomplished with the piano, has complained about the embarrassing dubbing of music over the poor keyboard skills shown by the 'actors'. This is an interesting statement, and if the learned gentleman had access to the director's interview on the DVD version of the film, he would have found out that the 'actors' did actually play the majority of the pieces themselves. I, unlike him, therefore thoroughly enjoyed the playing sequences, especially Rush's who is a talented player in his own right.
There are few actor performances that have me genuinely startled, but Rush's is one of them, and at times his portrayal of Helfgott makes you want to believe that they are the same man. Great stuff. Bravo sport!