Playing for their lives

Interview ,  Dec, 1996   by Oren Moverman

With Hollywood scrambling to change its menu from summer's cotton candy to winter's canned caviar, a brilliant Australian film has arrived on our shores to remind us of the true flavor of quality cinema. Directed by Scott Hicks, Shine is a humorous, penetrating psychological study of the troubled life of Australian piano prodigy David Helfgott. Played in the film as a child by Alex Rafalowicz, as a youth by Noah Taylor, and as an adult by Geoffrey Rush, Helfgott has survived his traumas and, now in his fifties, continues to perform and record classical music.

Juxtaposing past and present in an unconventional, almost musical structure, the film depicts Helfgott's emotional struggles, first with a domineering father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) chased by the ghosts of the Holocaust, then with breakdown, obscurity, loneliness, and longing for the keyboard. Although it culminates in Helfgott's survival, through the unconditional love of a woman (Lynn Redgrave), and his triumphant return to the concert stage, Shine is no ordinary overcoming-the-odds, based-on-a-true-story, mental-illness movie of the week. Jan Sardi's moving script and Hicks's intelligent direction account for the film's impeccable pacing, visual richness, tasteful sentimentality, and boldly original piano-playing scenes.

But what is winning over audiences wherever the film is shown is the acting - particularly that of Australian film star Taylor and stage veteran Rush, who combine to portray the evolution of Helfgott's cheerful brand of insanity. Hicks says of his two leading men, "Geoffrey Rush comes from the stage; years of technique, training, and big, demanding roles - from Gogol through Chekhov through Shakespeare. Noah Taylor is a creature of cinema. He made his debut at fifteen; he's been in fifteen films and he's only twenty-seven. The fact is, he's a chameleon." The difference between Rush and Taylor becomes even more pronounced when listening to their individual voices. Together they bring to their one character a depth rarely seen on the American screen.

Talking to Noah Taylor, the young David Helfgott

OREN MOVERMAN: What drew you to Shine?

NOAH TAYLOR: As much as I'd love to say, "I did this picture because it meant da-da-da-da," I did it because it was a job. I'd turned down a lot of stuff, and when Shine came along, it was not only acceptable to me, but in the end it turned out to be a good thing for so many different reasons. For David Helfgott, it has improved his life fiscally and emotionally. The director, Scott Hicks, spent ten years developing and researching this film and letting it percolate in his head, so it was nice to see it pay off for him. And the film obviously strikes some deep chords with people, whereas a lot of films today are wasteful. They deal in banal entertainment when they could be healing. Personally, I prefer music to film because music is much purer. It can be divine, whereas film is so often just eight inches away from being snuff. So it's a dirty business, film. But, you know [shrugs], it's a job. [gets up and closes the door] I'm obsessed with this door.

OM: Why's that?

NT: I have a door obsession. It has to be shut. It's obviously something very anal. [alarmed] Don't do it! Oh, I thought you were going to open it.

OM: NO, I'm locking it.

NT: Oh, thanks. It's fear of opportunity, perhaps. [laughs] I went out with a girl who mined my life. We went out for five years, lived together, you know - everything. And then she went and cheated on me and broke my heart and did all the things they do in country-western songs, and that got me all fucked up. Fear of opportunity! Luckily her mother is a sort of Jungian analyst. I got steered toward Jung, and it's been helpful in my life.

OM: Don't you think that actually ties in with Shine?

NT: Jung?

OM: Well, love, pain, and recovery are at the center of David Helfgott's story.

NT: It was about a year after I broke up with my girlfriend that I did Shine, and I was still a complete and utter fucking mess. I begged her to come back from Africa, where she had moved, and look after me. And she did, to her great credit. I'll always love her for that. Shine has that motif of the power of love - obsessive love to destroy, in this case in the father-son relationship. It shows how terrible obsessive love can be. I mean, I obsessively loved my girlfriend, and it wasn't until we broke up and were apart for a while that I learned to love her sanely. And it's so much better, but it's a hard lesson to learn.

OM: You were twenty-six when you acted in Shine, but you start out in the film playing a character who's fourteen. How does a grown man become an adolescent onscreen?

NT: I'm an alien. I mutate. [laughs] I don't know. I was really worried about it the whole time, wondering whether I could get away with it or not, or if it was just a big fucking joke. I'm never doing it again - never! But, actually, you just sort of do it. I can mutate to that age. I can make myself taller and shorter, too. It's odd. It may have to do with the nuclear disaster we had at Maralinga [South Australia].