Rating: 
Summary: All-time sleeper of a movie.
Review: A film so good that even though the leading man only appears in a half-hour or so of the film, he wins about every award known to film actors. The rest of the film didn't do so bad either. There is some hyperbole, the "Rach 3" isn't unplayable, but everything fits to get the various points across. I think what impresses me most is the overall quality of the production and acting. Not a comedy, not a psycho-drama but a rather joyful one hanky view of someone's rather screwed up life. Lots of good music too.
Rating: 
Summary: The happy scenes are when David is brain damaged
Review: A Jewish boy in Australia named David Helfgott has amazing talent for the piano. Apparently in order for him to take his career to the next level he must go to London, but his father forbids this. The movie is taking the position that the father was wrong, disturbed. But judging from what happens to the boy in London, who knows? The boy has a breakdown in London, after he disobeys his father and makes the move. The breakdown costs him his career. Suddenly he talks like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, if Hoffman's character was on speed. Amazingly, he recovers in a sense, meets a nice woman who wants him, and succeeds to some degree in the music world. The best parts of the movie are the happy ones, the successful ones, when the piano player is already brain damaged and talking in the most eccentric way, but making it. The worst parts of the movie are when the boy is normal but unhappy, quarreling with his father. Because of this movie, I picked up the David Helfgott CD. Is he any good? How do I know. I'm not that knowledgeable about the classical music he is playing. He plays with spirit.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT MOVIE
Review: All I can say is, everything you want in a dramtic film is here. The realism of overcoming harsh abuse by an over protective father and the quest to play Rachmaninoff's Concerto No.3 lends itself to a first class dramatic piece of work.The music is excellent and I can't say enough about Geoffrey Rush's performance as the true David Helfgott is unforgettable.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant dramatic tale!
Review: An amazing performance by Geoffrey Rush and an enthralling storyline makes this film on of the most effectivly thought provoking dramas of all time.
Rating:
Summary: Only The Strong Survive
Review: Armin Mueller Stahl dominates "Shine" just as the father he plays dominated the film's subject, David Helfgott, a brilliant pianist crushed under the weight of implacable, savage, unremitting paternal love and expectation. Again and again the film's hardest scenes are those in which a savage beating, with fists or words or towels, is followed by an embrace, cloying and suffocating, and the litany "No one will ever love you like I do..if you leave you will be punished the rest of your life...only the strong survive."Scott Hicks' movie opens with a piano competition where David, eight, is already cowed enough to not answer when asked the title of the piece that he will play. The father answers. The child plays, brilliantly, even following the piano as it rolls away across the stage, but he does not win. Daddy marches away furious. Daddy's folks were boiled up in the camps and Daddy's own father, a stern and irreligious presence still tacked on the wall in the tiny, tin walled hut they share with two sisters and mother firmly under thumb, Daddy's Daddy wouldn't let Daddy have music when Daddy was young, Daddy, as he recalls again and again to David, saved up his pennies when he was young to buy a violin and what did Daddy's Daddy do? Daddy smashed it, with his fist. Just like that. Which is why David is very lucky, a very lucky boy to have his piano. What is he? Say it, he should say it. And David says just how lucky he is.
The Rachmaninov 3 Concerto eventually breaks his mind. Or rather, the pressure built up around winning it, winning the encounter with his music, winning, finally, in these small bantam weight contests of life. While waiting to be told the outcome of the Australian state contest he waits with his main rival. "It's tough isn't it Roger?" he says. "It's a blood sport," Roger replies and goes on, shudderingly relieved, to win. "Shine" is above all an examination of the consequences of not winning, at life, the consequences of being forced to feel winning the only thing, of being forced to try and accomodate one pressure, be it a father or an absolute perfection to attempt, and failing, necessarily, to measure up.
The comparison that comes to mind quite early on is Jane Campion's first feature "An Angel at My Table", with its portrait likewise of an artist who detours through mental illness to arrive at recognition. "Shine" has a different narrative structure, starting with Geoffrey Rush's grown up and all but mentally incompetent Helfgott, charming but looney except when at the piano, then flashing back to that eight year old competitor and everything that followed to explain the continuing present in which he finally finds a place to play the piano to unconditional adulation (a restaurant), a woman who loves him and provides, likewise, unconditional affection (Lynn Redgrave) and finally the return to the concert stage. The thing is, Jane Campion imbues her artist's passage through the veil with mystical, mysterious, somehow beguiling images that throw upon the universe the colours of her life. Hicks' Helfgott is just left out in the rain frequently, in fact with such continuing regularity that you wish they'd just stick an umbrella in his hand - surely it can't have rained all night and every night in the outback and this seems like cheap sympathy begging and betrays the basic lack of grandeur to the film-maker's vision. "He's pitiful because he can't get in out of the rain, poor duck." This sort of thing grates on your viewer, after a while. The performances are uniformly strong, notably Noah Taylor as the teenage prodigy, probably more haunting than Rush's grown up loon and straddling effortlessly the range from cowering terror, quizzical humour, longing, love and passionate nay psychotic and guileless devotion to the art. Gielgud does his usual cameo as the music master whose performance you might paint by numbers, though a moment when he tells of playing the Rachmaninov 3 for the man himself is touching, and the film is full of such moments. But finally, as the now calmer though still frantic Helfgott is walking from his father's grave with his calm, practical wife who says "There is a reason for everything," you wonder if that's enough of an answer to give to tragedy, enough of a vision even to append after a tragedy. Jane Campion leaves her heroine in "Angel at My Table" writing alone at night in a caravan and listening "to the sea, to the sea". I wished many times in this movie that this hero, so crushed by the quotidian and torn apart by one man's experience of hell, might have accounted more for wonder, might have made the world a little more explicable in its fall.
Rating:
Summary: A moving true story that captures the significance of music
Review: As a pianist, I was swept away by the intensity of this movie, as well as its beautiful soundtrack. Any music-lover can understand the mixture of sacrifice, determination, hard work and hope that makes a brilliant musician. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who has ever loved a piece of music or the sound of a flawless piano concerto - a beautiful tribute to an unforgettable pianist!
Rating:
Summary: OUTSTANDING movie presented on an average DVD
Review: Bear in mind that this was one of the first generations of DVDs that were released, and so many of the additional features that we enjoy now were never added in these earlier release titles. I do hope that "Shine" is re-released with more in- depth features, including something that focuses on David Hefgott, the pianist that this movie is based on. I truly hope the decision is made to interview or document Helfgott in some way. That's the only reason I deducted a star, because the movie is outstanding. I would urge those who enjoyed this film to contact FineLine Pictures, who released the movie, and urge them to create a special edition DVD to include this. The real David Helfgott actually contributed as a musician (pianist, of course) for this wonderful film about his life, dramatizing his struggles through his childhood and breakdown as an adolescent. Yet it isn't about gloomy and depressing accounts but about survival and living to the best of one's abilities. Those who have little patience with people who are schizophrenic may become a bit uneasy at the performance of Geoffrey Rush who played the adult Helfgott. Rush's acting was impeccable and very believable, which is why some might be a little agitated or confused at the stuttering and incomplete and rambling dialog by Rush's character. But have patience in getting to understand Helfgott as the movie progresses. It can confuse the viewer since there are flashbacks and flash forwards. But you know, this was one beautifully produced movie. It has had high replay, because the film simply touches the heart. Just relax and allow the movie (and Helfgott's character) absorb you. By the end, you'll really FEEL how much of a journey that David Helfgott traveled to arrive where he did. And for those who enjoy Lynn Redgrave, my gosh. Her portrayal of Gillian was superb. Redgrave didn't even get any type of top billing and she didn't appear until late in the movie, yet I felt like Gillian and David were my own family by the end. The DVD's special features include a movie trailer, a video clip of an award presented to Rush (look for Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise together in the audience) and a somewhat unusually- formatted Q/A with director Scott Hicks (about a dozen questions are displayed and when you select one, a video with an answer by Hicks plays). "Shine" wasn't meant to be a tearjerker movie, but it got to me. I sometimes can't watch even the trailer without getting a lump in my throat. Lovers of piano concertos and also those who appreciate classical music would be especially grateful for this cinematic gem.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Movie
Review: Contrary to popular belief, this movie is extremely accurate in the portrayal of David Helfgott. It is a moving and delightful movie with a touch of the harshness of growing up as a young, Jewish prodigy, in a broken home. The movie is well done and the soundtrack is also worth every penny! Also, concerning David's own album where he plays Rachmaninoff is wonderful too. I'd like to see ANYONE attempt to play "Rach 3!" It is one of the most difficult piano pieces to play! You may need to watch this movie two or three times to catch all that is happening.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible Actor Performance !! Wonderful Film !
Review: Even now, after seeing "The Pianist" from Polansky, I think that SHINE is equally or even a more "brilliant" film, let's say... And in fact the main Shine Actor role demands such an interpretation that we don't see in "The Pianist", which actor almost look the world on a passive way... Shine, on the other hand, is an amazing film, it's actor seems to really incorporate and love the character !! Shine exuberates in love for life in such a way that it literally extracts tears from our eyes.
Perhaps if the "The pianist" actor would be that one of Shine, the result could be better.
In a phrase: Shine is one of the best all time movies. Get it! Dihelson Mendonca
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful movie
Review: I agree with most of the reviews which follow. This is a 5-star movie from beginning to end. I just rented it for the second time (two years after first seeing it) and believe it would bear watching over and over. David's father is a particularly interesting character. His relentless control of his son (some type of warped and twisted love? hate? ? ) to excel at the piano, and to 'keep the family together' is fascinating and scary. My late father played beautiful piano (I am told by my mother)until he suffered a schizophrenic break when I was an infant. Unlike David he never regained this ability. 'Shine' suggests what the piano may have meant in his life. Wonderful movie.
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