   |
SYNOPSIS
Opening in the early 1980's, Shine begins as David (Geoffrey Rush), a man in his forties, stumbles into a wine bar after getting lost one night in driving rain. Although he is wildly eccentric, David charms the bar's owner, Sylvia (Sonia Todd). When Sylvia takes David home, it appears that he is living in some sort of halfway house, under someone's care. Despite his unorthodox lifestyle and personality, Sylvia is impressed with David's brilliant skills as a pianist and gives him a regular job playing at her bar.
David's impromptu performance for Sylvia is, in fact, the first time he has been at a piano in more than a decade. Inspired by this, he is transported back to his childhood in which everything seemed to revolve around the piano. Though just a little boy, David (Alex Rafalowicz) is pushed by his father, Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl) to excel as a pianist. A Polish-Jewish refugee who emigrated before World War II, Peter is enamored of music, though he himself was denied the opportunity to pursue it. Having lost most of his family in the Holocaust, all Peter has left are his four children, and the only thing of value he has to give them is his beloved music.
Of the four, it is David who possesses an exceptional talent and, under the tutelage of his domineering father, he begins to shine on the local competition circuit. Then, when Peter is persuaded to get David a proper instructor, the boy's genius wins him accolades on a national level. By the time the child prodigy is a young "star" in his teens (played by Noah Taylor), no less a luminary than Issac Stern offers him a scholarship to study in America, but Peter can't bear the thought of losing David and forbids it.
Bitterly disappointed, David finds himself both flattered and frustrated by his father's love. On the one hand, Peter wants his boy to have everything that he himself was denied as a child. On the other hand, Peter is resentful, even envious, of the opportunities that David enjoys that he could not. For years, Peter has struggled to open doors for his son and now, ironically, he closes them.
Over the next few years David forms a strong and touching relationship with a famous elderly writer, Katharine Susannah Prichard (Googie Withers) and, when another opportunity to study abroad -- this time in London -- presents itself, she urges David, now in his late teens, to accept. This time David defies Peter's authority and when he sets off for London he is banished from home. At what should be a moment of great pride, Peter feels nothing but betrayal and burns his precious scrapbook filled with clippings of David's prodigious achievements. 
At the Royal College of Music in London, David studies under a legendary professor Cecil Parkes (John Gielgud), who is himself something of an eccentric. Parkes recognizes in David the spark of genius and is somewhat oblivious to the fact that David's near-obsessive commitment to the piano leaves him adrift from everyday reality. Separated from family and friends, David's life becomes fragmented -- all concertos, cigarettes, and occasional letters from Katharine. It is upon learning of Katharine's death that David loses his last bit of inner strength. Playing the blisteringly difficult Rachmaninoff "Piano Concerto No.3" to an admiring college audience, David's performance is a triumph. But, when it is over, he collapses on stage, the victim of a complete breakdown.
David returns to Australia, where he receives various forms of treatment at various institutions. Though his sister visits him, his father behaves as if his son is dead. What is worse, David is forbidden to play the piano for fear that it might excite him too much. Then, after wandering into Sylvia's bar and re-establishing himself as a performer, life for David begins to change.
A chance meeting with Gillian (Lynn Redgrave), a Sydney astrologer who is visiting Sylvia, develops into friendship, then unlikely romance. And, because Gillian's love is unconditional, free of expectations, envy, or competition, David's chaotic inner life and his undisciplined outer life gain stability for the first time.
David will only see his father once more before the elder Helfgott dies. But with Gillian by his side, David gradually comes to accept his father's death and learns to deal with the traumas of his past. Returning to the concert stage in triumph, with Gillian and the rest of his family in the audience, David the pianist is finally reconciled with David the man, and now both of them are able to shine.