THE Australian Shine is yet another of those films surrounded by an aura of rapt veneration. It is the more or less true story of David Helfgott, the son of Peter, a Polish-Jewish refugee many of whose kin perished in the Holocaust. As a child, Peter scrimped for a violin, which his father prevented him from mastering. But Peter has taught his young son to play the piano. David proves a child prodigy, although Peter has great difficulty letting him go for lessons with a professional teacher nearby. When an offer comes for David to study in America, Peter puts his foot down: the family must not be broken up.
It is typical of this film written by Jan Sardi from a story by Scott Hicks, who also directed, that we find out next to nothing about Peter and his pathology-not even what he does for a living. David’s talented siblings are dimly glimpsed in the background; his mother is a household drudge verging on a mute zombie. Yet we need to know more about this family Peter so desperately wants to hold together. Only his madly contradictory behavior toward David takes on a little life, largely because Armin Mueller-Stahl is an actor good at being quietly, ominously scary. But occasional telling details do not connect into a story: the filmmakers mistake being artily elliptical for art.
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