Shine Essay Example For Students

Shine Essay Directed by Scott Hicks, the drama Shine is a formalist masterpiece. Writing the piece as a fiction film gave the author license to alter the events in the story of David Helfgott, a real musician who had a nervous breakdown on his way to magnificence. Geoffrey Rushs portrayal gave life and believability to David, and Rush won an Academy Award for his realistic method acting. He had not only to provide depth to the character, but had additional physical demands placed upon him due to Davids irregular speech and his tendency to twitch. Both setting and costume are unobtrusive, allowing the audience to focus on the characters rather than their adornments. The formalistic style allows for manipulation of time, and the film begins in medias reas, jumping back and then foreward as it progresses. The structure is highly fragmented, and much of the action is cyclical. Every element of film composition is elegantly intertwined in this picture, mingling together to form connections and patter ns out of seemingly separated things. The film opens with a close shot side-view of the protagonists face as he smokes a cigarette, smoke drifting up from his lips and into the surrounding darkness. He is talking, but that soon is faded into the sound of rainwater. The rain becomes visible as it replaces Davids face in a fade technique, and David enters the frame and walks from the right of the screen to its left, suggesting change and action. He arrives at a restaurant window, peers in, and falls into a strange conversation with the employees. This is now the chronological middle of the story, and, while common in Medieval literature, is a highly unorthodox place to begin a picture. Though this film is more easily classified as a formalist piece, it has outstanding avant garde elements throughout. The transition from the restaurant to the car is masked by the dialogue covering it. Since the acting overrides editing as a way to convey meaning in Shine, Hicks employs many sound motifs to ease editing transitions and make them seem more natural. As the discussion fades and the rain again takes auditory prominence, the scene darkens and the water becomes the clapping of many hands. In this way David eases into a flashback of hi s childhood. He walks small and silent to the stage for his first competition, and a long shot is used to emphasise the fright and anxiety of the boy. Other transitory devices include Davids glasses, his hands on the piano keys, and sometimes a change in his costume, such as when he first plays the restaurant in rags. When he stands to receive his applause, he is dressed much more nicely, now an employee of the establishment. Hicks also employs classical cutting techniques, which depend on the content curve (the moment when the audience has had a chance to assimilate all information presented but not analyse or become bored with it) to determine breaks in scenes. One example of this technique is after David presents his professor with the Rack III and asks Am I mad enough? The scene is cut before the professor answers, and the following scene is the professor intensively training David on the very piece. Cutting for continuity is commonly used to condense time while maintaining a sense of the actions taking place between two major events. Preparations for one of Davids concerts are edited in such a manner, making a ritual out of the ordeal while not wasting too much time on it. Besides editing, relationships can be suggested through film devices such as proxemic ranges, angles, and reaction shots. After David loses his first competition, his father stares at the ground while walking well ahead of the boy. His father is disappointed, and David is rather unaware of any problem as he innocently plays hopscotch as he follows. The reactions of Davids father and his instructor are shown through parallel editing when the announcement of the National Champion does not coincide with their hopes for David. Both are displeased, but Mr. Helfgott simmers with barely restrained anger. Since he was denied music as a child, he forces it upon David and demands greatness from him. Later in the film, David is filmed standing on the second floor of a library balcony as his father calls to him from below. The low angle used when the scene is shot from the fathers point of view suggests his decrease in power and his growing respect for his son. Moments before they walked down the hall to the room, the fathers arm wrapped protectively and proudly around Davids shoulders. This relationship reverts to its former, however, as Davids father beats him for wanting to leave the family and study in America. Though no oblique angles are used, the effect of the handheld camera is enough to effectively portray the violence and confusion of the scene. This feeling is reinforced by the overlapping dialogue of the family and the tight framing. Arts and ethics EssayIn search of his own fortune, David leaves after expressly being told not to. This one difference is strong enough to tear the family apart and create a conflict around which the story can revolve. The irony of the situation is that, while trying desperately to preserve his family, Davids father actually succeeds in alienating his son and putting undue stress on his relationships with the other family members. The music he counted on to bring David and himself together also split them apart. Until his breakdown, David had all but adopted the old professor as his father because he understood David well and was kind to him. The literary aspect of this film comes not from the fact that it was adapted from a novel (since it was not), but from its strong basis in the literary convention. For example, the motifs of rain and applause are a common technique of literature, as is the shifting point of view. The story is told from first a third-person limited perspective, then goes into personal flashbacks from Davids memory, and the remainder of the film switches back and forth between the two. Also, the film is rife with imagery and symbolism, both of which are favourite literary devices. Such symbols can be interpreted from the viewpoint of the theories of Structuralism and Semiology. Water is the most obvious of these symbols, and traditionally means cleansing, rebirth, and calmness. However, rain means bad weather and difficulties, and dirtied water (such as that in the bath) is poison. Just before Davids first adult recital, all of his pages float in clear blue pool water as clouds drift by above them. This is finally the foreshadowing of a rebirth. While not a universal symbol, the glasses signal Davids dependency on things outside himself. Such things eventually destroy him, since he is not able to break through the multitude of walls and fences that fill the screen and live for himself. A lion appears twice, first when David describes his father to Katherine and later when he awakens at the base of a huge sculpture of one. Lions are typically strong and powerful, the king of all they survey. The fact that David wakes up with one behind him foreshadows his fathers return and his support of his son. The medal won for the recital of Rack III and the composition itself both become symbols of the father that was so bent on having his child son play the impossible piece. The fact that David chose that as his premiere work told of both his lasting devotion to his father and his determination to please. When Mr. Helfgott returned the medal he was recognising the accomplishment and forgiving his disowned son at once. The closing shot is one of David and his wife as they leave his fathers grave and the cemetery, the camera pulling back on a crane as the two become lost in the vast stretch. No longer is the audience involved; the story is over. The main themes of this film- complications, deterioration, and loss- are expertly portrayed through the harmony of all divisions of filmmaking. Both Hicks and Rush are excellent, and, despite herself, this eclectic critic enjoyed the film.