Formalist Criticism Of Shine

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Formalist Criticism Of Shine

Kelly Culbertson, Carnegie Mellon Univ, Pittsburgh
SHINE
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 Rush's 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 David's 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 patterns out of seemingly separated things.
The film opens with a close shot side-view of the protagonist's 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 David's 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 his 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...

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