The true-life story of David Helfgott, an Australian musical prodigy who suffers a total mental collapse after his "thesis" performance of Rachmaninoff's D-minor piano concerto at the Royal College of Music in London ("No one's ever been mad enough to attempt the Rach 3!" "Am I mad enough, professor?"), spends years as the personification of the Blithering Idiot, and ultimately, with a couple of key helpers, puts enough pieces of himself back together to have a career and a marriage. What's most impressive about the movie is simply the solid, old-fashioned craftsmanship of the storytelling, its clear, direct, pointed manner of expression: pared down and packed tight without seeming either oversimplified or overstated; brisk and selective without seeming underdeveloped. Noah Taylor, growing up before our eyes from The Year My Voice Broke through Flirting, and stage actor Geoffrey Rush, a facial amalgam of James Woods and Nicol Williamson, split the role of the protagonist down the middle (a small fragment going to yet a third actor), with the usual physical discord of such arrangements: nothing to unite them but a pair of glasses. (A receding chin will not be something a person grows out of.) In voice and mannerism, they blend more smoothly, with Taylor laying sturdy groundwork for the older actor's virtuoso blithering. Armin Mueller-Stahl, Lynn Redgrave, John Gielgud; directed by Scott Hicks. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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