Undeniably, the visual text Shine is successful because the director, Scott Hicks, seeks to create new realities and fresh perspectives for old ideas such as love. Through his astute concoction of visual techniques such as: lighting and camerawork amidst verbal techniques such as dialogue and music Hicks portrays “…the power of love – both to destroy and to redeem.”

Shine follows the story of a piano virtuoso David Helfgott in his struggle to overcome the adversities caused by his father Peter in order to achieve his own dreams and ambitions of becoming a well-established musician by attending The Royal Academy of Music.

Shine is successful in the sense that the director, Scott Hicks, creates new realities for old ideas such as love by presenting the power of love to destroy. This is an interesting alteration to the old idea because it contravenes our superficial conception that love is completely constructive. The idea of the power of love to destroy is presented through the character of Peter. Peter is a very harsh and abrasive character: he is a Polish immigrant who now lives in Australia and has lived through the atrocities of the Holocaust. As a child he had his family taken away from him and the psychological after-effects of this horrid experiences is evident in his character. Peter is very over-protective of his family and obsessed with keeping his family close to him to fill the void this emotional suffering has caused. His dialogue is a blatant representation of his domineering personality as he constantly reminds his children and even makes them repeat after him that “No one will love you like daddy does.” In another scene, we see a CU shot of Peter behind a barbed wired fence which is a lucid symbol of the prison that he has created for his family to keep him close to him. This is ironic as he believes that “no one will love…” his family like him yet he is destroying his family on his own. A reoccurring motif that symbolizes Peters ignorance and domination were his glasses. We saw close-up shots of his glasses a couple of times but the most memorable scene was after David and Peter fought and David embraced Peter in a hug. During this time, a CU shot of Peter’s glasses revealed intense light shining onto it. This was interesting because the only light that was illuminating the room was a lamp. Hicks did this on purpose to symbolize the fact that Peter was blind and ignorant of everyone else due to his own desperate needs which in turn resulted in tragic outcomes. Hicks showed us the power of love to destroy because he wanted to disseminate the message that contemporary society, just like Peter, is blind to reality. This has a direct link to the teenagers contemporary society and myself personally. Hicks new reality of love through a teenagers perspective has enabled me to gain insight into my own life personally because just like David’s parents, my parents are also immigrants. I am still a teenager and I am trying to find myself amidst all the teenage drama and my parents come from a completely different society meaning that their ideals and values are completely different to mine. It gets very difficult to maintain my own individuality at home because the things I consider to be the norm in my perception is not always the norm for them. My parents, just like Peter, are very over-protective of me due to their previous experiences and inadvertently restrict me from being myself. Because Hicks’ creates these new realities and fresh perspectives about the outmoded idea of love, I am finally able to gain a deeper understanding about the true effects it may have on me as opposed to believing that every form of love is always constructive. Therefore, I believe that Shine is very successful in portraying the old idea of love and teaching us, as viewers, valuable lessons.