The movie Shine, tells a story of an Australian child David Helfgott, the main character, who is a talented pianist. David had a traumatic childhood life and narrates this life in his flashback. The movie shows how his father abused him together with his sibling. He also losses his family due to poor conditions that were present in the camps they called home. David gets a scholarship in his teenage age. Though his father denies, Katharine, a co-founder of party encourages David’s father, Peter to allow him to go (Sardi & Scott 56).
David therefore leaves and enters to the competition in London. He wins but suffers mental breakdown and is admitted in a hospital where he receives a shock therapy. David returns to Australia but his father rejects him and this makes him collapse at he is readmitted to the hospital. A volunteer decides to take him but later abandons him when she released he is difficult to handle. As he wanders in the streets, he enters in a restaurant and his talent makes the owner like him. He later meets a girl, Gillian that he ends up marrying (Sardi & Scott 172).
David was suffering from a mental disorder called manic that is caused by severe depression. The disease is manic because of the electric shock therapy he received while admitted in the hospital. Some of the symptoms he showed while living with the woman who volunteered to stay with him are related to manic. The symptoms were for instance, seizures, unintended destruction, irritability and sudden change of moods (Sardi & Scott 92). This symptoms are related to manic, a mental disorder mainly caused by depression.
Some circumstances may have caused the disorder and one includes rejection by his father (Sardi & Scott 65). Rejection may have resulted to severe depression that caused mental breakdown. David could not handle his competition together with the rejection and this stressed him. Pressures from people who thought his very talented may also have contributed to his depression. Severe depression caused by his work and rejection by his father resulted to mental breakdown that led to the mental disorder he suffered.
After getting friends who looked after him in the restaurant and acted as a family to him, David’s conditions changed for the better. He was able to play the piano again and live a happy life. This evidently shows that David’s condition was also may have been caused by lack of a loving family since childhood (Sardi & Scott 162).
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Works Cited
Sardi, Jan & Scott Hicks. Shine: Screenplay. New York: Grove Press, 1997. Print.
