Out of Tune

by Margaret Helfgott

  Just when I thought nothing could possibly upset me further, even more horrible reviews appeared. “Stahl had the juiciest part of all as Helfgott’s gestapo-like father,” wrote Gary Wolcott in the Tri-City Herald (Pasco, Washington) on March 14, 1997, under the headline “Film Shines Light on Effects of Child Abuse.” Elaine Dutka, writing her pre-Oscar roundup in the Los Angeles Times in March 1997, quoted acting coach Larry Moss as saying: “Mueller-Stahl [in Shine] was unafraid to let the audience dislike him. He showed the monster inside with fangs and blood intact. The actor was almost Hitleresque in his body language.” This review not only compares my father to Hitler but also imbues him with a vampirelike persona, with overtones of some hideous creature straight out of a medieval purgatory painting. It reminded me of some of the vilest anti-Semitic drawings produced by early German volk (folk) literature, and of the virulent anti-Jewish propaganda films the Nazis used to influence the public in their crusade against the Jews.

  My blood also ran cold when I came across the idea that my real-life father was so evil that he did not deserve to be genetically linked to David. Peter Helfgott “does not, by spiritual measures, belong on David’s family tree,” wrote Brent Northup in the Helena Independent Record (Helena, Montana) on March 14, 1997.

  Some reviewers directly suggest that the house that I grew up in had the atmosphere of a concentration camp. For example, Bill Hanna writing in the Intelligencer (a daily newspaper in Wheeling, West Virginia) on March 15, 1997, says, “David’s fanatically strict father runs his household much like a prison camp.”

  Sometimes I was able to correct journalists before the damage was done. Thane Rosenbaum of the New York Times called me while writing a feature article on Shine. He was taken aback when I told him that my father was not in fact a Holocaust survivor. He wrote about what was for him an astonishing revelation in his subsequent article, on March 2, 1997, stating that “each of these images [in Shine] points to the conclusion that Peter Helfgott was a Holocaust survivor.”

  From the most highbrow publications to the popular magazines the story was the same: in a sickening role reversal the “victim” became the “aggressor.” “Mr. Hicks offers us the Holocaust-surviving father, unwittingly imposing his tragic suffering on the next generation … He damages his son’s health and art. Have the sins of the fathers been visited upon the sons?” (Kyle Pruett in the New York Times, November 17, 1996). “[Helfgott is] controlled by his loving but bull-headed and physically abusive father, a victim of the Holocaust” (Cosmopolitan magazine, December 1996).

  By the time of the Oscars, Leslie and I were giving interviews on major television stations, such as CNN, trying to get the truth across. Some commentators saw these interviews and realized what Hicks was up to. “Hicks is certainly playing Holocaust head games with the Shine audience,” wrote Gerald Peary in the Rhode Island paper The Providence Phoenix (April 4, 1997). It wasn’t enough for Hicks to turn my father into a monster, he had, as one reviewer said, to make my father “a monster with an explanation.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read Hicks, quoted in the New York Times on the role the Holocaust plays in Shine: “This subject is still an open wound for some people,” he said, “and I didn’t want to trample on profound sensitivities by being offensive.”

  I wish I could say that Hicks’s offensive treatment of Jews was restricted to the Holocaust. But his entire treatment of Judaism and Christianity raises very disturbing questions. Whereas the Jewish-related themes in Shine are dealt with in a negative, gloomy way throughout most of the film, at the end—coinciding with the entrance of love and happiness into David’s life—Christianity and Christian symbols are suddenly introduced, accompanied by bright blue skies and uplifting choral music. In several unexplained scenes and camera shots, large crosses appear and we see David in church. If the character of David has not quite become a Christian, Hicks seems to want us to know he has at any rate been saved by Christianity.

  There is of course absolutely nothing wrong with using lots of light, love, and music during Christian scenes. Both Christianity and Judaism can be uplifting religions. But what is so disturbing is the way Hicks is misusing Christianity as a means of portraying Jews and Judaism in a negative light. Hicks’s message seems to be that the Jews destroyed David, but his rehabilitation and later success are attributed to Christian kindness. Whereas there is often dark and foreboding music when my father appears on screen, when David leaves the hospital toward the end of the film (scene 146), he is accompanied by Vivaldi’s “Gloria”—symbolizing the ultimate salvation. The music builds up over five scenes, culminating in the church (scene 151). Whereas in scene 9 of the screenplay, a picture of a “stern rabbi” hangs on the wall of the sinister Helfgott house, suddenly in scene 148, “A framed picture of Christ hangs on the wall,” as the screenplay puts it. This would all be fine except that in real life David is not a Christian; he is a proud Jew who has chosen, for example, to donate some proceeds from his 1997 world concert tour to Jewish charities.

  Shine would have it differently. The motherly figure of Katherine Susannah Pritchard says of David (scene 65): “You are Krishna, Christ, and Dionysus,” omitting his Jewish background. In contrast, David’s real Jewish mother is portrayed as a sullen drudge in the kitchen and as “helpless” with regard to her poor stricken son. There is almost nothing positive about the Jewish Helfgott family in the film. Even on the rare occasions when love is expressed, a suffocating feeling accompanies it. Whenever there is violence, shouting, or swearing, it is in Yiddish, the language of European Jews. For example, scene 80 of the screenplay states, “Rachel screams in Yiddish”; or scene 40, “Peter curses again in Yiddish.”

  There is also implied Jewish prejudice against non-Jews; Peter only responds to Ben Rosen after Rosen speaks Yiddish, i.e., he warms up to him when he finds out that Rosen, too, is Jewish. This is ridiculous and not at all how my father was in real life. The real Frank Arndt wasn’t Jewish. But his cinematic alter ego, Rosen, obviously is. I presume Hicks turned Arndt into a Jew because he didn’t want a non Jew to voice the completely false and anti-Semitic idea that Jews regard their religion as a money-spinner. When Rosen introduces the idea of a bar mitzvah, Peter says: “What?” Rosen replies: “David hasn’t had his bar mitzvah.” Peter then says: “Religion is nonsense,” and Rosen replies: “It’s also a gold mine if you know where to dig” (scene 24).

  No, Mr. Hicks. Having a bar mitzvah is not a fundraising scheme, but an educational exercise designed to instruct a young boy in his faith and culture, a ceremony with deep traditional and spiritual significance. In the synagogue scene, my father looks cold and his face wears an uncompromising and menacing expression. In the screenplay (scene 51) the words actually used are “David cowers.” This is all in marked contrast to the later joyful expressions in church.

  Shines David is peculiarly uncomfortable with his Judaism. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the frivolous way in which he talks about the Holocaust and in his negative references to Israel—he dismisses it as merely “a battleground, a war zone; what a bore.” In the film, but not in the screenplay, David adds that Israel “just destroys everything really, doesn’t it?” In reality my brother would never judge Israel by its often distorted, negative, simplistic, and arguably anti-Semitic television image.

  In almost all the letters he has ever written me, David has said positive things about Israel. He repeatedly told me how much he wanted to visit Israel, and, after his visit, how much he enjoyed it. He calls Israel “a beautiful country.” In one letter, he says “those people in Masada must have had tons of courage—they had the right spirit,’ referring to the Jews in the ancient hilltop fortress who, two millennia ago, committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans. He talks in some detail about wanting to go to the concerts that are held in ancient amphitheaters in Israel, and to the Mann Concert Auditorium in Tel Aviv. He talks about all the archaeological and historical sites he wants to visit. He say
s how he hopes Israeli athletes will perform well in the Olympic games. In one letter, he recalls how horrified he was when Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He says he remembers how his music lesson that day was canceled as a mark of respect. Since the 1970s, David has been fascinated by Israeli politics, giving me his opinion, in various letters, on politicians from David Ben-Gurion to Golda Meir.

  David has always been proud of his Jewish roots. In one letter to me he writes that although he is not religious he “thoroughly enjoys reading about the Talmud and Jewish religious writings.” In another he says he is “looking forward to going to the Liberal schule [the Yiddish word for synagogue] on Friday.” He tells me of the “fascinating books” about European Jewish history and the Holocaust that he has been reading.

  David has performed at fund-raising concerts for Jewish and Israeli causes. He played, for example, in Melbourne in 1987 for the Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and in Sydney for the Women’s Zionist Organization. So why is Hicks so eager to show David emerging out of the Jewish darkness into the Christian light? Unfortunately, to people familiar with classic anti-Semitic motifs, the themes of the Jew as responsible for his own misfortune and of Christian redemption are all too familiar.

  The London Evening Standard reviewer picked up on this: “Lynn Redgrave (Gillian) plays the astrologer who plucks the damaged boy from the pressure-cooker Jewish household into the curative stewpot of a Christian environment—the faith is explicitly emphasized. I suspect the cheerleaders for the film, which is being heavily touted for Oscar honors, have an agenda of their own that I don’t entirely share.”

  The real life Gillian, too, raises some disturbing questions about her opinions of Jews in her book, Love You to Bits and Pieces. For example, within the course of five pages (49 to 53), the words “rich Jews” appear eight times. (For instance, the line “he had to throw himself at the mercy of those rich Jews” is used on page 49.) The term also appears later in the book. But she doesn’t use the term “rich Christian” or “rich Gentile” when we read, for example, about Russell Smith of Camon Mining who gave David $10,000 in the late 1980s.

  She falsely claims that my paternal grandfather was a rabbi and that my father chased his rabbi father around the table trying to cut off his beard with a pair of scissors. To ascribe such disrespectful behavior to my father is preposterous. Again, this has overtones of the Nazi period—the Nazis forced many Jews to cut off their beards publicly in the streets, while humiliating and insulting them.

  I had sincerely hoped that the lines about Jews, and the Holocaust, both in Love You to Bits and Pieces and in Shine, were the result of extreme insensitivity and ignorance, rather than of ill will and prejudice. However, all the evidence leaves me and others no choice but to conclude that the impression received by the majority of filmgoers was the one Hicks intended to convey.

  18

  MEDICAL ORGANIZATIONS

  ATTACK SHINE

  One source of support in my campaign against Shine has been the medical profession. Doctors and medical organizations have been dismayed by the way Hicks’s film suggests that “bad parenting” can be the cause of serious mental illness. This idea is a misconception made popular in the 1960s. Unfortunately it is still widespread. Following a torrent of newspaper articles that stated that my “brutish” father “caused” David’s illness, various medical bodies felt they had to speak out. Though it was obvious to psychiatric experts that Shine was playing around with the truth while purporting to be based on fact, they were concerned that this was not obvious to millions of ordinary filmgoers. They feared that thousands of innocent families of mentally ill people were being hurt by the false picture presented in Shine. As my family knows only too well, it is hard enough having to cope with the mental illness of a loved one without being blamed for it as well.

  While the person suffering the illness is, of course, its main victim, families of the mentally ill can suffer terribly, too, as their time and patience are stretched to the limit and they are financially drained by the high costs of medical treatment.

  While nobody attaches blame to a family when someone suffers from physical ailments such as kidney failure or a sore throat, when a person is mentally ill, there are those who are all too eager to find an easy scapegoat upon whom to heap blame. By doing so, they are not only revealing a lack of medical knowledge, but are demonstrating an inability to accept the reality: psychotic mental illness is in fact rooted in biological or physical factors such as chemical imbalance in the brain, and is often genetically determined.

  Those who attempt to invent social causes for such illness may make remarks like “they spoiled him”; “they were too good to him”; “they neglected him”; “his mother went out to work and wasn’t there when he came home from school”; “they didn’t let him do his own thing”; “he went to the wrong school”; and so on. Even worse, the patient himself, not fully aware of what he is saying, may blame his own family.

  Medical experts (as opposed to fanciful filmmakers) will tell you that “endogenous” mental illnesses— by which they mean schizophrenia, affective disorders, manic depression, and paranoia—are certainly not caused by bad parenting. In David’s case the way blame has been assigned is even more unjust since there was no bad parenting. Like many families in similar situations we have done a great deal to look after David in terms of our time, our emotions, and our energy as well as money. While he was alive my father did more than anyone.

  Yet Shine would have it otherwise. For example, scene 143 of the screenplay reads as follows:

  143. INT. PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL CORRIDOR. DAY

  BERYL walks along with a NURSE.

  BERYL: What goes on in his head?

  NURSE: God only knows.

  BERYL: Is he schizophrenic or something?

  NURSE: No, he just lives in his own little world; no trouble at all.

  BERYL: Poor lost soul.

  NURSE: He could leave tomorrow, but he’s got nowhere to go.

  In one fell swoop, filmgoers and readers alike are misled both with regard to David’s “invisible” family and to the seriousness of his illness.

  David has been seen by various doctors who have all determined that his mental problems have a physiological basis. While the precise details of his medical records remain confidential, David and Gillian have given permission for his current psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Wynn, to make public the fact that he has been diagnosed as suffering from schizo-affective disorder, a form of psychosis related to schizophrenia. Dr. Wynn has discussed David’s condition several times on television programs, such as Witness in Australia (August 6, 1996) and The South Bank Show in Britain (June 22, 1997). She has also confirmed that with a case such as this, the genetic component can be very significant.

  Dr. Chris Reynolds, who looked after David in the early 1980s and had access to his Graylands Hospital medical records, has also publicly stated that David was treated for a schizophrenia-related illness (in the Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1996).

  Yet Scott Hicks has a different diagnosis. At many points in the film, David’s illness is put down to mere eccentricity, as he hops and skips around the psychiatric hospital in search of his “lost childhood.” The pressure to win, which my fictional father constantly puts David under, is even alluded to in the mental hospital: for example, in scene 139, David tells the nurse “gotta win, gotta win”—the implication being that David is there because of his father’s constant emphasis on “winning.” In his introduction to the published screenplay, Hicks claims that this is “the story of a boy who is never allowed to grow up.” No one stopped David from growing up. The “Production Background” at the back of the screenplay describes David as an “eccentric pianist” and an “endearing eccentric” and so on. The hereditary factors in the Helfgott family tree—the mental illnesses of my father’s sister and his aunt—are conveniently omitted, thus paving the way for the blame to be laid on my fath
er.

  Gillian Helfgott has taken much the same approach. In her book, she does admit at one point that David has “a chemical imbalance in the brain,” and tends to become “manic” when he doesn’t take his medication, but this is rarely alluded to again. In newspaper and radio interviews, instead of explaining the nature of David’s illness, she has consistently downplayed his medical diagnosis and asserted that David is just an “eccentric.”

  The fact is that David’s illness exists completely independent of his environment. Although modern medicine has yet to determine precisely what causes such biological disorders, we do know that they commonly begin to manifest themselves in adolescence and then gradually develop, as happened in David’s case. Often it develops so gradually that the family and even the person with the disease may not realize anything is wrong for a long period of time. Or sometimes, as in our case, relatives sense something is wrong, but have no idea as to its seriousness until an acute episode is experienced. Certainly, for me, it has been extremely painful to watch the personality changes that David has slowly undergone since he was a young teenager.