The reactions of David's father and
his instructor are shown through parallel editing when the announcement of the
National Champion does not coincide with their hopes for David. Both are
displeased, but Mr. Helfgott simmers with barely restrained anger. Since he was
denied music as a child, he forces it upon David and demands greatness from him.
Later in the film, David is filmed standing on the second floor of a library
balcony as his father calls to him from below. The low angle used when the scene
is shot from the father's point of view suggests his decrease in power and his
growing respect for his son. Moments before they walked down the hall to the
room, the father's arm wrapped protectively and proudly around David's
shoulders. This relationship reverts to its former, however, as David's father
beats him for wanting to leave the family and study in America. Though no
oblique angles are used, the effect of the handheld camera is enough to
effectively portray the violence and confusion of the scene. This feeling is
reinforced by the overlapping dialogue of the family and the tight framing.
David is released and retreats into the pounding rain, but is unable to locate
his teacher and so returns home. David sits crouched in the bathtub as time
stops due to a combination of the silence and the slow motion of the scene.
Water, as it drips from the faucet and David's hair, is the only sound, until
his father arrives and fills the air with his pointless talk. In the middle of
David's biggest recital, all sound is blanked out and the scene slows down, and
only David's sweat-soaked hair and his fingers provide movement. This lack of
sound and action serves as a tension-building device, since an audience is
unaccustomed to and unsettled by silence. Further than that, however, is the
fact that the silence makes clear the distinction between David's art and his
reality. He has put such a great amount of time and effort into his playing that
he no longer can even hear it; he has lost all enjoyment. At the end of the
beautiful and perfectly played piece, the tragedy foreshadowed by the silence
comes to pass and David falls to the floor from a nervous breakdown.
His glasses
slide and rest away from him; the next scene opens with David in a mental
institution, lying on the floor, gazing at his glasses. They are photographed at
an oblique angle (completely perpendicular) in order to reveal David's
perspective through his eyes. Mise en scene also can be used as an effective
method of foreshadowing. When David goes to the mailbox and receives the letter
inviting him to America, he is caged in the foreground by the fence as the
family house ominously fills the background. Low, somber classical music plays
quietly, further reinforcing the reaction he will get from the letter. Another
example of layered frame construction is the first scene in which the audience
sees David at the college in America. Two professors discuss David's possible
talent as he flounders around after scattering papers far beneath them,
separated not only by the distance but by the pane of windowglass as well. Since
he is several stories beneath them, David is shot at an extremely high angle,
making the disparaging and doubtful remarks the first professor says about David
all the more possible. The very next shot has David standing above his peers on
a stairway as they call up to him, reversing the situation. The professors might
have been superior to David (at least at that particular moment), but he was far
more advanced than any of his contemporaries. During the scene cementing Mr.
Helfgott's admonition to disown David for leaving home he burns the newspaper
clippings he'd saved about the boy. This is one of the few extreme-close ups in
the film, and is repeated later when the same photograph is reprinted in another
paper and Mr. Helfgott sees it, deciding then to make amends. David gave the
same picture of himself to Katherine, his mentor, and receives it again in the
mail upon her death. The photograph serves as a connecting device and as a
reminder of the young man David once was, before stress set in and destroyed his
love and passion.
