When Shine hit the big screen, its enduring image was of young piano prodigy David Helfgott brutalised by a violent father who was desperate for his son to succeed, but on his terms.
It seemed, at times, hard to believe. Now a book by Helfgott's sister, Margaret, a piano teacher who lives in Israel, claims much of the film was untrue. Her recollections, of herself and David growing up in a loving family, are distinctly at odds with the bleak, remote atmosphere the film portrayed.
The book is published just as Helfgott begins a world tour in Hong Kong on Monday.
In this lengthy account, Margaret goes to great lengths to put her family's side of a story which she insists Shine depicted too negatively and only from one side. She makes no attempt to hide her contempt for Shine director Scott Hicks for not allowing the family to have a say in the script.
She also does not conceal her anger at Gillian Helfgott, the pianist's second wife, whom the movie credits for helping him return to being a musical performer and whose book, Love You to Bits and Pieces, Margaret claims, distorts the true version of his life.
What emerges is a candid but hardly revelatory account, which only adds to the difficulty of knowing what the truth might be.