本片根据澳大利亚钢琴家戴维•赫尔夫戈特（David Helfgott）的真人真事改编。
生于犹太人家庭的戴维（Alex Rafalowicz 饰）自幼便展现过人的天赋，他的父亲望子成龙，逼迫戴维苦练钢琴，甚至不切实际地让儿子挑战号称“世界上最难演奏的作品” 《D小调第三钢琴协奏曲》。戴维在父亲的阴影下苦不堪言，而父亲为防止家庭破裂又千方百计阻止儿子外出求学，最终父子走向决裂。
长为青年的戴维（Noah Taylor 饰）远赴英国皇家音乐学院求学，在此期间，“拉三”仍然是他心中未了的情结，经过紧张筹备，他终于走向舞台挑战父亲为他设下的攀登极限……
影片荣获1997年奥斯卡最佳男主角奖（Geoffrey Rush）。

一位来自英国小城镇的新人（杰瑞米艾恩斯）加入了一家业余戏剧公司。到了那里，他发现舞台上的戏剧与幕后发生的一切相比通常是一无是处：诱惑，浪漫，派系争斗和不可避免的嫉妒。

During World War One, on April 21, 1918, Germany's greatest fighter pilot - perhaps the best in the world - died as a result of one enemy bullet crashing through his torso while flying his legendary red Fokker Dr 1 triplane, having just been in pursuit of an enemy plane. More than eight decades later the controversy over who fired the fatal shot still exists. This documentary carefully examines the stories of the four most likely to have downed Manfred von Richthofen. Scientific examination of the evidence reveals that, while most accounts credit Canadian pilot A. Roy Brown for the "kill", that is likely not the case. If not, then who is the hero?

Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World belongs to a 35-hour film cycle, The Book of All the Dead, which comprises the bulk of Toronto-based Bruce Elder’s filmmaking from 1975 to 1994. In ancient Egyptian culture, the Book of the Dead consisted of religious texts intended to help preserve the spirit of the departed in the afterlife — but in Elder’s reading, that comforting idea of continuity takes on a rather darker cast. Lamentations is comprised of a complex audio and visual patchwork: a philosophical meditation superimposed as text throughout the film; vignettes featuring a comical but disturbing Franz Liszt, a debate between Isaac Newton and George Berkeley, an angry, deranged man in an alley, and an arrogant psychiatrist; and a final search for salvation in the forests of British Columbia, the American Southwest, and Mexico’s Yucatan.

一名市长候选人的儿子被绑架，他和妻子被许多政治和其他方面的敌人包围，两人别无选择，只能采取肮脏手段以拯救儿子。