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Directed by Jane Campion
Starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin
New Zealand, 1993
Rated R (strong sexual content, intense images, adult themes)
Recognized in my "The Century's Masterpieces" page.
Major elements are revealed in this review. You have been warned.
MYSTERY
Jane Campion wrote and directed The Piano, one of the most
eloquent films about the closeness of passion and repression I’ve
ever seen. Yes, she is a woman but, unlike what many people
have said, The Piano is not a feminist film and isn’t about women.
It is, firstly, about lust, then restriction, and, finally but least
importantly, about love. It is a masterpiece saturated in
evocative images and a film that succeeds, perhaps, because
a woman is behind the scenes. Campion creates an otherworldly
place in the forests of New Zealand and she understands the
emotional power of eroticism that doesn’t employ tight camera
angles and close-ups of sex. And she doesn’t go for
what many so-called feminist films employ: she doesn’t victimize
any of her characters or make any of them criminals, either,
which is a great asset to a film that portrays the complexity of
the situations we get into because of passion.
A nineteenth century woman named Ada (Holly Hunter) brings her daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), to New Zealand. Ada is mute, presumably by choice, and is arranged to wed Stewart (Sam Neill), a British man she has never met. When she arrives in New Zealand, her husband refuses to take her beloved piano, her only source of expression, back to his house. He says it is too heavy. Flora, Ada’s illegitimate daughter, is a very vocal child and helps her mother demand the piano be brought back to the house. Stewart does not realize the piano, over Ada’s mute years, has become synonymous to her heart and soul. Without it, she has no means of speaking in the language of emotion and is completely miserable and soulless.
There is an uneasiness between Ada and Stewart already. Baines (Harvey Keitel), a British immigrant who has abandoned his native land’s customs in favor of Maori attitudes of freedom, offers Stewart a good amount of land for the piano after he takes Ada to the beach and hears her play. Some of cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh’s most beautiful images here are those of Ada with her piano on a deserted expanse of the beach. Baines is struck by Ada’s frightening intimacy with her piano and becomes attracted to her. Ada refuses to give her piano, her soul, to this man, an illiterate. Stewart becomes angry and tells her she must make sacrifices for her family.
The piano, which is explored in great, stunning detail by Dryburgh’s camera, is sold to Baines in exchange for the land. He requests lessons from Ada but when she consents, he will not play. Instead, he offers her piano in exchange for his sexual gratification. She will "earn" her piano back key by key if she lifts her dress and lies with him. At first, she refuses. She finally accepts the offer; I’m not sure whether if it was in a state of longing for her piano or a state of longing for sex. It’s too easy to say she simply falls in love with Baines. In the end, she does have a deep love for him but she attains it gradually: first she lies with him for her piano; soon, it is simply for her desire; later, it becomes an entanglement of love and sex, maybe even of rebellion.
Stewart is portrayed as a cold man at first and Baines, an obsessed man. The Piano makes them deeper. This is a thick film and we sympathize with Stewart who cannot win Ada’s love or sexual attention, and we are allowed to witness the unexpected tenderness of Baines. He is truly a romantic, though he initially seeks romance with Ada through obsessive sexual requests that border on blackmail. Flora is mischievous and her decisions are strange. She is outspoken and tattles on her mother and Baines, which leads to the most shattering sequence in the entire film.
Shot very dramatically, this sequence has Stewart, who trusted Ada to stay away from Baines, chopping off her finger with an ax. We, thankfully, don’t see the actual violent act but, even more painful, we see Ada’s face turning blue and her absolute horror.
In the climactic scene, Baines, Ada, and Flora sail away from New Zealand and away from Stewart to live together. Ada demands her "spoiled" piano be thrown overboard and, in a suicidal attempt, gets her foot caught in the rope. In a scene as haunting as the one previously mentioned, Ada is tugged to the bottom of the ocean. For several moments, she simply waits to die. Suddenly, she realizes what she has done and wishes to live. When she finally makes her way to the surface, she has been mysteriously redeemed. Her soul (her piano) lies disintegrating at the bottom of the sea and she no longer is repressed. Her piano-playing need not be her only source of expression and pleasure anymore: she has discovered life, love, and passion.
Perhaps I have made The Piano seem sentimental and gooey. It is moody, definitely, but it is not melodramatically romantic. It is romantic, yes, and it sees love and passion as salvation, but it also sees love and lust as clawing. The Piano is about bondage and this is highlighted by everything from the women’s tight corsets to the inner struggle within the characters. By Jane Campion’s screenplay not giving the outlet of language to Ada, Holly Hunter is repressed. In one of the best performances I’ve seen this decade, or of any decade for that matter, Hunter says everything with her face, body, and fingers. One critic suggested that people are imagining Hunter’s physical expressions, however, Ada becomes real, despite the character’s enigmatic aura.
Hunter, though she gives the film’s stand-out performance, is not the only gifted actor in The Piano. Let’s not forget Harvey Keitel and Sam Neill, men who are bound: Keitel’s character by sexual and romantic obsession; Neill’s by jealousy and sexual inadequacy. And Anna Paquin is strange and precocious as Ada’s daughter who must stand up for her mother but is burdened by her humorous knack for telling tall-tales and her desire to lie and tell her mother’s secrets.
Stuart Dryburgh, using the photographic technique known as Autochrome, supplies a great deal of overwhelming intensity, mysticism, and otherworldliness to The Piano. There are moments when the film is warm and glowing with red, and other times when it is cold and dark blue. Dryburgh is even able to shoot the bizarre intimacy between Ada and her piano, Ada and her daughter, and Ada and Baines. There is a certain beauty about Ada’s fingers gently caressing and falling upon piano keys. The Piano is a fiercely sexual film, but there are scenes between Ada and Baines that are decidedly unerotic. The film is not about swooping cameras on heated sex- often those camera angles are used in films as sexual exploitation and audience titillation, and that’s not what The Piano is based on at all. These scenes are graphic, the most graphic I’ve ever seen, but they are not gratuitous or pornographic and Dryburgh lights and frames them without flaw. His photography catches every nuance of New Zealand and the faces of The Piano’s characters.
Jane Campion is one of the few greatly acclaimed and successful female directors around, and her films speak from a woman’s point-of-view, which is absolutely uninhibited and refreshing in a cinema that too often focuses only on the male perspective. There is both a universality and complexity to The Piano and it is one of those rare films that is multi-faceted, shaking, and engaging. Campion’s point of view on the world is extremely fascinating. She is one of the greatest directors of the ‘90s decade and The Piano is one of the most haunting and poetic films I’ve ever seen.
By Andrew Chan
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