Piano, The (1993) [Blu-ray]
Drama | Romance

Winner of 3 Academy Awards® including Best Actress (Holly Hunter) and Best Supporting Actress (Anna Paquin), The Piano weaves the passionate tale of Ada, a young mute woman (Hunter) desired by two men. Sold into marriage to a husband (Sam Neill) who doesn't understand her, Ada finds herself drawn to her darkly intense neighbor (Harvey Keitel), stirring up vengeful jealousies and violent emotions. But in the end, only one man truly understands how to win Ada's heart through her beloved piano.

User Comment: Ian Harrison from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, 27 June 1999 o There are very few female directors in the film industry that have been given proper acknowledgment or had their works introduced to mainstream filmgoers. Jane Campion is one of these precious few, a director who carefully paces and sculpts her works so that they magnificently flow like a musical interlude. "The Piano" is her ultimate masterpiece, a film of such simplicity, described with calm and tense complexity. Holly Hunter received an Oscar for her fascinating performance as Ada, a mute woman who is forced into an arranged marriage with a New Zealand landowner, played convincingly by Sam Neill, a native Australian actor himself. Ada journeys to New Zealand with her young daughter (Anna Paquin, also an Oscar-winner that year), few other possessions, and her treasured piano, a part of her that amplifies her voice that she cannot express through vocal communication.

I believe it would be wrong to assume that any of the characters are martyrs in this tragic story, nor would it be right to think Sam Neill's character a villain. You may think this is crazy, but I think the piano itself serves as both a good and bad omen for all that are involved. I would relate it to a "Pandora's box" of sorts, a treasure that exposes all the evil and sin in the world, but which also provides hope as well. The piano is Ada's sounding box, a tool that allows her to escape from a world that does not understand her, but that also threatens her moral compass, removing her from marital conventions and forces her to lose herself.

The performances in "The Piano" are particularly good, especially Holly Hunter's. It is interesting to note that all of Hunter's piano playing in the film is actually Hunter herself performing in front of us. You can visually and aurally feel the mood of Hunter's character through the music she plays. We the audience lose ourselves right along with her, lost upon a sea of music. We see why Keitel becomes enamored by her, and why Neill becomes overcome with jealousy and betrayal. Not many films would allow us to enter the emotions of all three main characters, but this film is truly an exception.

Rarely do we witness real beauty captured on film. "The Piano" is such a visually stunning film, it's almost intoxicating how its atmosphere sweeps across the screen. This landscape is equaled by the performances, bringing understanding and mystery to this wonder. Sometimes symbolism of this nature can be distracting to an audience. "The Piano" dares to follow this symbolic path, and hits a bull's-eye with full emotional force.

This is one of my all-time favorite films. It combines masterful scripting, cinematography, performances, and musical score into a disturbing, erotic, and ultimately uplifting piece. The movie's heroine, wonderfully portrayed by Holly Hunter, is mute (symbolic of the fact that she has no say in her own life), with her daughter (the astonishing Anna Paquin) and her piano as her personal obsessions. Her conscripted husband, coldly played by Sam Neill, is trying to win her heart and her desire in all the wrong ways, while his crude tribal neighbor, sensually played by Harvey Keitel, understands her needs and ultimately captures her ... physically, intellectually, and romantically. The film's message and its delivery are extraordinarily powerful, the cinematic technique is rich ... the sequence shot with Hunt, Pacquin, Keitel and the piano on the beach is one of the best pieces of work I've ever seen. Lasting impact.

Summary: Magnificent, symbolic film masterpiece plays beautifully, like a piano.

User Comment: *** This review may contain spoilers *** ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico, 24 June 2003 o Director-screenwriter Jane Campion started at the movies in the early 1980s at the Australian School of Film and Television... She clearly emerged from her cultural heritage to become one of the world's premiere female directors...

Campion's films typically have a treacherous terrain of searing emotional intensity... We recognize ourselves in the ways her characters think and behave... Her work signifies a break with the tragic, the Gothic and the sentimental...

Her exquisite film which won three Academy Awards including one for Campion's screenplay, is not about sex, but about passion...

Jane challenges the viewer on many levels... Her film (literary inspired from 'Wuthering Heights') explores new territory in the delicious handling of female sexuality and pleasure with the ecstasy of a loving relationship...

In one scene Ada, with tears of anger, hits Baines hard across the face, as if she has spoken words of love... With each new breath, with every moment that their eyes remain locked together, the promise of intimacy is confirmed and reconfirmed and detailed... Only their feelings and emotions guide their instincts...

No woman artist had approached sex in such a direct and liberating manner... Campion's scenes shows Baines' face crumpling with the exquisite pain of his pleasure... Ada moving his head to her chest, and Baines struggling through her dress anxious to touch her skin...

Nominated for eight Academy Awards, the film tells the story of Ada, a strong willful 19th-century Scotswoman who hasn't spoken, since she was six years old... Ada has been set up in an arranged marriage to a British emigrant in New Zealand...

The film opens with Ada who is carried to shore on the shoulders of five seamen to meet her husband Stewart, a landowner who is without much emotion or real love... Her large Victorian skirt spreads across the men's arms and backs... On her head a black bonnet... Around her neck her pad and pen...

Campion manages to chose a cast to suit her purpose and style... Ada is not any easy role and Holly Hunter plays her without vanity... Her face is alight with facial expression, sometimes tender, sometimes sad, sometimes humorous, sometimes soft, while her hands and fingers are quick and neat...

Ada speaks through sign-language translated by her young daughter Flora, and through her beloved piano which happens to be the prime source of her expression... She takes great delight in feeling her fingers on her piano's keys... But in the way she eyes the illiterate, uncultured Baines, there is an insolence and lack of respect... We watch her stopping abruptly, indignantly, as he touches her neck...

Harvey Kietel plays the lonely neighbor George Baines, a depressive man who is everything Stewart is not... He has never seen a graceful woman behave with so much abandon... Ada moves to the piano... She wants to touch it, but she is torn by her feelings, wanting it, but not owning it... Baines views Ada totally absorbed in her piano music... He seems satisfied to watch... He finds himself edging irresistibly closer, magnetically drawn to the spectacle...

Baines enjoys her fingers moving on the keys and the small details of motion on her face... Twice he closes his eyes and breathes deeply... He is experiencing a strange sense of appreciation and lust... He feels powerless... He is desperate and romantic... He no longer admires her absorption with the piano... He is jealous of it... His attention finally focuses on her neck as it bends further or closer to the piano... Ada's long white neck proves irresistible... Baines comes across the room, kisses her, and asks: 'Do you know how to bargain, nod if you do. There's a way you can have your piano back.'

Anna Paquin has been proclaimed one of the best child acting roles ever... She gives a subtle and complex performance as the very cute little girl torn between her mother and stepfather... She looks over at the house suddenly aware that the piano playing has stopped suddenly... She investigates the mystery peeping through the various cracks and holes in the loosely built hut... Her venture is one of challenge and curiosity... Her complex portrayal of Flora won her the Best Supporting Actress...

Sam Neill plays the intense, moralistic and very-Victorian husband Alistair Stewart, who never understands his woman's nature... He surveys Baines' hut suspiciously... There are sounds inside which are worrying him... By wondering around the hut, he finds a hole where he can see the two lovers kissing, and undressing... He reels back angry, but just as we might expect him to burst through, he steps up to look again...

Jane Campion creates an unusual film, poetic and lyrical, complimented by a beautiful cinematography of the haunting woods, which by many critics has been named as a masterpiece... She is the first female director to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes...

Summary: A break with the tragic, the Gothic and the sentimental...

[CSW] -3.8- Though a seemingly simple story there is a sense of drama, complexity and tension that underlines every bit of it. This is the type of movie that the majority of viewers will appreciate and a minority will not. It would be impossible for me to predict which type of person will like it and which won't, it is just too complex. Many may consider this movie to be tragedy but using the Greek definitions of "Tragedy vs. Comedy" this is not a "Tragedy" since the main character does not have a flaw that lead to her downfall but is rather a "Comedy" because it ends happily. Although I consider this a once-is-enough movie I would have felt that I had really missed a hidden gem had I not seen it. I suggest that you rent this one.
[V44.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.

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