Review of The Piano (1993) by Bonnie G — 25 Jul 2009

I saw this movie once before when I was probably about 13 or 14 (and far too young to watch it!) and I just recently saw it again and realize now what an amazing piece of cinema it is.

Ada is a mute Scottish woman with an illegitimate daughter in the 1850's. She is sent to New Zealand to be married off to a wealthy man, Alisdair Stewart. Unsurprisingly, the arranged marriage proves to be a loveless one. Ada is filled with passion, which she expresses by playing her beloved piano. When Alisdair refuses to transport the piano back to his house along with Ada's other belongings, another local man, George Baines, buys it from him for 80 acres of land. He asks Ada to give him lessons and then offers to give her the piano back--if she provides sexual favors for him (one "visit" to his house for every black key). Ada is disgusted, but is willing if it means getting her piano back. But quickly enough it becomes clear that George has passion for both music and sex which Alisdair does not have, and Ada falls in love with him.

The acting in The Piano is phenomenal. Sam Neill plays Alisdair--a repressed man who elicits both sympathy and anger from the viewer (esp. as he becomes increasingly jealous and violent when he learns of Ada's affair with George). Harvey Keitel is George, whose character transforms from a voyeuristic pervert to a sensual, dark lover who is not afraid of Ada's strangeness. Ada is played by Holly Hunter, who also performed the piano solos for the film, and expresses a wide range of emotions without speaking. Finally, a precocious Anna Paquin plays Flora, Ada's illegitimate daughter. Unlike other child actors, many of whom don't act like real children at all, you completely forget that Paquin is acting--her character is so incredibly realistic and fleshed out.

The Piano has a lot going on in it--the politics of British colonization are never mentioned outright, but are present in the differences between the New Zealand natives and the uptight Brits and Scots trying to turn them into church-going, "civilized" people. But politics aside, The Piano is about passion and self-expression. Ada uses her piano instead of her voice. This is why she is so bitter first when Alisdair refuses to take her piano seriously and later when George sexually blackmails her so she can get it back. However, this distasteful sexual bargain becomes an intensely physical affair when Ada realizes George actually understands her love of music and her need for self and sexual expression.

The music, the acting, the story line--everything works perfectly in The Piano, which proves to be a rare film where a supposedly weak character (a mute woman with an out-of-wedlock child) is never for one moment a victim, but always the master of her own life and destiny.