Review of The Piano (1993) by Samuel J — 15 Jun 2009

"A woman directing? Next they'll be allowed to vote!".

That would be the response from a chauvinistic male pig (or a woman attempting to elicit said response from said chauvinistic male pig, in order to point out what a chauvinistic male pig he truly is), but Jane Campion proves that you don't need a penis to say "Action" and "Cut" (Although I would have liked her to say "Cut" before showing Harvey Keitel's penis, I was eating at the time of viewing when that scene creeped up).

The film centres around Ada (Holly Hunter), a woman who has been unable to speak since she was 6, who has been arranged to marry a wealthy landowner from New Zealand (Sam Neill, the wealthy landowner, he is not New Zealand). With her daughter and Piano in tow, she reaches the beach at New Zealand, but the natives cannot carry her piano to her new home. New hubby refuses to get more men to carry her piano to the new place, so he lets the piano rot on the beach. After Harvey Keitel listens to Ada play the piano beautifully, he requests that he gets the piano for some land with Sam Neill, along with some piano lessons from Ada. From there on in the two develop a relationship that'll play out the rest of the film.

The truth is, this is a magnificent film, penises and all. Holly Hunter has a helluva lot to do: She has to play the piano exceedingly well, play a mute, learn sign language, be cold to Sam Neill, loving to her daughter (The wonderful Anna Paquin, who also won an Oscar) and also be egotistical (kissing her own reflection in a mirror) when it comes to manipulating men, and also be extremely protective over her daughter + piano. But even if they asked her to be an african american, opera singing, mountain climbing, electric guitar playing, pedantic, vain, male model, she'd still win the oscar for it. She's utterly sensational, it's one of the all-time great screen performances. But even that's not the sole reason to watch the film: Sam Neill does quite well, Harvey Keitel does really well, the script is very nice, it's wonderfully directed, the film score is good, and the cinematography is top notch. It's moving, funny, sweet and quite an emotional trip. Easily one of the finest films of the 90's, don't let the IMDB Top 250 fool you. Watch this film.