Review of The Piano Teacher (2001) by William C — 10 Aug 2016

This film is a haunting masterpiece that offers up one of the most nuanced psychological portrayals ever committed to film. It is typical Haneke: brutally difficult to watch at points, unrelenting in playing with viewer expectations, and purposefully inconclusive. But if you allow Haneke to force your attention to the film in all of its depravity, you will marvel at its brilliant contemplation of loneliness, artistic sacrifice, perversion, the interplay and eroticism of human power dynamics, and the painful realization that aesthetic representation is often divorced from lived experience. Lots of films have taken up the bizarre and sometimes perverse undercurrents that exist just beneath the surface of high society, but none have done so with this level of raw, uncompromising detail. Huppert's performance is immensely powerful and manages to somehow be torturing and beautiful at the same time.

This is not a film for everyone. It is guaranteed to ruin a casual movie night, but it is the type of film that, when watched with an open mind, will change your life.