Women's Pictures - Jane Campion's The Piano
Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 7:00PM
The Piano contains many stories. It is a love story between two outsiders: a mute woman, and an uneducated man. It is an allegory about oppression: a white landowner in New Zealand treats his wife and the Maori people like children or property. It is a study of conflicted characters: a repressed, oppressive landowner; his passionate, mute wife; the lower class man who falls in love with her; and her wild, intelligent daughter. It is a warning about the hazards of refusing to listen: a failed marriage, a soured initial seduction, and the climax of the film are all spurred by lacking communication. The Piano also has its roots in the fairy tale “Bluebeard;” a sinister story about a newlywed who discovers that her husband murders his wives. But as we’ve seen, Jane Campion doesn’t do easy fairy tale morality.
Campion’s story opens with the only words we will hear its main character speak:
The voice you hear is not my speaking voice - but my mind's voice. I have not spoken since I was six years old. No one knows why - not even me...
Ada (Holly Hunter) is a mute Scottish woman shipped to Victorian New Zealand to marry a stranger, Alisdair (Sam Neill). Ada carries with her the two possessions that make up her voice: her headstrong daughter (Anna Paquin), and her piano. Alisdair leaves the piano, to Ada’s dismay, but a former whaler named George (Harvey Keitel) senses the piano’s importance, and shelters it in his house. He uses it to start an affair with Ada. Considering that this is a story set in the Victorian era, it is a welcome surprise that Campion refuses to make Ada a victim of anything (except maybe circumstance). But that initial image, the piano on the beach, lingers. The incongruous image of a piano on a beach sets the theme for the film - melancholy, and tinged with magical realism.
The Piano brings all of Campion’s visual talents to bear. She and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh tinge New Zealand’s verdant forests with blue mists, in contrast with the warm oranges of safe interior spaces. Stylistically, The Piano is a continuation of the lessons in restraint that Campion learned from An Angel at my Table - Campion uses the camera to observe action, rather than intrude upon it. Instead, she relies on powerfully stage visuals - many to do with the piano itself - to create a dreamlike world of images.
Contrasting with this eerie dreamlike cinematography is the very real performances. Holly Hunter plays Ada with stone-faced stubbornness and theatrical intensity that conveys everything Ada feels without speaking a syllable. Equally impressive is Flora, Ada’s daughter, who speaks with her mother in hand signs and lies as often as she tells the truth. At TFE, we’ve talked before about the difficulty in figuring out where a child’s performance ends and a good director begins, but whatever the case, Flora remains as emotionally complex and stubborn as her mother. This is the best acted film of Campion’s career so far.
Campion’s efforts were immediately recognized. She won the Palme d’Or, tying with Kaige Chen’s film Farewell My Concubine. Campion then became the second female director nominated for an Academy Award when The Piano was nominated for eight Oscars. (Only one of the film’s nominees - cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh - was a man.) The film won three total: Best Actress (Holly Hunter), Best Supporting Actress (Anna Paquin), and Best Screenplay (Jane Campion). Best Director and Best Picture went to Steven Spielberg’s sentimental juggernaut Schindler’s List. Still, the fact that Jane Campion’s emotional, unsentimental indie could hold its own critically in a year that included films by Robert Altman, and Martin Scorsese shows how powerfully received The Piano was. Jane Campion's next films would not fare so well.
Coming Soon on Women's Pictures:
4/23 - In The Cut (2004) - This film has been requested on all forms of social media AND in the comments section! It was described alternately as Jane Campion's Best and Jane Campion's Worst. We're not ones to turn away from a controversial film. Especially not one starring Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo. (Amazon Instant Video)
4/30 - Bright Star (2009) - Join us for the Hit Me With Your Best Shot crossover with Campion's latest feature about poet John Keates. This is going to be a tough one to choose just one shot for. (Amazon Instant Video)
Reader Comments (11)
"The Piano" was a revelation, it was very much like "The English Patient" in terms of being so memorable for setting. Those scenes on the beach where Ada and her child use her crinoline as a tent while they wait to be met - unforgettable.
I love it when some film by someone know one has heard of, just catches fire. I suppose that simply describes the effect art can have on all of us. It was so original... I'm glad you liked it Anne-Marie. thanks.
I loved this movie fiercely from its first shot, almost reflexively. So many shots, beats, line readings are burned into my brain though I've only seen it the once. Lovely write-up.
I also live for the fact that 7 of The Piano's 8 Oscar nominations were for women! Was that really over 20 years ago, y'all? Where are our Campions now??
I'm bummed you won't be writing about Portrait of a Lady, a movie I find SO watchable, and that gives The Piano a run for the "best acted film of Campion's career" title. And it has BOTH Shelleys, yo!
BUT I look forward to reading your thoughts on In the Cut - it's a weird one. And how negative can you be about a movie that gives you Ruff in the buff, right?
The Piano, though. Beautiful, confident, fascinating film. A movie I think about all the time.
Love your write ups Anne Marie! I am very much looking forward to what your thoughts are on In the Cut. I saw it once, a long time ago and enjoyed it at the time. It was such a shock seeing Meg Ryan in a completely different role from anything she had done.
Oh man, The Piano movie was THAT film for me. The one you watch in your teens unsuspectingly, not knowing that your understanding of movies and cinema and everything else were going to change forever. It was unrelentingly strange and fierce even when it was completely still, and I had just never seen anything like it.
Would love to see it properly in a theater one day. Bright Star is the only thing of hers that I've seen on the big screen; it was half as good (which is to say, still very good) and I nevertheless had a semi-mystical experience while watching it.
What no mention of Michael Nyman's gorgeous musical score? If memory serves, Nyman was snubbed by the academy and didn't even get a nomination! Though even if he was nominated, there was no way he was going to beat John Williams Schindler's List, which had a lot of good will behind it for the subject matter alone.
I loved The Piano so much that I went out and bought the soundtrack on cassette tape! LOL. Yup, the film came out in the early 90s, and cassette tapes were still being made then!
In terms of acting, all the performances are brilliant, and in my mind Anna Paquin's oscar is much deserved. Personally, I think she is the Academy's true youngest oscar winner and not Tatum O'Neil. I've heard that the director for Paper Moon had Tatum do as many 70 takes per scene, looking for the one take that was the most natural. And oh yeah, Tatum is clearly the lead, so category fraud to boot!
@Blinking Cursor, you are absolutely right; Michael Nyman deserved to WIN the Oscar, never mind just be nominated. That score holds up like a fortress. My yoga teacher even plays in our Thursday morning class!
The Piano wrecks me. Holly Hunter didn't even need to "deglam"; she just *was* Ada. It's such an indelible and brilliant characterization that, Angela Bassett and Stockard Channing aside, I can't believe she didn't win EVERY award in the sun. She's a treasure.
THE PIANO was the 4th film directed by a woman to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but the 1st of them to also receive a Best Director nomination.
If ever there were an argument to keep the Best Picture field expanded...
Number of Best Picture nominees directed by women, 1928-2008: six
Number of Best Picture nominees directed by women, 2009-2014: six
http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/help/statistics/Pic-DirByWomen.pdf
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Caroline, I agree completely. It was that movie for me too. I felt like it changed every single thing about how I view movies-how they are shot, the performances, everything.. And it started my adoration for Campion, which has endured all the way to Bright Star, which I unabashedly love as well. These two movies are the most visually beautiful pieces of film I've ever seen, bar none.
@Caroline and @Suzy: Me, three! Single-handedly the experience that bounced me off the math track and made me a cinephile for life. Love hearing more people who reacted so similarly, at the same moment in our lives.
Anne Marie, after Katharine Hepburn and Jane Campion, I feel like your logical next step is to write a TFE series about my mother. That would really complete the hat-trick for women who shaped my life. (This is all about me, right?) You're doing a beautiful job!! I too would love to hear your thoughts about Portrait, which I'm very defensive about and love so much, but of course I'm eager for In the Cut, which I'm also very defensive about and love so much.