I must have been misinformed about "The Piano". I've always thought it was going to be one of these insufferably long movies that take the words slow and dim-lit as synonyms of deep and profound, these films where you try to convince your mind that it's genius while you have a hard time sitting through five minutes without checking your phone, or maybe I thought it was a sort of pseudo-feminist movie meant to content the elitist tastes and earn a Golden Palm on that biased bass.
But what the hell I know? "The Piano" is a straightaway romance, full of heat and passion like you rarely see in movies, and where all the players, no pun intended, cut straight to your heart. A few movies make you feel for their protagonists like "The Piano" does and I guess it says a lot about the sensitivity of Jane Campion who wrote and directed a magnificent story of souls lost in the middle of nowhere, trying to live in a pretension of civilization among wilderness, only to discover their own wild desires, triumphing over the hypocritical pretension of 'marriage', and with a piano, of all the matchmakers. Who would have thought that a tiny and mute woman from the 19th century would indirectly speak so many huge, loud and modern statements about love and passion.
I was going to praise the modernity of the author who wrote the original novel, expecting a figure à la Jane Austen or Eyre, but then I read that it was an original screenplay. What Campion did was to assemble many familiar topics from these literature classics while infusing them into a personal idea of feminist heroism, and it works because Ada is one hell of a creation by Campion and Holly Hunter. This is a woman who had an illegitimate child, a mini-Ada named Flora (Anna Paquin); only in the edge of the world, a man accepted to marry her, an uptight British landowner (if you can call lands these swampy muddy traps) named Stewart (Sam Neill) who emigrated with his Aunt (Kelly Walker) and her dim-witted servants. He recreated a microcosm of England in the midst of New Zealand's bush, he needs to recreate the illusion of marriage.
But from the opening start where we see Ada and Flora being carried by the sailors on the beach to the way their frail bodies literally sink into the mud, we have the signal that this is a very awkward setting and things won't turn out as we expect with this kind of material. You have indeed that texture that belongs to period pieces or Ivory/Merchant productions but in a territory where man can hardly set the mark of progress or civilization. You can't just conquer the land easily, and it is fascinating how Ada embodies that notion. This is a woman who chose to be silent at the age of six until it confined to muteness. She revolted against the patriarchal system, her muteness is part of her character and she's got it more than any 'normal' woman Stewart would have married, but he takes her muteness the wrong way and commits the worst mistake by abandoning her only valuable item: the piano, on the beach, because the Maori natives can't carry it.
Stewart misunderstood Ada, he thought Flora was the translator of her feelings, but Flora is a free-spirited angel (almost literally) that doesn't need to be everywhere with her mother, but to understand Ada is to listen to her music and understand her love for the piano. Modern visions of love sometimes put 'understanding' far above love and respect, Stewart respected Ada but the one who understood her could win her heart, and the rival was George Baines, played by Harvey Keitel. George is an adventurer with a face marked by Maori tattoos, and when he hears Ada playing piano for the first time, he understands how he can reach her. He sells a land to Stewart in exchange of the piano and courses from Ada. Ada is reluctant until she sees the extent of the bargain, for each course, she'll get a black key symbolically, when the count is down, she takes her piano back.
This is the start of some of the most powerful erotic relationships of recent time, one where you can pinpoint the transfer of power between Baines and Ada. It comes to the moment where he raises the price just to be able to touch her neck, and later, when he gives three keys so she can lift her skirt, she's shocked but then suggest five, they settle at four. Both have the power, the piano is just a decoy, an excuse to let them play with their fantasies. It is the credit to a filmmaker who assumes her feminism to have portrayed a relationship where the man has the upper hand
only because the woman gives her blessing. She doesn't see herself as a whore, she simply values Baines' fascinatingly awkward ways to reach her. And like Campion said, sometimes a man's extreme masculinity reveals a woman's extreme femininity. "The Piano" is about characters who repressed their feelings for too long until a piano would open their eyes
and the rest.
"The Piano" is served by a terrific bittersweet score from Michael Nyman, stellar performances from Hunter and Paquin, who won Oscars, as well as Campion for her thought-provoking script, while her directing was intelligent and sensitive, especially with this attention to such details like Flora acting like a child and not being unrealistically smart or the way the Maori were portrayed, on an equal foot with the Whites, and even showing how hard it was for women to get the simplest things done, like going to the bathroom.
"The Piano" is melancholic, captivating, haunting but inspirational because it's about people who simply learn to become honest and 'eloquent' about their feelings.
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