The Piano

Jane Campion's third feature film, THE PIANO is a historical drama that tells of a Scottish woman, Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), who is married off to a colonist in New Zealand that she has never met. Ada is mute, a development that mysteriously came upon her in childhood, but she is a virtuoso pianist and her cherished instrument is one way she communicates her feelings to the world. As Ada and her illegitimate daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) land on the shores of New Zealand's South Island sometime in the mid-19th century, her new husband Stewart (Sam Neill) ignores her sign-language entreaties to carry her piano inland along with their other belongings. Feeling no love for this man she has been forced to marry, Ada is drawn into sexual bargai...

A great movie.

For me, this is one of the great films of 1993. The story is not pretty, and we could almost call it love in times of mud, not only because of the continuous rain and the amount of mud on the set, but mainly because of the rudeness and brutality of the male characters. However, the film is very good, it's engaging, captivating and really deserves to be brought back these days. Winner of three Oscars (Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay), I believe it just didn't win more due to fierce competition from "Schindler's List". The film also won the prestigious Palme d'Or for Jane Campion in Cannes.

Set in the mid-19th century, the film begins with the marriage by proxy of Ada, a young, singl...

Holly Hunter is on good form here as "Ada", a mute who is adept with her piano. Soon to be married to a Kiwi farmer, she sails with her daughter to his remote home where he "Alisdair" (Sam Neill) seems to be rather indifferent to her presence. The same cannot be said for their neighbour "Baines" (Harvey Keitel) though, and he engineers a land for piano swap with her husband as a prelude to inviting her round to his home to play. After a few meetings they work out a peculiarly unique bartering system that might see both get what they ultimately want from the arrangement. It's at this stage that "Alisdair" feels frustratingly cuckolded and things take a turn for the violent and the brutal. It's a beautiful film to look at, the cinematography ...