Rating: 
Summary: This is not just a movie but a lesson for living
Review: The Piano removes you from your living room and sets you down on a remote New Zealand coast. There you sit alone, on a beach wondering when the rain will ever stop while you ponder how this brillant mother and daughter will ever survive. This movie ebbs and flows with the music, like the tide. A tapestry is being woven in front of your eyes, a tapestry colored by subtle imagery, haunting words that just hang...'just go..just go' and
scenes that are forever etched in your mind. Only a genius could have created such beauty and only the most talented actors could have brought it to life.
Rating: 
Summary: Mute Woman Falls In Love With Tattooed Keitel and Not Sam
Review: Holly Hunter plays a mute woman in New Zealand. She plays a piano and disses this guy she is arranged to marry. That guy is Sam Neill!!! So, anyways, she falls in love with Harvey Keitel who has tattoos all over his face and he sets up this deal where he will get sex from her if she wants her piano back from him. And Anna Paquin plays the daughter of Holly Hunter. Anna Paquin totally jacks up the plan to cheat on Sam Neill and Sam Neill chops off her finger. But this is after a way-too-brief scene where Holly Hunter is naked. Man. That should happen more. So, Sam Neill and Holly Hunter leave and throw the piano in the ocean. End of story. Oh, wait. This is a review, not a story summary. The movie is good. Thank you.
Rating:
Summary: Second most erotic film
Review: I can't honestly review it because my wife explained it to me, and I realized she was right. The entire film is purely symbollic, nothing is to be taken literally. The cold woman is unlocked by the gentle, strong, primitive man, dumping the piano overboard symbollizes her ability to talk again, to respond sexually.
Rating: 
Summary: Some Good - Some Bad
Review: Yes the photography is stunning and is probably the highlight of the whole movie. I was highly upset at the "mild" domestic abuse which is mostly emotional. Although there is really only one violent scene it rocks you with horror. I was disapointed by this film, expecting something on an epic level that would remain with me long after the viewing, but this film didn't do it. It left me asking "that's what all the noise was about?"
Rating: 
Summary: Pretentious and murky
Review: I know this film was embraced virtually all who saw it and my wife and I were excited to see it based on the reviews and word of mouth buzz, but my we came close to walking out on this film. Despite it's obvious popular success, it's hard to see what's so great about it. This film from self proclaimed feminist director Jane Campion seems to hammer home the point that men are beasts- yeah, what else is new? For some that may be a valid point but in this film, none of the male characters seem to reveal any redeeming qualities, reducing them to cardboard villains whereas our heroine, despite leading on Harvey Keitell at one point, appears to remain free from any approbation. A Feminism that denigrates Men in broad strokes only serves to polarize and harden the battle lines rather than leading to the mutual understanding.
The characters just don't act and react to events in the film consistent with intuition and common sense and they fail to connect as a result. The photography is often murky and claustrophobic (as well as the story) and Michael Nyman's annoying new age type doodly music (especially for her playing) is absurdly anachronistic for the period depicted and woefully devoid of real musical value for any period. This was an "Emperors New Clothes" experience for us.
Not recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Another Well-Reviewed Movie I Didn¿t Like.
Review: April 6, 2002 A skillful and passionate film. An immature concept. 'The Piano' pounds its story conceits very thin (and they
aren't meaty to begin with). What Sam Peckinpah's films are to
adolescent male machismo, Campion's 'The Piano' is to
adolescent female angst. Great acting? To be sure. Great cinematography? Yes.
Great script? Ehhh. The stereotypes in this film are worse than horrendous.
They're positively naïve. Holly Hunter's character (or Overblown Feminist Archetype
#1, the Oppressed But Divine Female) bristles. Boy, does she
bristle. She bristles under the oppression of patriarchal
society. She bristles devoid of personal and financial
freedom. But mostly she bristles in the clutches of a rich and
cultured but insensitive mama's boy (or Overblown Feminist
Archetype #2, the Soulless, Impotent Wimp). Eventually she
finds refuge from her bristling in no less a place than the
primordial jungle, in the arms of a taciturn sex machine who
knows how to keep our lady in her sexual place without trampling
her freedoms (or Overblown Feminist Archetype #3, the Brutish
But Noble Savage). Oh, come on! Not that Holly Hunter doesn't bring all of her considerable
talents into play, but her character sinks this film. The story
is centered around her, which is sort of like centering your
refrigerator around a spoiled hunk of Limburger.
For starters, how about this? She's so oppressed she's
lost her voice. She can only express herself through her piano. Forgetting for the moment the clatter in our ears (the
overwhelming racket of heavy, thematic gears grinding away),
just on a personal level, what a self-involved wimp! Read your
Austen, your James, or your Wharton. Their put-upon lady leads
are *actual* heroines. They shame Campion's gloomy, pale
little narcissist. I don't doubt the talent or commitment of anyone involved
with this flick, but it all comes across like the secret, inner
-most revenge fantasy of some painfully shy high school girl.
I can see her now, swathed up to the knuckles in a heavy,
ink-stained black sweater, hunched over her poetry journal,
scribbling away. By the time Hunter is tangled up in the seaweed (or
Overwrought Symbolic Incident # 233) I suspect some of you will
have reached your limit. I certainly did, and perpetrated my
first and (to date) only public film-going faux-pas, remarking
loudly enough for the rest of the theatre to hear: "Good. Drown already." Somebody shushed me from the back, but a wide variety of
strangers around me giggled for a solid half-minute and the
woman in front of me clapped.
So I'm not alone on this one. PEOPLE WHO'LL LIKE THIS MOVIE: stone Campion fans, indie-
boosters, acting enthusiasts, the recently dumped.
PEOPLE WHO WONT LIKE THIS MOVIE: I have one male friend who
liked it quite a bit, but he has to be dragged kicking and screaming to anything
with a budget over ten million dollars.
Rating:
Summary: The universal conflict between passion and reason¿
Review: In this movie, you are transported to another world where the sea is gray and forbidding. The landscape is muddy and it seems to rain constantly. This ads to the pensive mood and is somewhat symbolic of how the characters feel "stuck" in the morass of their existence. Anyone who has ever played the piano, will realize that you can at times say things with your hands, your mouth does not even know how to express. Ada (Holly Hunter) speaks through her music and sign language. When she travels with her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) to marry Stewart (Sam Neill), she has no idea that her repressed longings will emerge with such a force, she will put herself in danger. Transporting a piano is never easy (I've purchased two in my short lifetime) and moving it to a remote spot in New Zealand is hardly ideal. No one else understands the importance of the piano until Baines (Harvey Keitel) agrees to take Ada and Flora back down to the beach where the piano sits just out of the reach of the foamy waves. There Ada plays the piano and Baines starts to take an interest in her. His interest in the piano is far from innocent, it is Ada he really desires. He convinces Stewart to trade the piano for land. Then Baines convinces Ada, she can earn her piano back, by coming to his house to give him lessons. She must visit him once for every black key. He wants her to care for him and slowly he discovers her heart strings, until finally they only play for him. Baines and Ada discover an erotic love, few people ever find. The feeling of being needed and desired also consumes them both and makes them irrational. While her husband tries to force her to love him, Baines takes the time she needs to learn to love again. Ada feels isolated, ensnared, unloved and misunderstood in her marriage. She seems almost defiant and you have to wonder why she agreed to marry a stranger. One can only assume it was the only choice she had at the time. One also assumes that if Ada's husband had taken the time to realize what was important to her, he could have captured a song, she would have only played for him. There is something incredibly beautiful about the emotions Baines and Ada share. Yet the price for their love is incredibly sardonic. I'm completely smitten with the artistic nature of this film. I can't say anything about the rating, since the version on TV was obviously adapted for the audience.
In fact, from what I've read here, I'm glad I didn't rent the movie. Too often a perfectly wonderful movie is ruined with gratuitous images. I'm glad I missed those. Disturbing Desires and Alarming Consequences. One of the most
haunting and erotic movies I've ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: Gorgeousness
Review: What a complete masterpiece of film art! I just saw this for the first time in a film class I'm taking. While I wish I saw it in a high-end theater, the letterboxed DVD and high-end projection system presented it very beautifully. I'm also glad I did not see it at a younger age in '93 as this would have been more difficult for me to artistically absorb. I feel sorry for anyone who sees it for the first time on a little TV with the sides of the picture cut off. The cinematography is truly wonderful. The set design, make-up, costumes and casting were exquisite, as well. The [...love] scenes look like a live recreation of an actual Michelangelo painting. The story, acting, and...Well everything is just lovely. High art.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary
Review: One of the rare masterpieces of American Cinema, The Piano stands among the most memorable movies I've ever seen. A fortunate cast with Paquin-Hunter-Keitel, an intriguing original screenplay combined with brilliant director's work are bringing this movie towards the peak of artistic cinematography. The image of human greatness it suggested will stay in my mind as long as I live.
Rating:
Summary: 2 1/2 hours of wondering "What's the point?"
Review: Beautiful, pretentious movie featuring characters you can't relate to in any way. Why should we care about them? They're cartoons borne of a melodramatic imagination. Full frontal nudity of Harvey Keitel proves that not everything that is disturbing is art.
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