The Piano

Rating:
Summary: A film about not compromising
Review: THE PIANO is one of my favorite movies because it's about one of my favorite topics: women who do not compromise. Ada (Holly Hunter) is mute, but she is mute by choice. She stopped talking simply because she didn't think talk amounted to much. It's not surprising that she did not find happiness until she met the equally non-compromising social outcast played by Harvey Keitel.

THE PIANO is a beautiful film with a surreal feel. The shots of the coast of New Zealand seem like paradise, elegant and peaceful. But it is also a hard movie to review because it is so unlike any other I've seen. In many ways it seems to be an ambiguous movie, particularly where Harvey Keitel's nudity is concerned. He's not a classically handsome leading man (nor does Holly Hunter's Ada seem sexy enough to inspire his eager nudity), and yet this is his most notoriously naked performance. This is one of many ways THE PIANO dares and challenges its viewers, as full-frontal male nudity is not the standard Hollywood fair.

This is not a heart-warming tale to leave you feeling good about the world (one scene gave my friend nightmares). So, I would not recommend this to someone looking for a happy evening of entertainment. On the other hand, if your tastes are somewhat outside of the mainstream then you will probably enjoy THE PIANO.

Rating:
Summary: Words cannot convey...
Review: Words cannot convey...and this is one of the things this incredible movie teaches us. The Piano is one of my favorite movies of all time. The scenery is breathtaking. Holly Hunter is brilliant as Ada, the mute (by choice) "victim" of an arranged marriage. Her facial expressions and physical movements express more than words could ever say. In fact, I found that once I become aware of watching her gestures, I began watching the expressions of other characters in the movie also. Harvey Kietel is cast in a very different role for him and the result is impressive and shows a much larger range of his acting ability. The music in the film is beautiful and is Ada's true "voice".

This movie must not be watched in the ordinary way one would watch any other movie. If you're just going to watch it in a literal way, this isn't the movie for you. The Piano is a wonderous combination of music, scenery and symbolism. It's like a dream sequence. The movie feels almost enchanted. The filming of 2 major scenes of violence is exquisite. I didn't notice the violence itself so much as I felt the pain of the characters.

I highly recommend this film...no matter how many times I watch it, it never fails to move me.

Rating:
Summary: If Looks Could Kill
Review: THE PIANO is a very unusual, enigmatic and haunting film. To say anything less would be incredulous. It is a story set in some remote coastal hills of a very bleak eighteenth century New Zealand overrun by dense jungle, mud, the elements and crude natives. Ada (Holly Hunter) and her young mischievously meddlesome daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) arrive on the New Zealand beach to meet Stewart (Sam Neill) whom has arranged to marry Ada. Ada, as we discover in the prolog is a woman who has not spoken since she was 6 years old. She is not only mute but strangely introverted and repressed. A piano, which Ada has brought with her, is her only means of expression. The ex-seaman ex-whaler Baines (Harvey Keitel) is a rather crude looking character who becomes enchanted by Ada's piano, which has been left on the beach. He retrieves it, buys it and then has Ada barter for its return setting the conflict of personalities and their repressed feelings into motion. Ada's mute playing of the piano is juxtaposed by her piercing dark eyes focusing from her face shrouded in ever so pale white skin. Her looks are riveting and disturbing. The image of Paquin's face is unnerving. As the film progresses we see that the primary characters are truly misunderstood from what our initial impressions had ascertained them to be. This is an exceptional film that you have to watch and listen to closely because of its very subtle nature that envelops your senses. The characters and the actors that portray them are brilliantly presented. Stuart Dryburgh's cinematography is equally important because the images on the screen take on a life and spirit of their own in this haunting film.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite erotic classic
Review: Jane Campion's "The Piano" does what many truly great films do: It inspires fascinating discussion and provokes mixed reactions. The male friend with whom I saw it back in 1993 and I were so enthralled that we kept our significant others waiting to leave for our respective Christmas vacations because we kept phoning each other to discuss symbolism and interesting themes in the movie. While I continue to absolutely love the film, I also recognize why some viewers have not shared my reaction. Perhaps you have to have at least considered a forbidden love affair or perhaps you have to have found yourself trapped in a relationship where you feel you have lost your voice to appreciate what Campion explores.

The story centers around Ada (Holly Hunter in an Oscar-winning performance) and her daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin--who also won an Oscar for her extraordinary performance). They leave their upper-class home in Scotland after Ada's father (apparently) arranges her marriage. Ada, who has willed herself not to speak since age 6, expresses herself through her beloved piano.

The true story of who fathered Flora is never revealed in the movie, but the context suggests that she is Ada's illegimate child born from an illicit affair. The hinted-at story of Flora's conception provides a key to understanding both why Ada later begins an affair with her New Zealand neighbor Baines (Harvey Keitel) and why she makes a mail-order marriage in the first place. I suspect that Ada's aging father may have wanted to see her settled--preferably far away so that her unconventional behavior would no longer be a source of social embarassment--and given Ada's muteness and out-of-wedlock child, her father probably couldn't find a suitable suitor in mid-Victorian Scotland.

Stewart (Sam Neill) first encounters his future wife on a lonesome gray beach surrounded by her crated belongings. His Maori porters begin carrying many household items up the muddy path to his dreary homestead. But Stewart refuses to bring the piano along, despite Ada's apparent distress and Flora's pleas that her mother MUST have her piano.

Ada's piano, abandoned on the barren New Zealand beach, captures the sense of what 19th century colonial life might have been like for too many women--treasured possessions, the last ties to "civilization" left behind.

Rendered voiceless without her piano, Ada begs Stewart to return for her instrument through notes and more pleas from Flora. Finally she persuades Baines--a colonist whose tattoed face evidences the extent to which he has "gone native" and who is considered less civilized by his neighbors--to guide her back to the beach. Ada comes to life again as she, at last, gets to play. Drawn by her passion for the piano, Baines arranges with Stewart to trade land for the piano. Without consulting his wife, Stewart assures him that Ada will provide lessons too.

During first of these lessons, Ada strikes her own bargain with Baines, whom she still considers a boor: She will trade sexual favors to earn back her piano, one key at a time. Ultimately, her reluctant bargain grows into full-blown love and passion. The dark, brooding tone of "The Piano," however, suggests that something in this situation will go tragically, and probably violently, wrong.

Campion has filled her movie with haunting piano music (actually played by Hunter) and intriguing imagery. The metaphor of piano as voice and losing and regaining one's voice, Flora's role in changing her mother's fate, the question of whether Ada's bargain reflects a woman taking control of her life or just being victimized in a different way, and many other complexities make this a movie worth watching again and again and again.

Rating:
Summary: BREATHTAKING!
Review: I haven't seen this movie for a long time, but saw it again the other day. I forgot how powerful it was and how breathtaking all the actors are as well as the scenery. Strong performances and beautiful music (I bought the soundtrack long ago and had to dust it off after seeing this movie again!). As for some of the negative comments of seeing Harvey Keitel naked (full frontal, too), and found him disgusting looking, well, folks, that's how most people look in real life!

Rating:
Summary: A Different Look At Romance
Review: All the things that characterize a Hollywood romance are turned upside down and changed about in this film. The usual fare is the interactions between two urbanites with huge polished smiles stuck to their faces. They enter a relationship which is loud, giddy, and giggly.
In The Piano, the woman doesn't speak at all and both men are stoic sorts who have lived in a hard land. A lot happens under the surface where we can only guess at it. In mainstream films, the emphasis for the man is rushing in and grabbing the woman of his dreams with all possible speed.
But here, just once, the quiet, patient, and tender man emerges with the lady. And what's more, when we first see him, we fail to see through his hard exterior. Even the viewer comes to know this man's virtue only over time.
I found this to be an incredibly beautiful story and as if that alone wasn't good enough, I also greatly enjoyed the cinematography and the music. This is one of those films that I find guilty of being incredibly good on all counts.

And a final note about male nudity: Yes it is in this film. Both male and female are seen completely nude. And there's nothing wrong with the male part. We men have beautiful bodies too. Art of the past has had no compunctions about showing nude males and correctly so. I'm not sure I can understand this modern prudery.

Rating:
Summary: Creative Artists in a Bad Soap-Opera
Review: What went wrong with this film? Everyone involved has done brilliant work before and after this production, yet when they combined all their talent together they ended up with a movie that steamrolled the creator's statement over the characters and their actions.

None of the characters act in any sense other than to be moved as pieces on the gameboard for the writer in an attempt to say "something." What that something is is obviously supposed to make us sympathize with Hunter's character, but she is drawn as such a cartoon (a boorish, manipulative cartoon at that), one can never feel anything for her other than wonder why she is ruining everyone else's life around her? Perhaps for the kicks? It would certainly seen so, as she has no reason to even be in the film except as to create unhappiness for all the other characters.

If one wants a film dealing with the ability for the human spirit to rise upon inprisonment, there are many, many, MANY better films than this one. One can only leave this movie feeling cold and depressed because it never is more than cardboardish, hateful characters doing terrible things to each other (including a clumsy attempted-rape sequence) until the out of the blue "happy" ending that seemed tacked on to help the bitter pill be easily to swallow by American audiences.

Shallow and desperate.

Rating:
Summary: Artistic no
Review: I rented this movie thinking it would be very good and interesting to a point but I found the nudity and explict sex sceens disguisting. The sex sceens and nudity I found pointless for this film. I understand it was part of the story but it could have been less more to a PG-13 rating. Harvey Kitel's frontal nudity sceen was horrible and gross. (...)

Rating:
Summary: "The Deliverance Banjo" is more fitting
Review: If there was an 11th Commandment, it would read, "Thou Shall Not Watch The Piano". I don't think I've spent a more horrifying two hours in my entire life. "The Piano" is officialy crowned Queen of Detestable Movies, leaving former heiresses to the throne such as "Chocolat" and "The Banger Sisters" comfortably in her distant wake.

I see where this film was trying to go; how it was trying to be "artsy". If the director wanted to par alongside with what passes for art nowadays (i.e. paintings made with human excrement), then she hit the nail squarely on the head with such acuteness not witnessed since the opening scenes of "Karate Kid 2".

Holly Hunter's character is not mute, but she chooses not to speak. We've never really told exactly why, but I guess it was intended to add to her pathetic "mystique". All it added to was my growing nausea. Hunter "spoke" through her piano, playing ragtime tunes when she was happy (even though ragtime hadn't been discovered yet), and playing eerie Baroque whenever she was depressed (which was about 99.99% of the movie). Not to say she trod through her depression alone....I was with her the entire time, her despair mirroring to perfect symmetry my own feelings at having to sit through the shallow symbolism of it all.

Set in colonial New Zealand, Hunter shows up on a beach to marry farmer Sam Neill. Their union is pre-arranged by her father, which predictably leads to Hunter's resistance of and rebellion from the sham marriage. Hunter's character and behavior are supposed to represent a sense of ahead-of-her-time feminism. This feminism is conveniently overlooked by the director when Hunter prostitutes herself out to neighbor Harvey Keitel as payment for her piano. One key at a time...plunk, plunk, plunk...and so the movie drudges on.

Nothing makes much sense. The symbolism, such as it is, is dry and ineffective. The characters are shallow with no believable relationship forged between any of them. Oh yes, then there's the scene that earned this movie five stars from the Hollywood crowd...Harvey Keitel walking around naked, blackmailing a married mother into sex while her daughter waits outside, and showing the remaining conscious audience that he's not the tanned, bulking hunk of independent farmer the director casted him as.

Pianists everywhere should feel insulted that their instrument of choice has been chosen to represent this avant garde slaughterhouse drainage clog. "Deliverance" not only had a more interesting plot (and that's not saying much), but the musician of the movie, the banjo player, was a more entertaining character than Hunter. Lack of dialogue is no excuse, because the banjo player didn't talk either.

If you don't find my review credible, find me one post-"Piano" movie starring Holly Nunter, Sam Neill, or Harvey Keitel that is.

Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly, achingly beautiful!
Review: Beautiful and brilliant are the words that come to my mind for this movie. The music still haunts me. The ocean, the music, the rain and the forest, one does feel it all. The movie is an amazing emotional rollercoaster ride.
As a mute women married off to a stranger, something which must be common in those days, Ada's (Holly Hunter) piano is how talks. Her husband fails to listen to her but Keitel does! This movie by a women director explores women's perspective in relationships in such a musical, passionate, beautiful fassion that it takes your breath away.
Some of the scenes in this movie are going to stay with me for a long, long time. The music too.