The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition)
|
List Price: Our Price: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 (10%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $12.99 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition)
Movie Review: Prepare yourself
Summary: 4 Stars
I was originally attracted to this film because I am/was a pianist and I was interested to see a French take on a movie involving a musician.
Wow... upon first viewing, I was quite shocked. There are some scenes in this movie that are downright disturbing. If you've seen any French film, you may know what to expect. If you haven't, this may not be the right film to start with. Ultimately, it was very well acted and well directed. The special features aren't enormous, but what is there is quite interesting, including an interview with Isabelle Huppert.
It's hard to describe, really. If you're used to American film, you probably won't like it right away. Give it a chance. If you don't like it, that's fine.
Movie Review: Powerful and Disturbing
Summary: 4 Stars
After I saw "La Pianiste" several years ago, I said to myself that I would never see it again, so powerful and disturbing it was. Time went on but I could not get the movie and its main character, Erika Kahut out of my mind. The story of a respected Piano teacher in Vienna Conservatory, cool and collected on the surface, an expert in classical music, with the inner world so dark and disturbing with the demons of fear, self-loathing and self destruction strong enough to ruin her demanded more than one viewing. I read the book "The Piano Teacher" by Elfriede Jelinek, the controversial Nobel Prize winner in literature that the film is based on and after reading it I saw the film again. Second time, all pieces of puzzle came to the right places. Not very often an outstanding harrowing book is transferred to the screen with such brilliancy as "Le Pianiste". Three actors gave outstanding performances. Franz Schubert's Piano music, "soaked in the morbid humanity", is another bright star of the movie.
I only have one problem with Haneke's vision. There is a scene in the film where Haneke made some changes to Erika's character comparing to the novel. In the book, the furthest she went to reveal herself to Walter, the young student in the conservatory who became attracted to her was in a letter. As soon as he realized what he was dealing with and showed to her how much he was repulsed by that, she had stopped communicating with him. Erika of the book would never chase Walter to throw herself to him. She kept everything inside - she did not like to act, she was not a chaser - she loved to watch. The big scene during the hockey game was not necessary. It tried to make Erika sympathetic (and of course, Huppert was heartbreaking) but it took the mystery that surrounded her - Jelinek did not write that scene, it sounded and looked false in otherwise excellent film.
4.5/5 or 9/10
Movie Review: The Piano Teacher: yet another example of why I love French cinema.,
Summary: 4 Stars
"A feature film is twenty-four lies per second." -- Michael Haneke.
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke (Cache (Hidden), Code Unknown) is known for his "disturbing" film style. "My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator," he says. "They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus." That said, based on the novel The Piano Teacher by Austrian Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, Haneke's compelling 2002 French film, The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste), tells the story of Professor Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert), a cruel piano professor at a prestigious Vienna music conservatory. Lonely and sexually repressed, she shares an apartment with her domineering mother (Annie Girardot). Erika is a case study in Freudian psychology. Behind her prudish fa?ade, she enjoys a long list of fetishes. She frequents sex shops, watches porn, hides bondage toys in her boudoir, mutilates her vagina, and watches couples having sex at drive-ins. At a recital, she meets Walter (Beno?t Magimel), an engineering student, who not only has an appreciation for Schumann and Schubert, but believes he can melt Erika's icy persona, even though he is unwilling to engage in her erotic fantasies. In fact, he is "repulsed" by Erika's notion of sex. Isabelle Huppert's performance is nothing less than riveting. Jelinek's story is reminiscent of Catherine Breillat's work, and like Breillat's film genius (Romance, Anatomy of Hell, Fat Girl, Brief Crossing (Breve Traversee)), Haneke proves in this film that he isn't afraid to confront the hard truths of human sexuality in a completely non-judgmental way.
G. Merritt
Movie Review: Distubing
Summary: 3 Stars
I just watched this film and feel as if I need a shower. This is an emotionally drainiing film about two very sick and twisted people: the mother and the daughter. The mother is like Mama Rose in Gypsy, totally focused on her daughter and unwilling or unable to let her go. The daughter is so damaged she cannot break away from her mother and at the same time is sexually repressed and turns to porno to relieve her repression. But it really doesn't release her. At times I felt like strangling that mother but that mother is so sick I felt ashamed at how I felt.
This film will stick with you, whether you like it or not and I'm not sure. I watched it through until the end (which means I didn't hate it or I would have walked away). Isabelle Huppert is magnificent (as she always is) and no one plays a repressed woman on the verge of eruption (see La Ceremonie).
Even her feelings about Schubert are twisted.
I still would say it's worth a rental. You will not forget this movie, I promise.
Movie Review: Saddest movie ive ever seen
Summary: 4 Stars
Sad in a sick twisted way. Most depressing? maybe. The story is about an uptight sexually repressed piano teacher who lives with her old mother. Also the students she teaches. She has a gift for music and comes off as very intelligent yet emotionless. One of her younger students falls in love with her, attempts to seduce her and she keeps trying to control him and use him for her warped version of love. I still cant tell if she really loved him or not. It seems the only time she feels anything is when shes inflicting pain on herself or pain on others, even the student who loves her.
She makes him do certain things and will deny his affections. Then when he does what she supposedly wanted him to do which was disturbing in itself, she is still just sitting there with no emotion at all. This woman was definitely mentally ill and i tried to understand her character but there wasnt really enough information. I dont want to give away the ending but the whole movie is a downer. I didnt understand what happened at the end or what became of her but i have to say this, this is probably the saddest portrayal of anyone ive ever seen on film. I still cant tell what exactly made her that way. Is she a sociopath? Was she abused at some point? Its a slow moving film but effective.