The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition)
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Movie Reviews of The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition)
Movie Review: Jelinek, Haneke, & Huppert
Summary: 5 Stars
Nobel or no, it surprised me Jelinek's novel got made into a movie. There is of course a filmable plot to the book, but its blunt narrative is so stylized, almost childish in its urgent impetus, and hounded all throughout with a foreboding sense of reader-voyeurism, that it seemed to me totally unfilmable or at least very difficult to reproduce on film.
And then I thought - of course, Haneke. The master of cool intellectual voyeurism, done in a visually often flat but (for the viewer) psychologically harrowing way. Plus, Huppert, the master of sangfroid surrender. It could not be any more perfect. Who else but these two to translate onto film the strange, disinterested yet intense tone of the book?! Yet, curiously, the result is surprisingly a lot less like either Jelinek or Haneke.
For one thing, I've never seen his camera as romantic as it is here. It's almost lyric, and although unblinking in its gaze on Erika, it also clearly pities her. It shows her depravity, but it *sees* her as ill. I found myself wondering why Haneke did this. He could not have failed to see the book has far less pity than a slight contempt in its clinical scrutiny. Nor could it quite have been the usual 'movie' reason of having to make its main character sympathetic enough to stay with -- at least not for the director of movies like 'The Seventh Continent.'
These aren't complaints. I have no complaints against this movie. But it should be said that even if Haneke isn't interested in a transparent novel-to-film transfer, it's not as obvious in its being a 'Haneke' film (again, not a complaint).
Actually, I think the movie is all Huppert's. She's devastating and devastated and completely searing.
Movie Review: Exceptional in Every Way a Film Can Be!
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Haneke is an artist of rare vision who demonstrates in "The Piano Teacher" (La Pianiste), the depth of his insight into the human condition. However, be warned that, in this film, the director demonstrates a levity of mood and captures a portrait of reality that many may find uncomfortable, and even unwatchable. The film was booed by audiences at Cannes 2001 despite the fact that the film's two main performers won best actress and actor awards respectively for their performances. I think the film is one of the most amazingly well-directed and well-acted that I've seen in many years. However, you should be aware that this film is NOT for the faint-hearted.
The central character of the film, Erika Kahut, is more complex than any I've seen, and Isabelle Huppert plays her to perfection. Huppert is my favorite actress and with her icy eyes and cold, even cruel manner, she is riveting to watch. You find yourself asking from the beginning of the film and throughout, what is behind those blank eyes? Is it madness, pain, desire, need? Is it all of these? Whatever it is, it is utterly compelling. The character never explains her actions, nor does the film. Perhaps that is why she is so fascinating. It is as if her face is an opaque surface upon which we can read whatever we wish to.
Erika Kahut, the piano teacher, is a woman in her 40s, lives with her mother, and teaches at a prestigious music school in Vienna. By day, she is an exacting, even monstrously cruel teacher who is constantly reminded by her mother of her failure to become a famous pianist. This is perhaps what compels Erika to be so utterly sadistic toward her students. She resents their potential successes and tries to sabotage the work of the more talented students to ensure that they will not succeed. After abusing her students by day, she goes home to her overbearing mother. She then invents excuses to go out.
At night, the "daytime Erika" of the conservatory is left behind as she goes to porn booths and watches sexually graphic films and sniffs leftover tissues of former patrons to, we presume, get a sexual kick. She does other sexually exotic things throughout the film that are kinky enough to give the kinky pause.
When Erika meets a young, handsome piano player, Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel), her world of sexual sadism and self-destruction is taken to the extreme. Walter wants a traditional love affair with Erika, but she has something very different in mind.
The climactic scene where the two of them fight for dominance is one that will go down in cinema history as one of the most horrifying, sad, real, and insightful sex scenes ever filmed. You will NEVER forget Erika's face when she looks fully into the heart of darkness with Walter.
This is a must-see for film lovers and a must-have for Huppert fans.
Movie Review: A dark and sometimes disturbing film
Summary: 5 Stars
Some may be put off by the length of the film (and even more by the fact that it is not in English) but I urge you to sit through this film, watch it to its disturbing end.
This is an excellent film which looks more into how we view people and how they really are. Huppert is excellent as a middle class piano teacher who on the outside is a rigid woman in control of her life as much as she is in control of her students, she demands perfection and accepts no excuses. In her private life however, she is torn apart by contradictions. Hupperts commentary in additional material sums it up perfectly, she is almost like a child. Smothered by a mother who controls every aspect of her private life she resorts to what many would consider a 'perverse' private life.
She becomes the unwilling victim of the attractions of one of her students, a young man who has it all, well off family, friends and the social standing that means what he wants, he gets. After a long pursuit Hppert finally gives in only to discover that by opening up to this young man she may lose more than she ever imagined.
This is a film that does at time demand your attention as does last over 2 hours but sit through it, you will be rewarded by the end.
Movie Review: now this is a great psychological portrait
Summary: 5 Stars
Bound to become a classic of world cinema, 'the piano teacher', is Michael Haneke's most perfect film.. It tells the story of a women so repressed and abused by her mother that she explodes with sexual tension..
it comes out in her music.. and in a sort of chaotic relationship with one of her students.. at times incestuous and at times perverse this is a truly disturbed women who is as rigid as her own philosophy of music- this is a must see - a modern classic from a powerful new cinematic voice..
Movie Review: A Very Dark Tale!
Summary: 4 Stars
Being a piano teacher myself, I was very curious about this film. I don't teach in a conservatory, but do know that artists at that level can become very eccentric, and when they feel threatened, they can be vicious. Still, this film took that to the extreme and then some. Erika's relationship with her mother didn't make it any easier to achieve mental health, and her sexual fantansies and perversions drove her deeper into the abyss. By all outward appearances, she was a repressed, uptight bully with most of her students who went home to a quiet life with her equally repressed, bullying mother, but she often sneaked out at night to act out her fantasies. It's when an attractive student takes a romantic interest in her that she decides she can use him to act out her ultimate fantasies of being beaten and abused to an extreme. She controls him cruelly until he agrees to follow through. Some of this is hard to watch, but the film is never judemental, and Erika's humanity is always there. As twisted as she has become, she is never a caricature or a two-dimensional character. This is a very dark, very adult tale that left me a little shaken, as I'm sure was intended.