Movie Reviews for The Piano

The Piano

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Movie Reviews of The Piano

Movie Review: "...I just want to watch..."
Summary: 5 Stars

I'll stay mute for this...and rapt as well, who would have thought Harvey Keitel could be sooo seductive; the entire film is hauntingly enchanting and provocative like its heroine played by Holly Hunter. A must own.

Movie Review: See How Good A Movie Can Be?
Summary: 5 Stars

Since the storylines of this fourteen-year-old film must surely be well-known, let me say that The Piano, one of my favorite movies, is a unique production whose makers went out of their way to truly give it the appearance of the mid-nineteenth-century. It strolls forward with an anti-modern slowness in order to accentuate the unspoiled scenery of New Zealand, and successfully bring certain moments to prominence with a pace that matches that of the pre-electronic era in which it is set. The quality of the visuals is heightened by the performances given by Holly Hunter, Sam Neill, Harvey Keitel, and most especially Anna Paquin, whose skillful portrayal here won her an Oscar at the tender age of eleven. The plot of The Piano is highly unusual, even unique. For filmmakers to have accomplished the release of a tale concerning a woman of the 1800's, who went from Scotland to the most remote of British colonies in order to marry a stranger, for this woman to be one whose self-imposed muteness is compensated by her lovely playing of a piano...I'm daunted by the courage of those who brought The Piano into reality. For the wealth of feeling in its story, for its setting, for its cast and for its sheer brave inimitability, it is a fine motion picture.

Movie Review: A break with the tragic, the Gothic and the sentimental...
Summary: 4 Stars

Director-screenwriter Jane Campion started at the movies in the early 1980s at the Australian School of Film and Television... She clearly emerged from her cultural heritage to become one of the world's premiere female directors...

Campion's films typically have a treacherous terrain of searing emotional intensity... We recognize ourselves in the ways her characters think and behave... Her work signifies a break with the tragic, the Gothic and the sentimental...

Her exquisite film which won three Academy Awards including one for Campion's screenplay, is not about sex, but about passion...

Jane challenges the viewer on many levels... Her film (literary inspired from 'Wuthering Heights') explores new territory in the delicious handling of female sexuality and pleasure with the ecstasy of a loving relationship...

In one scene Ada, with tears of anger, hits Baines hard across the face, as if she has spoken words of love... With each new breath, with every moment that their eyes remain locked together, the promise of intimacy is confirmed and reconfirmed and detailed... Only their feelings and emotions guide their instincts...

No woman artist had approached sex in such a direct and liberating manner... Campion's scenes shows Baines' face crumpling with the exquisite pain of his pleasure... Ada moving his head to her chest, and Baines struggling through her dress anxious to touch her skin...

Nominated for eight Academy Awards, the film tells the story of Ada, a strong willful 19th-century Scotswoman who hasn't spoken, since she was six years old... Ada has been set up in an arranged marriage to a British emigrant in New Zealand...

The film opens with Ada who is carried to shore on the shoulders of five seamen to meet her husband Stewart, a landowner who is without much emotion or real love... Her large Victorian skirt spreads across the men's arms and backs... On her head a black bonnet... Around her neck her pad and pen...

Campion manages to chose a cast to suit her purpose and style... Ada is not any easy role and Holly Hunter plays her without vanity... Her face is alight with facial expression, sometimes tender, sometimes sad, sometimes humorous, sometimes soft, while her hands and fingers are quick and neat...

Ada speaks through sign-language translated by her young daughter Flora, and through her beloved piano which happens to be the prime source of her expression... She takes great delight in feeling her fingers on her piano's keys... But in the way she eyes the illiterate, uncultured Baines, there is an insolence and lack of respect... We watch her stopping abruptly, indignantly, as he touches her neck...

Harvey Kietel plays the lonely neighbor George Baines, a depressive man who is everything Stewart is not... He has never seen a graceful woman behave with so much abandon... Ada moves to the piano... She wants to touch it, but she is torn by her feelings, wanting it, but not owning it... Baines views Ada totally absorbed in her piano music... He seems satisfied to watch... He finds himself edging irresistibly closer, magnetically drawn to the spectacle...

Baines enjoys her fingers moving on the keys and the small details of motion on her face... Twice he closes his eyes and breathes deeply... He is experiencing a strange sense of appreciation and lust... He feels powerless... He is desperate and romantic... He no longer admires her absorption with the piano... He is jealous of it... His attention finally focuses on her neck as it bends further or closer to the piano... Ada's long white neck proves irresistible... Baines comes across the room, kisses her, and asks: 'Do you know how to bargain, nod if you do. There's a way you can have your piano back.'

Anna Paquin has been proclaimed one of the best child acting roles ever... She gives a subtle and complex performance as the very cute little girl torn between her mother and stepfather... She looks over at the house suddenly aware that the piano playing has stopped suddenly... She investigates the mystery peeping through the various cracks and holes in the loosely built hut... Her venture is one of challenge and curiosity... Her complex portrayal of Flora won her the Best Supporting Actress...

Sam Neill plays the intense, moralistic and very-Victorian husband Alistair Stewart, who never understands his woman's nature... He surveys Baines' hut suspiciously... There are sounds inside which are worrying him... By wondering around the hut, he finds a hole where he can see the two lovers kissing, and undressing... He reels back angry, but just as we might expect him to burst through, he steps up to look again...

Jane Campion creates an unusual film, poetic and lyrical, complimented by a beautiful cinematography of the haunting woods, which by many critics has been named as a masterpiece... She is the first female director to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes...

Movie Review: Overly mysterious
Summary: 4 Stars

This movie was lavished with praise when it first came out, but after a number of viewings over the years I find its intense mysteriousness less and less appealing. Holly Hunter plays Ada, a mail-order bride who goes to remote New Zealand to meet her husband (played by Sam Neill). We learn that by choice she has not spoken since age six, though why is never disclosed; indeed, the point is made that she doesn't know why, either. Her one solace is a piano, which she plays well. But Neill refuses to have the instrument brought to his home and another man, George Baines (played by Harvey Keitel), uneducated, but morally decent, takes the piano and lets her play it at his place. But he wants something from her in return - sexual favors. Gradually they fall in love and by movie's end have gone off together, sans piano, which they have thrown into the ocean. There are a lot of unanswered questions raised: why is Ada voluntarily mute? why is she so repulsed by her husband? why does she fall for Baines? - and the fact that these mysteries linger after the credits roll is annoying. The main theme seems to revolve around the love triangle, but devoid of purpose. As a heroine, Hunter is more a freak and social outcast. The movie is poetic and sensual, but at the expense of all reason. The piano itself is an interesting symbol with lots of implications, but the wildly lush settings and extremely odd behavior of the principal characters overshadow its significance. Although quite an eyeful (and earful), the movie leaves too many important questions unanswered.