Will, Silence, and Desire
In my experience, Oscar nominated films tend to be overwrought drudgery. They’re so IMPORTANT and so DEEP and INTENSE and stuff. (I’m lookin’ at you, The English Patient). The Piano, however, was nominated for a jillion Oscars (including Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Picture) and deserved every one. In the end, Jane Campion won for best screenplay, Anna Paquin scored best supporting actress (at 11, and she was probably 9 when it was being filmed), and Holly Hunter took away Best Actress. It’s especially fascinating when you come to understand that Ada doesn’t speak, and that Hunter had to carry the movie with her stern little face.
Brilliant casting, atmospheric cinematography and a haunting score absolutely make this moody, amazing little film. Ada, mute and willful, must endure an arranged marriage to a lonely New Zealander. Dumped on the stormy coast with her daughter Flora, she makes it clear that she has no intention of letting her mail-order husband touch her. When her husband swaps her piano (her voice) for a tract of his neighbor’s land, she shouts in every way she can: knocking things over, stomping her feet and exploding in a flurry of furious sign language, her daughter translating her indignant tirade with a fishwife’s own tongue. Then Ada herself stamps her dissatisfaction onto a page of her notebook, almost carving the paper with her blunt pencil before holding the note to her husband’s nose: The piano is mine. It’s mine.
Already assigned to one man without her consent, her husband sends her to give lessons to the man who has taken her piano. George, who arranged the swap for the piano knowing full well what it meant to Ada, proposes that Ada earn it back. What ensues is an extraordinary film about will and female desire, about choice and agency and every kind of passion. The film hinges on Anna Paquin’s Flora, who is cruel and sweet and crafty in turns, but would have absolutely foundered without Hunter’s expressive presence. The fact that she actually knew sign language and played the piano pieces herself were just the icing on the cake, because watching her performance you could swear she “could lay thoughts out in [your] mind like they were a sheet”.
It’s a deeply satisfying film: a weird, perfect lullaby and very worth your while.
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I’ve never seen this movie. I was afraid of the English Patient effect, I guess. I’ll check it out.
It’s such a fantastic film – it’s got this small, personal story set against this huge, lush wild place, it’s got amazing acting and it’s quiet by necessity but never boring.
I can’t believe it’s out of print. That’s mental.
I love the hell out of it. I used to listen to the soundtrack every day, and I still have it.
It’s kind of amazing when you think that she came from money and had an affair and a child out of wedlock before her dad married her off across the sea. She just does pretty much only what she wants to do – she must have wanted to leave Scotland or they never would have gotten her on the ship alive in the first place.