Interesting, but not very convincing

Rating: 6/10 (24 February 2008)

"The Piano" has a lot going for it: a strong cast, a unique premise, great on-site scenery, but somehow the combination left me flat and unmoved.
The story follows a young English mute woman (Holly Hunter) who is sent to New Zealand to become a bride for a local settler (Sam Neill). Her passion is her piano which she brings across the ocean, but her new husband has no interest in it. Instead, one of his native workers (a curiously miscast Harvey Keitel, who doesn't look Maori for a moment) is drawn to her, and thus we have our triangle.
Some of the scenes showing the interplay of Maori and English cultures were fascinating. The views of New Zealand, both the large-scale and also the smaller-scale views of jungles and mud (there is LOTS of mud!) were very enjoyable. The idea of someone being forced to express herself solely through music, and then finding herself in this wilderness totally devoid of culture, that too was interesting.
But this story lives and dies on the basis of its characters, and somehow the main ones (the men especially) were baffling and, worst of all, unsympathetic. Neill's character treats his new wife with coldness and indifference at first, though he does seem to warm to her later on. Keitel's character is even less plausible. He is drawn to her sexually, and realizes he can use the piano as a bargaining tool to achieve his carnal desires. Halfway there, though, he relents. In the meantime, Hunter's character warms up to him, even though he was abusing her. Hunter does the best acting, even though she can't speak any words, still she conveys the frustration and anger and resentment at her predicament very well.
More could have been made of the piano as a metaphor for civilization out in the wilderness among the savages, but it wasn't. In fact there was the opposite: the native man feigns interest in the piano, only to ensnare the beautiful woman. One never feels that his interest in the piano was truly musical or artistic.
Again, it's hard to explain exactly why, but the combination of characters just did not click very well for me.
I found the score hopelessly anachronistic; at no point does the piano play any of the music one would have expected during that period (Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, etc.), but it's still decently pretty. And be warned, there is plenty of male nudity, including the full frontal variety, and a little female as well.
It's worth seeing, but I walked away thinking that a very interesting premise was somehow mishandled and left untapped.