a difficult and wonderful movie

Rating: 10/10 (30 April 1999)

I've read the previous comments about "the piano" and it seems to me there are a lot of confused and even contradictory ideas about this excellent and difficult movie. Somebody seems to believe that it's an ultra-feminist opus, on the other hand, somebody else wrote that women are here portrayed as animals, without a real will; many people found it disturbing and morbid, others believe that it's just stupid and arty.
I'll try to explain here why these ideas are in my opinion erroneous. This movie is about people living in another "world", with more strict rules than in today western society (marriage arranged by parents were rather usual), a world where who didn't conform with those rules was an outcast.
Ada is clearly a strong person and in many ways she doesn't act as woman in her position was expected to do in this period (she has even got an illegitimate daughter), she's a rebel but she doesn't realize that she's also prisoner of her own rebellion (see her dependence from the piano).
I guess she consented to her marriage because she wanted to escape from her previous condition. Unfortunately, her rather wild nature isn't understood by her new husband, a good and moralistic man, who refuses to take her piano to his farm. It's true that her request is unrealistic and that the piano looks so out of place on this seashore "on the other side of the world", but the piano is Ada's life (and cage), her main way for communicate.
On the other side, Baines, a man that lives as a Maori, is fascinated by Ada, he wants to "conquer" her through the piano (no prostitution, no violence! his approach is direct but he cares for her from the beginning). As the "liaison" between them becomes deeper and more and more passionate, all the community gets to know it. Ada's husband, understanding that she really loves the other man, has a violent and wild reaction (but not that strange for that time), but, eventually, he decides to make free his wife.
This strong love passion is the cause of the final Ada's "rebirth" , in one of the more upsetting scenes she "gets free" from the piano: now she's really on the way to be a independent human being.
I really hope that everyone try to watch this movie with a more "open mind" and try to remember that it's set 100 years ago, when behaviors and ideas had different standards. It's possible you don't like it but it isn't a dumb movie in any way.