A symphony of brilliance.

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2008)

Coming across an ocean, Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) sits silently with her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) beside her and a piano accompanying. They are on their way to New Zealand where Ada's new husband (Sam Neill), whom she's never met, is waiting to be with her. Upon arrival, the two instantly dislike the newest member of their family as he drags them up towards their home and leaves the piano on the dreary beach. The next day, Ada gets George Baines (Harvey Keitel) a tribesman who works for her husband, to bring them back down to the beach to the piano. Ada is mute, but finds poetic beauty in the sounds that she produces through her piano and I have to say that I was quite moved with their beauty as well and so was George. Or rather, he was moved by Ada's beauty.
So George brings the piano up to his home and keeps it there; he arranges for Ada to give him lessons to play and in turn she can play her piano at his home. Soon she finds out that his reasoning for having her come there is of a much more erotic nature. They come to an agreement that for every visit she makes to 'teach him to play', she will be one step closer to him giving her the piano. But while she visits and plays, he makes requests of her (such as lifting her skirt up or taking off her dress-coat so that he can see her arms). Quite quickly these requests come to her laying down next to him and eventually them laying nude together. Initially she is stubborn and put back by this man, but soon she begins to feel for him. Soon she falls in love with him. In this love comes my favorite aspect of the film. It's not your typical love story between two incredibly attractive people torn apart by their families or some twist of fate and they fight to get back to one another. These are two very flawed individuals who have nothing stopping them from being in love, except for her caution towards feeling so deeply for someone again. But once they finally accept their passion for one another, they have her new husband to deal with.
The Piano is a tragic film with scenes of extreme tension and one of the most wrenching moments I've ever had to witness on screen when husband Alisdair discovers their affair and picks up his axe. However it's also a beautiful picture with some of the most gorgeous cinematography I've ever seen and a score that sweeps me away. Two shots in particular had me stunned; one focused solely on the piano in it's crate sitting on the beach as the waves crash on the sand behind it, and another where Flora runs over a series of hills to deliver a message to Alisdair. As I said before, the love story in it is certainly unique and thus it's one of my favorites ever depicted on screen. In order for it to work, the performances had to be flawless and they most certainly are. Holly Hunter is painfully moving without saying a word, Sam Neill is flawed and naive throughout the entire picture until the final act where he is absolutely terrifying and Harvey Keitel makes the audience feel as Ada does; at first he is strange and despicable but we realize that under this creepy exterior is a gentle lover and Keitel perfectly embodies both aspects of this. My only complaint with the film is in the young Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar for this role. I personally found her to not only be unbearably annoying, but her scenes near the end felt so forced and ridiculous it almost came to the point of hilarity. If it wasn't for the incredible performances surrounding her and the power of the story, I believe I would have ended up laughing. However when there is such strength and flawlessness encompassing everything, one little thing isn't going to ruin the experience. An absolutely incredible film with such a beautiful ending.