Wildly over rated

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 2001)

It looks great, it sounds great, especially the scenes on the beach. Holly Hunter's acting cannot be faulted. Critics and the public loved it, yet it failed to impress me. The Piano is, in my opinion, the most overrated film of all time.
The problems are many.
The actors, Hunter aside, are atrocious - How Anna Paquin won an Oscar is beyond me and as for Harvey Keitel with biro all over his face. What were those accents? Both wandered from Irish to New Zealand to whatever.
The characters are inconsistent - The Anna Paquin character claims she loves her mother but not five minutes later rats her out. The Sam Neil character attacks Hunter in a fit of rage yet later is the calmest man on the planet. The Holly Hunter character decides to kill herself but a minute later changes her mind. I know that in real life people are inconsistent but in a movie consistency gives characters much more plausibility.
The saddest thing about this film is that it won an Oscar for best Screenplay. HOW?