Self indulgent, art-for-art sake, critics darling wannabe

Rating: Null/10 (3 February 2002)

The Piano, it's international accolades aside, is an overtly surreal, dreamlike puddle of dross. I will grant that many of the artisans who lent their names and reputations to this production have scored peripheral success, but the core artistic conception, the film itself, is a murky blur of period costumes mixed with inaccessible concepts and visions. Perhaps Jane Campion knew what she wanted to say, but with the distributor failing to hand out liner notes at the box office the rest of the world was left to battle with subliminal cartoons, and schizophrenic characters and their mood swings.
I desperately wanted to like 'The Piano', and yet, aided by this desperation I still found myself feeling cheated by a Director who was just as desperate to court the critics and, at the same time, carve her signature into her work, all to the detriment of the finished product.
Why do I hate this film so? Well, it's largest crime is that it is boring. The film is boring not because of it's subject matter, but by the way that subject matter is handled. None of the characters feel like real people, they all, or almost all, deliver lines and performances (performances gravely influenced by direction) that are at right angles to the actions of real people.
Ignore it's reputation, see the film, and then ask yourself "What up with that?".