Piano lesson about hidden narratives

Rating: 10/10 (6 March 2007)

After watching 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' the previous day, I bumped into another, by-the-way very well-made, movie with some feminist undercurrents in it. 'The Piano' is not merely feminine, to paraphrase another commenter whose remarks I liked even while not agreeing with them entirely, it is indeed feminist to a degree. Here's how I decode what you find in the movie, without spoilers. This is a story, with some mysteries that you won't be able to fully decipher, that is messy but enjoyable at the same time, and it's kept moving by the layers of hidden narratives that are there for you to explore. So there is a load of other critical stuff in it beside feminism. Think of how 'inappropriately' Ada's little daughter behaves at times! She's annoying, isn't she? But then remember that she's a child who had to move to the end of the world with no option of saying 'no' to the idea. And all those aborigines, they also behave so inappropriately at times! In their case remember that their lands are being bought up for nothing by newcomers of another world, that are intruding their civilization rather inappropriately, one could say. And so on. Getting back to the feminism theme, the piano is the medium that Ada uses to break out of the limitations imposed on her (never having fitted the role of a 'Victorian woman'), she can't use her voice, so she'll rather play the piano scandalously well for a good girl - yeah, that's pretty obvious symbolism alright. The men around her, the characters played by Sam Neill and Harvey Keitel. Well, in my interpretation one is the non-natural man whose rule in society is built on social constructions evident in conventions of the era, while the latter, played by Keitel, is representative of a kind of true, natural manliness. Anyway, I don't want to create the image of being totally self-assured about meanings, for I'm in fact not. And you'll have a lot more questions to ask after the film, I promise. But that's not going to take away the pleasure of watching it, if you're ready to buy into some post-modern, surreal stuff, a really catchy, captivating film score and some truly brilliant cinematography.