Masterpiece, perfectly acted, greatest film of all time

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2005)

Brilliant, beautiful, you have not lived until you see it. I went and bought the book, which was beautiful, and explained some of the mysteries not dealt with in the movie. As always, Hunter, the absolute best actor, was fantastic. Her role as the mute, Scottish woman Ada Wyston Mcgrath, whose one from of expression and release was her piano, was beautiful. A mute outcast, rejected from society in her home town, merely for being mute, only to be aggravated further by her having an illegitimate daughter Flora McGrath (Anna Paquins very first movie, also a brilliant actor). Flora being the result of a night of passion with her piano tutor. Not a most suitable and acceptable thing to do at the time. Her father, desperate for her to settle down with someone and become a respectable member of society, sends her to New Zealand for an arranged marriage. When she arrives her relationship with her new husband, Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neil), gets off to a rather terrible start. Having to leave her precious piano at the beach, she does everything possible to retrieve it, aggravating Alisdair, who, no matter how hard he tries cannot manage to fathom why the instrument is so important. His friend, George Baines (Harvey Keitel), however sees this, and uses it to his advantage. My personal favourite parts are the voice overs of Adas thoughts at the beginning and end of the movie. There is a silence where hath been no sound/There is a silence where no sound may be/In the cold grave under the deep, deep sea/Or in wide desert where no life is found/Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound/No voice is hushed, no life treads silently/Though clouds and cloudy shadows wander free/That never spoke over idle ground/But in green ruins, in the desolate walls/Of antique palaces, where man hath been/Though the dun fox or wild hyena calls/And owls that flit continually between/Shreik to the echo and the low winds moan/There the true silence is- self conscious and alone -Silence, Thomas Hood (1798-1845)