Sleepy and brilliant.

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2008)

There is a scene in The Piano where three women are walking through the woods discussing the bizarre behavior of Ada (Holly Hunter), and her incessant piano playing. Just as I was getting a little irritated that Director Jane Campion would have the sound effect of the woman peeing, a decidedly distasteful sound, the woman peeing says about Ada's piano playing, "To have a sound creep inside you is not at all pleasant." And I realize that Campion is thoroughly in charge of every sight and sound in the film, from beginning to end.
It's a slow, moody drama, to be sure, and this is probably why it took me so long to get around to watching it again. I remember seeing it with my parents when I was a kid, but I found it to be so boring that I asked if I could go into another auditorium and watch a different movie. I know now why they said yes.
Holly Hunter inhabits the silent role of Ada, a mute woman who enters into an arranged, loveless marriage in 1850s New Zealand, incidentally the place where Anna Paquin, who gave the most stunning performance in this movie, grew up. Campion's New Zealand feels like a small, isolated island surrounded by a cold, dreary sea, and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh relishes the opportunities he has for cold, warm, and emotional lighting, literally painting the movie in cold or brilliant colors for us, and the results are fantastic.
San Neill and Harvey Keitel play opposing roles, Neill as Alisdair Stewart, Ada's arranged husband who hopes that they will grow to love each other, and Keitel as George Baines, a man with Maori symbols tattooed on his face and who has a relationship with Ada that achieves astonishing change throughout the film. But it is Anna Paquin who steals the show entirely. Her performance is so brilliant and so unexpected that many times I forgot about the rest of the film and just tried to figure out how Jane Campion got that performance out of her. It is one of the best child performances in film history.
Incidentally, I had some bizarre Sam Neill coincidences today. First I watched a terrible time travel film this afternoon called A Sound of Thunder, and one of the threads on the IMDb message boards for that movie asked what people's favorite time travel movies were, and many people mentioned The Final Conflict, which stars Sam Neill. Then while I was watching The Piano, out of nowhere I started humming to myself this old Rob Zombie song called Demon Speeding, where the chorus goes like this, "In the mouth of madness, down in the darkness, no more tomorrow, down in the hollow..." And I thought, "Hey, In the Mouth of Madness, I haven't even thought about that movie since high school!" And then I looked it up on the IMDb and sure enough, Sam Neill stars in it.
Sorry, I just thought I'd mention that. But more importantly, The Piano is a stunning accomplishment, another complex and engaging film from Jane Campion, who I don't think has made anything much less in her career. Bravo!