The Piano
Tags: romantic, atmospheric

Plot synopsis:
A mute Scotswoman named Ada McGrath is sold by her father into marriage to a New Zealand frontiersman named Alisdair Stewart, bringing her young daughter Flora with her. The voice that the audience hears in the opening narration is "not her speaking voice, but her mind's voice". Ada has not spoken a word since she was six years old and no one, including herself, knows why. She expresses herself through her piano playing and through sign language, for which her daughter has served as the interpreter. Flora later dramatically tells two women in New Zealand that her mother has not spoken since the death of her husband who died as a result of being struck by lightning. Ada cares little for the mundane world, occupying herself for hours every day with the piano. Flora, it is later learned, is the product of a relationship with a teacher with whom Ada believed she could communicate through her mind, but who "became frightened and stopped listening", and thus left her.
Ada, Flora, and their belongings, including a hand crafted piano, are deposited on a New Zealand beach by a ship's crew. As there is no one there to meet them, they spend the night alone on the beach amongst their crated belongings. The following day, the husband who has bought her, Alisdair, arrives with a Māori crew and his white friend, Baines, a fellow forester and retired sailor who has adopted many of the Maori customs, including tattooing his face. Alisdair proves to be a shy and diffident man, who is jokingly called "old dry balls" by his Māori neighbours. He tells Ada that there is no room in his small house for the piano and abandons the piano on the beach. Ada, in turn, is cold to him and is determined to be reunited with her piano.
Unable to communicate with Alisdair, Ada and Flora visit Baines with a note asking to be taken to the piano. He explains that he cannot read. When Flora translates her mother's wishes, he initially refuses, but the three ultimately spend the day on the beach with Ada playing music. Baines, whose wife is far away in England living a separate life, is taken by the transformation in Ada when she plays her piano. Baines soon suggests that Alisdair trade the instrument to him for some land. Alisdair consents, and agrees to his further request to receive lessons from Ada, oblivious to his attraction to her.
Ada is enraged when she learns that Alisdair has traded away her precious piano without consulting her and complains that she does not want a man with filthy hands and no ability to read, touching her piano. Alisdair shouts the finality of his decision and demands that she fulfill the contract of providing lessons. On the day she arrives at his hut, she attempts to make an excuse that she cannot play the piano because it is out of tune. She is stunned to find that Baines has had the piano put into perfect tune. She begins by asking him to play anything he knows, but he asks to simply listen rather than learn to play himself. It becomes clear that he procured the piano not for his own interest in music, but because he likes who Ada becomes when she plays. During one session, Baines proposes that Ada can earn her piano back at a rate of one piano key per "lesson", provided that he can observe her and do "things he likes" while she plays. She is not eager to accept the deal, but cannot turn down the opportunity to regain her piano. She agrees, but negotiates for a number of lessons equal to the number of black keys only.
While Ada and her husband Alisdair have had no sexual, nor even mildly affectionate, interaction, the lessons with Baines become a slow seduction for her affection. Baines requests gradually increased intimacy in exchange for greater numbers of keys. Ada reluctantly accepts but does not give herself to him the way he desires. Realizing that she only does what she has to in order to regain the piano, and that she has no romantic feelings for him, Baines gives up and simply returns the piano to Ada, saying that their arrangement "is making you a whore, and me wretched", and that what he really wants is for her to actually care for him.
Despite Ada having her piano back, she ultimately finds herself missing Baines watching her as she plays. She returns to him one afternoon, where they submit to their desire for one another. Alisdair, having become suspicious of their relationship, hears them making love as he walks by Baines' house, and then watches them through a crack in the wall. Outraged, he follows her the next day and confronts her in the forest, where he attempts to force himself on her, despite her intense resistance. He then boards up his home with Ada inside so she will not be able to visit Baines while Alisdair is working on his timberland. After this, Ada realizes she must show affection with Alisdair if she is ever to be released from her home prison, though her caresses only serve to frustrate him more because when he tries to touch her, she pulls away. Eventually resolving to trust her, he removes the barriers from the house, and exacts a promise from Ada that she will not see Baines.
Soon afterwards, Ada sends her daughter with a package for Baines, containing a single piano key with an inscribed love declaration reading "Dear George you have my heart Ada McGrath". Flora does not want to deliver the package and brings the piano key instead to Alisdair. After reading the love note burnt onto the piano key, Alisdair furiously returns home with an axe and cuts off Ada's index finger to deprive her of the ability to play the piano. He then sends Flora who witnessed this to Baines with the severed finger wrapped in cloth, with the message that if Baines ever attempts to see Ada again, he will chop off more fingers.
Later that night, while touching Ada in her sleep, Alisdair hears what he believes to be Ada's voice inside of his head, asking him to let Baines take her away. Deeply shaken, he goes to Baines' house and asks if she has ever spoken words to him. Baines assures him she has not. Ultimately, it is assumed that he decides to send Ada and Flora away with Baines and dissolve their marriage once she has recovered from her injuries. They depart from the same beach on which she first landed in New Zealand. While being rowed to the ship with her baggage and Ada's piano tied onto a Māori longboat, Ada asks Baines to throw the piano overboard. As it sinks, she deliberately tangles her foot in the rope trailing after it. She is pulled overboard but, deep under water, changes her mind and kicks free and is pulled to safety.
In an epilogue, Ada describes her new life with Baines and Flora in Nelson, where she has started to give piano lessons in their new home, and her severed finger has been replaced with a silver finger made by Baines. Ada has also started to take speech lessons in order to learn how to speak again. Ada says that she imagines her piano in its grave in the sea, and herself suspended above it, which "lulls me to sleep". The story closes with her remarking that "it is a weird lullaby, and so it is; it is mine", before reciting the first three lines of Thomas Hood's poem "Silence", which also opened the film: "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".

Review: But the sensuous portrayal of Harvey Keitel and Holly Hunter and the complex acting of a young Anna Paquin allow this story to ring true.
Holly Hunter received an Oscar for her fascinating performance as Ada, a mute woman who is forced into an arranged marriage with a New Zealand landowner, played convincingly by Sam Neill, a native Australian actor himself.
Ada journeys to New Zealand with her young daughter (Anna Paquin, also an Oscar-winner that year), few other possessions, and her treasured piano, a part of her that amplifies her voice that she cannot express through vocal communication.I believe it would be wrong to assume that any of the characters are martyrs in this tragic story, nor would it be right to think Sam Neill's character a villain.
The movie's heroine, wonderfully portrayed by Holly Hunter, is mute (symbolic of the fact that she has no say in her own life), with her daughter (the astonishing Anna Paquin) and her piano as her personal obsessions.
Jane Campion's Oscar-winning movie follows Ada (played by Holly  Hunter), an immigrant to the New Zealand outback and an arranged  marriage, who has not spoken for years and lives her life through the  sound of her piano.
Her husband (played by Sam Neill) is a man without  much understanding, who tries to break the connection between his new  wife and her piano; in contrast to him is the wild illiterate Baines  (played by Harvey Keitel), a tattooed loner, who reaches into Ada's  soul and helps her to regain contact with her emotions and ultimately,  her voice too.
Keitel and Hunter give excellent  performances within a sensitive and sensual screenplay, while Anna  Paquin is impressive as Ada's wise daughter, always watching and always  aware.
Holly Hunter, who plays a mute piano goddess and manages with her not enough known acting skills to express more with her eyes,her grace and her tiny hands than 100 Gwyneth paltrows put together!!!(no offense,i much enjoyed Shakespeare in love,but,come on...)Harvey Keitel in this broken-hearted warrior/peasant role is more than touching;love embraces him as it embraces us,viewers.
where the hell are we??????) and lets the viewer flow on his own in this huge ocean of naked and oh so true feelings and respects the pain and/or the anger (Sam Neil,probably the only role in his carrier that shows his great talent) of her clearly beloved characters.Landscapes,seashores,humid forests,mud,rain: nature, as well as human nature, are captured by Campion's eyes and heart in the most sensitive and unartificial way.
. but even the beautiful cinematography and good cast can't rescue this over-wrought and over-rated film.Also:  did anyone notice that Baines is repeatedly depicted as uneducated and illiterate, but yet Ada writes to him (on a piano key of all things).
And the annoying music Ada plays on the piano (and we hear over and over on the soundtrack) is out of place in a film set in the nineteenth century..
A New Zealand woman in the 1800s becomes a mail-order bride for an uninterested working man; she's a self-elected mute and communicates through her wizened little daughter (Oscar-winner Anna Pacquin, a bit over-the-top) and through her passion for playing the piano, which becomes a point of contention in her marriage.
The landscapes were nice, though.All in all, a model of all that is worst about art cinema and an argument for going to see blockbusters or reading a book or tapping out some hymns on a tinny piano, which is what the Holly Hunter character would have played had this film attempted to connect with reality on any level..
I feel like a certain famous comedian when I say, "...take the setting, characters, and plot...PLEASE!!The setting takes place in one of the more beautiful spots in the world - New Zealand, but who could see it through all the backwoods trees, rain, and thick, yucky knee-deep mud they tromped around in throughout the movie.The characters were developed before we even sat down so we were left in the dark as to who they really were and why.
Then, as the story progresses, he turns into a "Peeping Tom" and a few scenes later, performs a very shocking and brutal act that was very unbecoming of what we knew him to be at first.Ada (Holly Hunter) is a rigid, cold-hearted, selfish, unbecoming bride who only knows how to stomp her feet when she doesn't get her way and sell her body for her real true love, the piano.
Seeing far more through the cracks in Baine's hut than she should have, this little girl didn't have much of a role model in her mother.The plot...anything said here may give too much away...that's how little there was to it.The only real depth to this movie was in the ocean, as the most colorful character in the story, the Piano, took it's final plunge (in what seemed more like a suicide after all it had been through) to it's watery grave where it could finally have some peace.
Holly Hunter's heroine's silence is a ludicrously contrived conceit, presumedly invented by Campion to force down her unfortunate audience's throats the notion that the most eloquent form of communication in this film is through music; I think we could have worked that out without it being so unsubtly pinpointed.
Jane Campion's critically-acclaimed film is about a mute woman in the 1800s, Ada (Holly Hunter - Broadcast News) and her young daughter who narrates the film through her mother, Flora (Anna Paquin - X-Men) who journey to a small tribe town in New Zealand where Ada is arranged to marry a wealthy and stern man, Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill - Dead Calm).
Ada is upset and finds a way to still be able to play her piano with the help of Alisdair's friend George (Harvey Keital - Bad Lieutenant) who begins taking lessons from Ida and ends up in a tangled love affair resulting in a powerful and sad climax.
'The Piano' scored eight Academy Award Nominations in 1993 including Best Director, Best Actress - Holly Hunter, Best Supporting Actress - Anna Paquin, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Picture, but was totally out-shadowed by Spielberg's masterpiece 'Schindler's List' which opened that same year.
Amidst a storm of publicity and hails as the new ultra-feminist zenith of masterpiece, The Piano hit international cinema like a plague, and suddenly it was "cool" to watch the thing, as well as talk everyone else into seeing it, whether the film suited them or not.
"The Piano", directed by Jane Campion, is a haunting film about love, passion, betrayal and refusal set in the 19th century.
Ada (Holly Hunter), sent to New Zealand on an arranged marriage, arrives with her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) and her precious piano on a stormy gray beach.
Completely bewildered, Stewart asks Baines if had ever heard Ada speak a single word to him, claiming that he could hear her voice in his mind.The breathtaking, beautiful imagery as well as its stirring music (Michael Nyman) contribute to the romantic, mystifying atmosphere of the film.
"The Piano" won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and Oscars for Best Actress (Holly Hunt), Best Supporting Actress (Anna Paquin), and Campion's screenplay.
This film has it all, erotism, music, unrequited love, jealousy, bitterness, sadness.....and a totally selfish 'heroine' with a bratty daughter to match.Sam Neill beautifully plays the long-suffering 'husband' of the new bride.
She does, however, fall in love with the neighbor (after being carefully manipulated by the delightfully dark character of Harvey Keitel).The problem is: when it all comes to a head, we are asked to believe that the husband, who has never shown ANYTHING other than a kind, gentle and patient side, instantly rebels with an act of unspeakable and unconscionable violence against the wife.
How Holy Hunter, who silently grimaces and looks a bit like Julie Andrews in her worst role - the shrink in The Man who loved Women - got an award for this film, I do not know.
If someone should necessarily watch a love movie I suggest: "A room with a view", very poetic, beautiful filmed, more realistic passions and conflicts.
Holly Hunter, Anna Paquin, Sam Neill, and Harvey Keitel are in top form.
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?
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.
I've seen a lot of terrible comments about this movie, I'd just like to remind to these viewers that a film is made to create an emotion, to make a person's heart jump in it's place.Of course this kind of sensibility may be offensive for some machos but take it easy, the film it's really well achieved and the story is really beautiful to tell and to watch.A woman's point of view always deserve respect, she's a director, if you don't like her work it's because your mentality is from the 19th century and you think she belongs to the kitchen.This is just an advice, in order to enjoy movies an open mind in all matters (like a woman's feelings) will help you a lot and will make your taste for movies what is supposed to be, a pleasure..
WHile the cinematography and score are outstanding along with the acting, the story itself falls a bit flat as it progresses ever so slowly.Holly Hunter does her own piano playing.
In order for me to enjoy a character based film like this I must have some reason to like the characters.I loved Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin, Sam Neill but even though I normally really like Holly Hunter and her acting was good, what is there to possibly like about her character.
I liked it the first time because it was refreshingly different, restrained in some parts, erotic to an extent, with some brilliant camerawork of Stuart Drybergh and choreography (beach scene with Holly Hunter, Keitel and Paquin, with the overhead shot and the imaginative designs of footprints in the sand).My second viewing had me reassessing if a viewer can be led to like a film without thinking rationally.
Jane Campion's third feature film, THE PIANO is a historical drama that tells of a Scottish woman, Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), who is married off to a colonist in New Zealand that she has never met.
As Ada and her illegitimate daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) land on the shores of New Zealand's South Island sometime in the mid-19th century, her new husband Stewart (Sam Neill) ignores her sign-language entreaties to carry her piano inland along with their other belongings.
Feeling no love for this man she has been forced to marry, Ada is drawn into sexual bargaining with another colonist, Baines (Harvey Keitel) who offers to get her the piano back if she does what he wants.The first half of this film is an interesting study in sexual power and the tragedy of a woman's lot during this historical era.
One of the delights of Campion's feature debut SWEETIE was Genevieve Lemon, and here in a supporting role she turns in here a mildly comedic performance that adds some levity to the severe sexual drama.Seeing it again some two decades after it came out, THE PIANO feels like a rather slighter film than I remembered it, and it is difficult to understand what drew critics to the time to rave about it.
In the mid-nineteenth century, in a community in a New Zealand forest, a mute pianist from Scotland (Holly Hunter) and her young daughter (Anna Paquin) live with a settler (Sam Neill) as per an arranged marriage.
The story is boring, and the overall feeling I had having watched this film was that I had wasted time doing so.The acting is good, and no one can be faulted in that respect.
The problem is, when you're as bored as I was watching this, it's not easy to concentrate on all the factors all the way to the end.New Zealand looks beautiful in this movie, and the historical qualities of the film add slightly to the depth of the piece.
The only thing I can say is this was a great film and Holly Hunter, Anna Paquin, Harvey Keitel and Sam Neill were all great.
I came to the conclusion that the three main characters of "The Piano" are good hearted people, but with big mental issuesBut that's just one of the layers of the film.Set in the 1850's, the story follows Ada (Holly Hunter) and her daughter (Anna Paquin) Flora, as they travel to New Zealand, where Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neil), an intended husband she hasn't met, is waiting for Ada to begin a life with her.
Campion, both in her direction and script, makes sure that every scene has total importance, without differentiating between a main character like Ada or an aboriginal from New Zealand.Every scene is so intense with the focus on the characters that you can't keep your eyes off the screen, even when the film is slow and depressing like no other.
This is Stuart Dryburgh's flawless achievement in cinematography; which includes close-ups so daring and compelling as the ones he uses now, more than ten years later, in films like "The Painted Veil".I can't forget about Michael Nyman's score, which is not the best thing in the world, but is perfectly combined with every piece Ada plays in her beloved Piano; in order to give a continuing musicality to the picture.
what a character we are privileged to see in this magnificent work of art.Holy Hunter plays her lifetime performance as a mute woman that is conquered by her own piano.this mute woman accompanied by her piano and daughter sets on a journey to meet her new husband.the relationship between this new married couple is moving very slow and in the first period of time over there she spends more time with her husband's good friend, Baines (played by Harvey Keitel) than she spends with her husband.when giving him (Baines) due to his request piano lessons.a special connection develops between those two and as expected in such situation's things are starting to get unpleasant and dangerous.this film is very symbolic and amazingly beautiful which made it really easy for me to fall in love with.we are witnessing a true triumph of a woman that is ahead of her time, a stranger to all that is surrounding her but yet when facing the crossroads between life and death she chooses life, a new life without her possessive and spoiled piano..
Definitely some of the best female performances I've seen in a long time and saying that means something since us cowpolk down here in the heat look at woman like cattle and these chics didn't act that way in the film.
If Ada is to experience orgasm, she will, as dozens of women's magazines and TV talk shows will tell you, have to do it herself.Set in an ill-defined period that resembles the 19th century (at least the way it is usually depicted on film), the movie's costumes, cinematography, and set designs are very pleasing to the eye, as is Holly Hunter as Ada and Anna Pacquin as her daughter.
This might be a little Oscar-friendly for some but that shouldn't detract from what is a haunting love story with the oddest of protagonists.Holly Hunter plays Ada McGrath, a Scottish mute living in the mid-1800's who is married by her father to landowner Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill).
Hunter's in "The Piano" is another, giving a faultless performance as Ada, whose haunting looks stay with you some time after the film has finished.
In counted and rare occasions a masterpiece the size of The Piano is born: the original soundtrack composed by Michael Nyman transport you to a different Universe, Holly Hunter's brilliant performance of Ada and Anna Paquin's mature performance of her daughter, which led both of them to win an Oscar for their respective roles in the film, the cinematography and visual beauty literally immerses you in the muddy and dirty environment in New Zeland in the mid-19th century and the brilliant script which narrates one of the saddest and most wonderful stories ever told.
Or the mail-order man who doesn't care about pleasing his new wife even to the point of letting her communicate.The only redeeming quality in this film is Anna Paquin's performance.The Piano was shot in blue.
Until now l'd watched exactly 8.732 movies in my lifetime this is my 131 that l gave a high rating 10/10, as the numbers shows in fact just a few reach such number,The Piano is one's of them, powerful, haunting and touching...the plot is really original the casting is wonderful, Holly Hunter as mute Ada has a stunning performance mainly when she play the piano that spoke for her, Ana Pasquin as little child Flora is another unforgettable character and finally Harvey Keitel as neighbor Baines who has perhaps your best acting ever as an illiterate person...
The Piano a 1993 award-winning film was written and directed by Jane Campion and starred Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill and Anna Paquin.
Holly is a fine actress so it was only fitting that I watch the 1993 film "The Piano" that she starred in and won an Oscar for best actress.
Anyway her inspiration and sentimental feel make it a watch.Set in 1850's New Zeland Hunter is Ada a young woman who's mute and her biggest passion in life is playing the piano.