The Piano (15.)
Directed by Jane Campion. 1993.
Starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin, Kerry Walker and Genevieve Lemon. 25th anniversary Blu-ray and DVD release from Studiocanal. 120 mins.
As we are celebrating an anniversary, maybe we can start with a trip back to the summer of 1993. Just back in the country after six months abroad, there were two films I was bursting to see based on the fevered hype that had built up around them: Reservoir Dogs and The Piano. Reservoir Dogs was everything I could've hoped for; this didn't really grab me though. If I'm honest, I suspect I felt it was a waste of a great Michael Nyman score. It may be significant that while Tarantino's debut has since been widely copied and homaged, The Piano is more likely to be parodied or sent up. It is fearless and puts itself right out there. Like its protagonist it is awkward and unyielding. It has no backup plan, no defence if the viewer doesn't choose to go right out there with it.
And now, twenty-five years on, I went all the way with it, and was exhilarated by the experience.
Let's get “sensual” out of the way right now. You can't speak about the film without using the word because it is an expression of almost indecent intimacy. It starts with the view from eyes that are being hidden behind fingers. It looks as if the film is starting from within a womb. Throughout close-ups are used to give the images more life, more urgency, but not more sense. The location is exotic but Campion's attention to detail makes it real and lived in. She has a gift for making a set seem like a location. There is a post-coital moment when Keitel's character asks Ada (Hunter) if she loves him and we cut to a close up of her face in a small hand mirror. It doesn't carry any logical meaning, doesn't tell us anything, yet it tells us plenty. We don't know what exactly, but there is resonance.
Campion is a master of awkward little details that spring out at you and stick in your memory. Of her first film Sweetie, I can remember only two things. Firstly, it not being that good. Secondly, a strange little interlude, lasting a second or two where a kid races his fingers across a wall and exclaims, "thunder," which has stuck with me ever since. Here, there is the from-nowhere piece of animation of a man being struck by lightening and catching fire.
The film is so original that it seems to come from nowhere. Then, in the extras, Campion mentions Emily Bronte and suddenly its genesis is all too clear. (Maybe Kate Bush should've done the score.) In the 19th century, a mute woman (Hunter) is married off to a prospector (Neill) in New Zealand and sent off around the world with her daughter (Paquin) and her piano. Once there she refuses to perform her conjugal duties so Neill sells her piano to Keitel, another Scottish settler who's gone Dance With Maoris. He wants her to give him lessons, which becomes a kinky scheme for her to reclaim the piano: she will earn it back one black key at a time if she allows him to "do things" while she plays. Though it has a feminist reputation, the story is like a very warped Barbara Cartland romance, where a wilful haughty woman is brought to heel by a bit of rough, their intimacy brought forth by their fetishitic interest in the piano.
The cast is perfect, though I'm not sure the character of George Baines is ever any more than Harvey Keitel with a Scottish-ish accent and face tattoos, but Keitel is a presence and one that isn't hampered by being made to look foolish. It is Holly Hunter's film though. She is defiant and snarling, yet small and weak. She is both protected and held prisoner by the armour of her looped dresses. She is best when struggling or off balance, such as when her husband is trying to get lunge amorously at her in the woodland and the vines and branches seem to intertwine with the contraption of the dress to trap and constrain her, yet she is still strong and defiant, stubbornly battling against fate.
I feel very enriched and unburdened to have finally made friends with this film. The irony is that the Michael Nyman score that gripped me originally now doesn't seem that important. Oh, the music is marvellous to listen to in its own. but in the film it isn't the overwhelming, dominant force it would be in a Greenaway film, or even in Gattaca. In fact, it is a little distracting: you wonder why this 19th-century lady knows late 20th-century pieces.
Directed by Jane Campion. 1993.
Starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin, Kerry Walker and Genevieve Lemon. 25th anniversary Blu-ray and DVD release from Studiocanal. 120 mins.
As we are celebrating an anniversary, maybe we can start with a trip back to the summer of 1993. Just back in the country after six months abroad, there were two films I was bursting to see based on the fevered hype that had built up around them: Reservoir Dogs and The Piano. Reservoir Dogs was everything I could've hoped for; this didn't really grab me though. If I'm honest, I suspect I felt it was a waste of a great Michael Nyman score. It may be significant that while Tarantino's debut has since been widely copied and homaged, The Piano is more likely to be parodied or sent up. It is fearless and puts itself right out there. Like its protagonist it is awkward and unyielding. It has no backup plan, no defence if the viewer doesn't choose to go right out there with it.
And now, twenty-five years on, I went all the way with it, and was exhilarated by the experience.
Let's get “sensual” out of the way right now. You can't speak about the film without using the word because it is an expression of almost indecent intimacy. It starts with the view from eyes that are being hidden behind fingers. It looks as if the film is starting from within a womb. Throughout close-ups are used to give the images more life, more urgency, but not more sense. The location is exotic but Campion's attention to detail makes it real and lived in. She has a gift for making a set seem like a location. There is a post-coital moment when Keitel's character asks Ada (Hunter) if she loves him and we cut to a close up of her face in a small hand mirror. It doesn't carry any logical meaning, doesn't tell us anything, yet it tells us plenty. We don't know what exactly, but there is resonance.
Campion is a master of awkward little details that spring out at you and stick in your memory. Of her first film Sweetie, I can remember only two things. Firstly, it not being that good. Secondly, a strange little interlude, lasting a second or two where a kid races his fingers across a wall and exclaims, "thunder," which has stuck with me ever since. Here, there is the from-nowhere piece of animation of a man being struck by lightening and catching fire.
The film is so original that it seems to come from nowhere. Then, in the extras, Campion mentions Emily Bronte and suddenly its genesis is all too clear. (Maybe Kate Bush should've done the score.) In the 19th century, a mute woman (Hunter) is married off to a prospector (Neill) in New Zealand and sent off around the world with her daughter (Paquin) and her piano. Once there she refuses to perform her conjugal duties so Neill sells her piano to Keitel, another Scottish settler who's gone Dance With Maoris. He wants her to give him lessons, which becomes a kinky scheme for her to reclaim the piano: she will earn it back one black key at a time if she allows him to "do things" while she plays. Though it has a feminist reputation, the story is like a very warped Barbara Cartland romance, where a wilful haughty woman is brought to heel by a bit of rough, their intimacy brought forth by their fetishitic interest in the piano.
The cast is perfect, though I'm not sure the character of George Baines is ever any more than Harvey Keitel with a Scottish-ish accent and face tattoos, but Keitel is a presence and one that isn't hampered by being made to look foolish. It is Holly Hunter's film though. She is defiant and snarling, yet small and weak. She is both protected and held prisoner by the armour of her looped dresses. She is best when struggling or off balance, such as when her husband is trying to get lunge amorously at her in the woodland and the vines and branches seem to intertwine with the contraption of the dress to trap and constrain her, yet she is still strong and defiant, stubbornly battling against fate.
I feel very enriched and unburdened to have finally made friends with this film. The irony is that the Michael Nyman score that gripped me originally now doesn't seem that important. Oh, the music is marvellous to listen to in its own. but in the film it isn't the overwhelming, dominant force it would be in a Greenaway film, or even in Gattaca. In fact, it is a little distracting: you wonder why this 19th-century lady knows late 20th-century pieces.
