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Nov 19, 1993 · The Piano. “The Piano” is as peculiar and haunting as any film I’ve seen. It tells a story of love and fierce pride, and places it on a bleak New Zealand coast where people live rudely in the rain and mud, struggling to maintain the appearance of the European society they’ve left behind.
- An Angel at My Table
Campion, who directed from a screenplay by Laura Jones, is...
- Sweetie
We have already met the rest of her family, including her...
- An Angel at My Table
Jun 14, 2018 · The feminist author Bell Hooks has argued that The Piano falls short of being a feminist film because it advances the sexist assumption that heterosexual women will give up...
- Holly Hunter
- Jane Campion
The Piano is a 1993 historical drama film written and directed by New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion. It stars Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, and Anna Paquin in her first major acting role. The film focuses on a mute Scottish woman who travels to a remote part of New Zealand with her young daughter after her arranged marriage to a settler.
- Setting of The Piano
- Story Structure of The Piano
- For Further Investigation
Like many creative New Zealanders, Campion comes from Wellington. I don’t know why so much creativity comes out of the Wellington region, but I suspect it has something to do with the dramatic landscape and its harsh climate. I don’t dismissively mean that the weather is so terrible that people have nothing else to do but stay inside and make their...
PARATEXT
When The Piano was released in my home country of New Zealand, every demographic rushed to see it. If people knew of Campion, it was probably for An Angel At My Table (1990), about New Zealand’s literary great Janet Frame. We watched that film in English literature class, and it appealed to the literary set. The Piano was widely anticipated. This predated Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Ringsfranchise, and it was rare to see a film shot in New Zealand, foregrounding our magnificent landscape. We...
SYNOPSIS
The spine of the plot is simple, in line with its clear fairytale ur-stories. Once upon a time, a mute woman and her daughter arrived from Scotland to be the new family of a white settler in 1800s New Zealand. In a secret deal with the new husband, another man buys the woman’s piano in exchange for a plot of land. He then coerces the wife into sexual favours in exchange for her beloved piano back. The new husband finds out, and in retaliation, chops off his wife’s finger. However, the two men...
Ada is our main viewpoint character, though we also see the story world through the eyes of both men at various times. This story does not have a clear ‘main character’, as such. It works like Brokeback Mountain and many other Annie Proulx short stories — it is the story of a small community rather than of an individual’s journey. Ada is mute, which is an interesting storytelling decision for several reasons. First, there’s the clear link to The Little Mermaid who, like this character, exists...
Sam Neill played another patriarchal character a few years earlier in Dead Calm, alongside another much younger wife, played by Nicole Kidman. Campion critiques the patriarchal views of Alisdair, but Dead Calmdoes not encourage any such reading. I’ve also taken a close look at a film where Holly Hunter does use her very Southern American voice, Thi...
Jane Campion’s stunning 1993 classic topped BBC Culture’s poll of 368 critics in 84 countries. Hannah Strong reveals why it’s a worthy winner.
- Hannah Strong
Aug 1, 2015 · It is a travesty that ‘The Piano’ does not come up very often when we discuss the great films or even the great films from the 90s; perhaps this is because it was a small independent film and not a Hollywood film, hence it was unable to garner mass appeal.
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Jun 15, 2018 · It’s a cliché to say it, but The Piano benefits from being viewed in the engulfing dark of a cinema screen, where one can be fully immersed in its rugged landscapes and surrounded by the melodic sound of Nyman’s strings and keys in conversation.
