La leçon de piano

This is one of my all-time favorite films. It combines masterful scripting, cinematography, performances, and musical score into a disturbing, erotic, and ultimately uplifting piece. 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. Her conscripted husband, coldly played by Sam Neill, is trying to win her heart and her desire in all the wrong ways, while his crude tribal neighbor, sensually played by Harvey Keitel, understands her needs and ultimately captures her ... physically, intellectually, and romantically. The film's message and its delivery are extraordinarily powerful, the cinematic technique is rich ... the sequence shot with Hunt, Pacquin, Keitel and the piano on the beach is one of the best pieces of work I've ever seen. Lasting impact.

Ada (Holly Hunter) arrives at a rainy New Zealand coast to meet her new husband - the gently-spoken frontiersman Stewart (Sam Neill) - along with her precious grand piano and her illegitimate daughter Flora (Anna Paquin). Ada has been a mute since she was 6 years old, and as she explains in her narration, no-one knows why. Stewart's friend Baines (Harvey Keitel) takes an interest in the piano and offers Stewart land in exchange for it, as well as lessons from Ada, to which Stewart agrees. Offering the chance to earn her piano back, Baines wants one visit per black key on the piano from Ada, who he is seemingly infatuated with.

Australian director Jane Campion's erotically-charged Gothic love story was a huge success back in 1993, winning the Best Actress Academy Award for Holly Hunter and Best Supporting Actress for Paquin, who became the second youngest recipient ever. Hunter's shadowy Ada is the backbone of The Piano, and while it may appear that it is her piano that fuels her passion, it is very much her own mind and experiences that dictate her actions. She is quite a fascinating character - not merely the put-upon mute who longs for love and her piano - she is actually rather subtly manipulative and sexually powerful, weighing up the two love interests in her life, and playing a dangerous power game with her increasingly jealous husband.

The contrast between the two men in Ada's life couldn't be any obvious - Stewart playing dutiful, business-minded and quite inept in courtship, while Baines is hulking, living out in the forest, his face spotted with native Maori tattoos - but it is quite clear as to where Campion's preferences life. Ada's scenes with Baines, in which he listens to her play, become the centrepiece for some highly erotic moments, playing out more like animal foreplay than anything human. Ada seems not to bat an eyelid when Baines lies on the floor by her feet, fingering a hole in her stocking, or simply walks around the room completely naked. While these unconventional actions are there to channel Ada's sexual repression/release and Baines' animalistic nature, these scenes often appear forced, filled with lazy or nonsensical metaphors passed of as spiritual film-making.

As with many Australian period films, The Piano looks stunning. The exotic location is not filmed through a sun-tinted lens, and nor does it capture any of the colourful wildlife (something you would expect if Terence Malick had directed it), but is grey, wet and muddy. Like Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1981), it has that lived-in feel, with Hunter's beautiful, ghostly face evoking a 19th- century photograph, where everyone looks grim and pale, and Campion's occasionally snapshot approach captures the mundane, everyday actions of the period. The performances are a revelation, with Hunter and Paquin deserving their accolades, and Keitel proving a formidable presence (I'll not mention the accent). The Piano is personal film-making, but too often the film seems to be striving for that mystical atmosphere rather than actually capturing it, occasionally getting lost amongst Campion's obvious adoration for her protagonist.

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If one wants to see true acting, just watch Hollie Hunter in this film. She does more with her facial expressions than twenty actors can with a thousand words. Her stature, her presence, her determination are so intense. One could feel sorry for her in places. She has been ripped from her world for reasons we cannot fathom. She has been deemed expendable. When she arrives she expects to be treated properly. Anna Paquin as her daughter settles into the new environment and begins to prosper. But it is not without sacrifice. The piano is the symbol of what was left behind. Her affair with the Maori is partly passion, partly payment. We never know how much of each. The performances are stunning across the board and, this time, worthy of Academy Awards.

There are some very sensual scenes and scenes of great danger. There is pain inflicted and selfishness and power. Hollie Hunter rises above it all and makes her way through this quagmire (the rainy muddy jungle in this case), and arises, victorious in her own fashion.

There are very few female directors in the film industry that have been given proper acknowledgment or had their works introduced to mainstream filmgoers. Jane Campion is one of these precious few, a director who carefully paces and sculpts her works so that they magnificently flow like a musical interlude. "The Piano" is her ultimate masterpiece, a film of such simplicity, described with calm and tense complexity. 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. You may think this is crazy, but I think the piano itself serves as both a good and bad omen for all that are involved. I would relate it to a "Pandora's box" of sorts, a treasure that exposes all the evil and sin in the world, but which also provides hope as well. The piano is Ada's sounding box, a tool that allows her to escape from a world that does not understand her, but that also threatens her moral compass, removing her from marital conventions and forces her to lose herself.

The performances in "The Piano" are particularly good, especially Holly Hunter's. It is interesting to note that all of Hunter's piano playing in the film is actually Hunter herself performing in front of us. You can visually and aurally feel the mood of Hunter's character through the music she plays. We the audience lose ourselves right along with her, lost upon a sea of music. We see why Keitel becomes enamored by her, and why Neill becomes overcome with jealousy and betrayal. Not many films would allow us to enter the emotions of all three main characters, but this film is truly an exception.

Rarely do we witness real beauty captured on film. "The Piano" is such a visually stunning film, it's almost intoxicating how its atmosphere sweeps across the screen. This landscape is equaled by the performances, bringing understanding and mystery to this wonder. Sometimes symbolism of this nature can be distracting to an audience. "The Piano" dares to follow this symbolic path, and hits a bullseye with full emotional force. Rating: Four stars.

There's no doubt The Piano is beautiful. The opening scene of the sailors carrying Ada and her beloved instrument onto the beach amidst the crashing waves is stunning; there are many shots like this, that show the awesomeness of the natural world, often as a reflection of the protagonist's emotional state.

I found the story to be less compelling however. It's slow, sparse on dialogue and doesn't give much information about the mute protagonist, like what her wants or fears are. I didn't find her particularly likeable.

There is also the matter of those awful Scottish accents; Why are American actors so bad at accents?

Even less convincing is the love story between Ada (Hunter) and George (Keitel). I felt there was zero chemistry between them; Keitel is such a lump of a man, I don't know why they couldn't have found someone more dashing for the role. His character, George, is so plain and boring, there's nothing about his personality that entices. It seemed silly to me that Ada would allow herself to be persuaded into bed with him, especially when his initial attempts at seduction were so blunt and rape-y. The love scenes left me cold.

It was the visuals and the haunting atmosphere that sustained me to the end. I can see why it gets praise from critics, but I can also see why it wasn't hugely successful with the general public. It just doesn't have the emotional power to match the cinematography.