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‘Hie Piano’ plays up the power of passionBy DannGikb Daily Hcr.itri Film Criiic“The Piano” is such a dense and mesmerizing piece of filmmaking that a critic could take up an entire newspaper section peeling away Us layers of meaning as u they were the multileveled clothes on its 19th-century heroine.This drama, oddly comic, fiercely erotic and viscerally violent, comes from the audacious and unconventional Australian filmmaker Jane Campion, whose previous movies “Angel at My Table” and “Sweetie” commanded critical attention, but remained strictly art-house productions.“The Piano” is Campion’s most accessible film — casting name actors such as Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel helps — yet, mainstream audiences spoon-fed on formula love stories will find themselves wondrously lost in its unpredictable turns of events and its explosive, spontaneous sensibilities.Hunter plays Ada, the mute (not deaf) Scottish mother of a 9-year-old daughter named Flora (Anna Pa quin). They arrive on the shores of New Zealand where Ada is to become the never-seen-before bride of an English colonist named Stewart (“Jurassic Park” hero Sam Neill). When he arrives with a hired crew of Maori tribesmen, Stewart proves himself to be pragmatic to the max. He gathers all of his will-be wife’s belongings except for her piano, which he orders left on the shore.Early on, the film establishes how important the piano is to Ada, who uses it as her own instrument of expression. The only man who realizes the importance of the piano is Baines (Keitel), an uneducated settler who, judging from the Maori-styled tattoos on his face, has assimilated nicely into the local community. He has eyes for Ada, and after he buys the piano from Stewart for 80 acres ofMovie reviewThe Piano”Produced by Jon Chapman. Written and directed by Jane Campion. A Miramax Pictures release. Rated R (sexual situations, violence) At the fine Arts Theatre, Chicago and Old Orchard Theatre, Skokie. 121 minutes.Cast:Ada............... Holly HunterDairies................Harvey KeitelStewart.....................sem Nefllflora. ..................AnnaPaQuinland, he makes the woman a deal.Baines will let Ada play her piano at his house if she will teach him how to play. After she has given him as many lessons as there are white keys on the board, the piano is hers to keep. She counteroffers with the lesser-numbered black keys. He agrees. Of course, that’s not all.“There are things I’d like to do while you play,” Baines confesses. So, Ada consents to do whatever he asks, each time extracting an agreed upon number of keys as the price of her compliance. Consider this, If you will, a fine arts version of “Indecent Proposal ”Baines turns out to be a man ol unfathomable voids and unpredictable mystery. He craves intimacy, not sex. At first, he requests Ada lift her skirl just a bit. As the requests accelerate, Baines wants her to lie down with him, fully clothed. In this arrangement, the sight of a single piece of Ada’s flesh shimmering through a tiny hole in her thick stockings takes on a tremendous sensual value.This is a story about the power of passion, not obsession with sex. Campion has a way of turning finely wrought details into scenes so real and urgent that fleeting trysts strike hotter sparks than 99 percent of so-called “erotic thrillers.” A single, quick moment of brutali-Harvey Keitel and Holly Hunter star in Jane Campion’s “The Piano«”ty screams with more impact than the sum of the violent scenes from most Hollyood fareHunter’s performance is one of the best ever committed to celluloid, no doubt because of her silence, which necessarily means Ada’s thoughts and emotions must be translated into sentences that can be read on the face and in the eyes. The performance, like Mar-lee Matlin’s Oscar-winning role as a hearing-impaired lover in “Children of a Lesser God,” begs to be compared with those immortalized during the cinema’s “purist”period before he advent of talkies.Keitel remains a peculiar, extremely enigmatic actor, one able to make the vilest instincts co-exist with the softest ml cations As the befuddled, superficial husband, Neill paints a painful portrait of a man who values the one thing destinec to elude him — control.Both these characters are obvious female fantasy figures conjured up to tell a liberating story of a defiant young woman who took on an imperfect world at an inopportune I me — and still did it her way.
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Fri, Nov 19, 1993
Page 504
Full Page
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USA 21 Sep 2022
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