Ada (Holly Hunter) is a wilful mail-order bride who has been mute since the age of six. She narrates the movie, explaining, “This is not the sound of my voice – It is the sound of my mind.”
No one – including Ada – knows why she is mute. The film does suggest, however, that she realises her voice is one of the few things she can control, and when she signs to her daughter or scribbles notes to others, she has a perverse type of power. Ultimately,
When she arrives to wed a stranger in the wilds of 19th-century New Zealand with only her daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin) – who helps her mother communicate by interpreting her sign language – and her piano to remind her of the civilisation she left behind, unbridled longings erupt, and tragedy follows.
Hunter’s new husband, Stewart (Sam Neill), is a cruel, emotionless brute who leaves her piano on the beach, a lasting symbol of unfinished life and unfulfilled happiness.
Baines (Harvey Keitel) is the horny neighbour who escorts her on the arduous journey through the jungle back to the seacoast for occasional visits with her abandoned keyboard.
Naturally, lust raises its shaggy head, and Ada follows her erotic instincts at her own peril. Through all of the rutting and violence that follow, one man is driven to madness through sexual frustration, the other man is propelled to love through erotic fulfilment, and the real tragedy is the way the adults use the child as a go-between, a traumatised messenger.
The Piano redefines “languid”. The film has a certain moody, morbid fascination, but its narrative flow is underwhelming. The biggest gaffe is the miscasting of the men who are the objects of the feverish Sturm und drang.
Sam Neill – who is supposed to be the loutish brute – is so much more handsome and appealing than Harvey Keitel, who is supposed to be the drop-dead sexual saviour, that you begin to wonder if Ms Hunter is not only mute but crackers, too.
11-year-old Anna Paquin won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Flora. She was the second-youngest recipient of an Oscar.
Ada
Holly Hunter
Baines
Harvey Keitel
Stewart
Sam Neill
Flora
Anna Paquin
Director Jane Campion
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