Jane the Champion

The Piano

Jane Campion

New Zealand

1993

The whole world has always wondered why great movies are directed by male directors, especially in Hollywood. In fact, Kathryn Bigelow has just been the first and only female director to win the Academy Award for Best Director after almost a century. However, I find Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” painful and inconsistently cooked, some parts are well-cooked, and others overcooked and mostly undercooked. This is not the first time that I’ve been disappointed with the hope of seeing a great movie from a female director though. Sofia Copolla’s “Lost in Translation” is completely unsatisfying at least for me. Not just that it is capriciously indulgent it is also uninspiring. I really did not see what other people and some of my colleagues saw with those two films. Traveling back 17 years from now, and a decade from those two failed attempts, Jane Campion has just shown the world and all women directors how to make a great, exuberant, rich film. With “The Piano” which won the prestigious Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Campion proved to be one of the most important contemporary directors, and arguably the best among women directors.

Campion’s “The Piano” which is cinematographed by Stuart Dryburgh is intoxicatingly gorgeous. The photography is really stunning. I tried to scan the film and look at some opportune scenes. Every frame contains unbelievable amount of sultry and exciting passion. What is even more interesting and commendable about it is that even the temporal photography of the film is gorgeous. I am not inclined technically about music but the tempo of the film is just so powerful that even a relatively unknown man about music would notice rhythmic evidences in the film’s photography. The audio-visual treatment to this Victorian period film has nevertheless been fantastic. The cold and palette of colors compliments excellently the sober and mystical atmosphere needed in the story. Campion with the help of Dryburgh have successfully made the film flamboyantly cold.

I can compare the film to Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love”, both are sexy and dazzling beautiful. The main difference though would be the colors. Kar Wai used saturated red-orange-black palette which conveniently delivered the heat of the repressed love affair in the story while Campion used dark blue and dark green with the eternal black and some other dark-cold colors. Between the two “In the Mood for Love” is more sentimentally-driven and delicate while “The Piano” is more ablaze and harsh therefore making me believe that between the two red-orange-black is an easier combination to portray the latter film. I find red a harsher color than dark blue and I find dark green more delicate than orange. Probably it is the culture of the country that resulted to those color decisions, but what I am trying to explain is that the combination Campion and Dryburgh chose is very interesting, intelligent, and edgy. Over-all, “The Piano” just knocked out the other.

 

The film is significantly semiotic. A lot of metaphors campaign over the almost two-hour movie. The environment of Ada’s new home: the agitated ocean, the serene shore, the uncongenial trees, and the despicable mud are all physical and logical metaphors of Ada’s own world clashing into the real world. Saving Ada from the cold and apathetic sea is also a symbol of her rebirth—a chance where she can leave all her sexual incompleteness and liberal control over her life. Ada’s shoe tying on the Piano after they drop it in the ocean symbolizes a part of her that will always be with her old Piano. The ultimate metaphor of course—the piano, is the metaphor of her life. This musical instrument is her voice. The piano allows her to release her feelings, anxieties, hopes, and most of all her silenced passion. I have a high regard for the scenes where Ada is playing and Baines is watching him. The music coming from the piano is the only essential sound occurring and those moments are so enchanting, almost heavenly. There is like an orbital of passion coming from Ada transported to the piano, and the piano diffuses it in the air through music, and Baines collect all those warm orbital of passion which sprees and fills his shabby hut. The piano allows us to know a character who can not speak, a device I’ve never yet seen used so charmingly.

Feminism is definitely the most apparent film theory we can apply in this Jane Campion movie and it is always interesting to create a feminist review of a film created by a woman. When most feminist films grab the opportunity to expose the interminable ego or the overrated evil of men, this film engages on the two sides of men—a technique to utilize the avoidance of feminine bias sometimes feminist fell into. The first type of men here is the one of Stewart (Sam Neill), the Englishman, who is educated, business-minded, and inevitably conformist. Those men treat their wives as properties and punish them whatever they feel like. Campion apparently made an effort to belittle that unpleasant side of men quality. At the beginning of Ada and her child’s stay at the place, Stewart even tries to project some fatherly gestures to Flora (Anna Paquin). The fact that he accepted Ada and her daughter even gave us a clue that those seemingly bad men are not bad at all and that Campion has no absolute negativities about that first type of men. The second type though would be that of George (Harvey Keitel), the native muscular guy, appealing, lover, and he who can make a woman happy. For the second type of man, I’ve seen any type of resentment embodied by George, no flaw and no loophole. In the circumstances where he can be a hero, Campion either cuts the scene or use a child to stop him. In a scene where Stewart goes into George’s hut we are all surprised to see that George is alive and Stewart is out of the picture. This obviously implies that former have either accidentally or purposefully killed latter. That scene is cut because it will certainly mark George as the hero and Stewart the bad guy (after cutting Ada’s finger) who has to be punished. The role of men in “The Piano” is not pretentious, no strong opinion instead a closer opinion most people with fair understanding might agree with.

Acting-wise, Holly Hunter is phenomenal winning the Best Actress award at the 1993 Academy Awards. I love the awkwardness and all the other element of mystery and strangeness she contains. She is radiating with pale yet dynamic aura like she is a gritty and quirky Mona Lisa or something. Hunter doesn’t just use her face to compensate for her verbal restraints rather she used her face and body. The pauses she makes after moving and the way she directs her eyes to a co-actor and they way she redirects them are so divine, so fluid, done like a real Victorian-era woman. The young Anna Paquin though is the apple of my eye also winning in the 1993 Oscar Awards winning the Best Supporting Actress award. She has brought overwhelming innocent, playful, and youthful energy in the entire film. Her ostentatiously loud charisma compliments Hunter’s mystifying silent aura. Paquin definitely is one of the best child stars I’ve ever seen grown in Hollywood. She is on par with Haley Joel Osment when he impressed the world in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense”.

“The Piano” is a film that has an interesting story and staggeringly dexterous direction. Campion has chosen an impeccable period to tell a story of a mute female pianist, a breathtaking landscape to provide the artistic interpretation of her story, and a satisfying ensemble to give life to her lovely characters. This Cannes-winning film is not angry in the backdrop of identifiable tensions and violence; instead it continues to be vigilant inside. I admire Campion because she knows what to show and what to cut, she did not cut the scene where Ada lost her finger because that allows us to see Stewart’s power over Ada, her helplessness, her possible incapacity to play the piano anymore, and most importantly the mean side of Stewart, for us to have a catch of the bad guy. Jane Campion needs to do more films. I never thought she is as good as this.