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Freda Freiberg

18 Sepetmber, 1933 — 26 April, 2024

Film Reviews

The Piano movie poster

The Piano

Jane Campion, writer and director of "The Piano", was born and bred in New Zealand but, after completing courses in anthropology and art, studied film direction at the Australian Film and Television School in Sydney, where she has resided ever since. Local film critics, as well as judges of international film festivals, recognized the arrival of a distinctive new talent already in her early short films, "Peel" and "A Girl's Own Story", which were acclaimed for their quirky wit and their strikingly surreal visual style, as was her first feature, "Sweetie". Feminist critics celebrated her contribution to the volume and variety of independent women's filmmaking in Australia; they also welcomed her acute analysis of the destructive dynamics of the nuclear family and what it means to grow up female within it.

"The Piano" is a more palatable and polished film than "Sweetie", which was rough and grating and unnerving. Its wide panoramic landscapes, romantic musical score, lavish period costumes and star performances locate it among the genre of glossy romantic melodramas in exotic period settings, alongside films like "Ryan's Daughter" and "Out of Africa". The story is a familiar one: prim, proud Victorian lady defies convention, and deserts her legal husband when she experiences sexual passion in the arms of a man who has `gone native'. In synopsis, it sounds like a Lawrentian hymn to sexual liberation. If this were the case, it would not have such a strong appeal to contemporary women, nor frustrate male viewers, as critical and audience reactions have indicated. This is definitely a woman's film, one that celebrates feminine culture, life without men, as much as sexual passion shared between a man and a woman. If you are in any doubt about this point, you need only look at the film's troubling epilogue, where the union of the romantic couple is shown to be accompanied by a deep sense of loss, on the part of the woman, as well as impairment of her creative faculties.

Swept up in sexual passion, she has abandoned her mute isolation, her dyadic relationship with her daughter, and her symbiotic relationship with her piano. But is it a victory, or a tragedy? She can now enter the social realm of language, but she utters only croaky sounds. No longer can she create beautiful music, nor conjure up fairytales with her fingertips.

Hands and fingers are central motifs of this film, which gives as much emphasis to the sense of touch as it does to sight and hearing. Ada caresses the keys of the piano with her fingers; she and her daughter speak to each other with their fingers; she is aroused by the touch of the man's hand; she reprimands him with a slap of her hand; she comforts her husband with gentle hands. Traditionally, women's work and women's culture (needlework, kitchenwork, childcare, letter-writing, playing musical instruments) have been associated with the skill of their hands and the dexterity of their fingers. It is also common belief that women are sexually aroused by touch, in contrast to men, who (like Stewart in the film) are turned on by voyeurism.

The key visual symbols of the film are the piano and the axe. The piano is the mute Ada's chief means of expression, expressing her longings, her unease and her fears. It is her voice, her therapy, her addiction, her self. The axe hovers over the film: it cuts down the forest, fences the land stolen from the Maoris, features in the Bluebeard shadow-play in the church hall, and is ultimately wielded on the woman's body, when the husband's patience is exhausted. It is the masculine weapon, as against the feminine instrument. The key of the piano is a love letter, which is answered by a blow from the axe. But, feminine mettle finally melts masculine metal.

The visual style of the film is more classical, closer to "Angel at My Table", than "Sweetie", but there are surrealist touches and striking stylistic flourishes that recall Campion's early works, as well as the work of other film artists. Like Polanski's wardrobe, the piano emerges from the sea and returns to the sea, surreally if not absurdly. The graphic matches of mother and daughter in identical bonnets and frocks have the fearful symmetry of an Ozu frame. The track-ins to Ada's hoop and bun have an hallucinatory effect not unlike that produced by Saul Bass's credits for "Vertigo" and "The Age of Innocence" ; like Bass's eyes and flowers, the object is both pure pattern, the perfect spiral, and a vortex of emotions - charged with eroticism and danger.

Freda Freiberg, December 1993.