The Piano (1993)
Country: AUS/FR/NZ
Technical: col 121m
Director: Jane Campion
Cast: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin
Synopsis:
Consigned with her peevish daughter and precious piano to 1850s New Zealand as a mail order wife to a plantation owner, a mute woman finds solace playing to a gentle brute who owns some land and has gone native.
Review:
A somewhat unique film that won many admirers, though some found it to be all style and no substance. We learn very little of the heroine's first husband, who is shrouded in myth, but presumably the shame of it is what sent her halfway round the world. Campion pauses for some majestic compositions, while the structure of this primitive community is barely sketched in and, in the end, it is the wilfulness of the enigmatic Ada that seems to matter more than the music. Nevertheless, the combination of Nyman's score, the New Zealand landscape and Hunter's performance conspire to leave indelible images in the memory, and the film remains Campion's finest work.
Country: AUS/FR/NZ
Technical: col 121m
Director: Jane Campion
Cast: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin
Synopsis:
Consigned with her peevish daughter and precious piano to 1850s New Zealand as a mail order wife to a plantation owner, a mute woman finds solace playing to a gentle brute who owns some land and has gone native.
Review:
A somewhat unique film that won many admirers, though some found it to be all style and no substance. We learn very little of the heroine's first husband, who is shrouded in myth, but presumably the shame of it is what sent her halfway round the world. Campion pauses for some majestic compositions, while the structure of this primitive community is barely sketched in and, in the end, it is the wilfulness of the enigmatic Ada that seems to matter more than the music. Nevertheless, the combination of Nyman's score, the New Zealand landscape and Hunter's performance conspire to leave indelible images in the memory, and the film remains Campion's finest work.
Country: AUS/FR/NZ
Technical: col 121m
Director: Jane Campion
Cast: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin
Synopsis:
Consigned with her peevish daughter and precious piano to 1850s New Zealand as a mail order wife to a plantation owner, a mute woman finds solace playing to a gentle brute who owns some land and has gone native.
Review:
A somewhat unique film that won many admirers, though some found it to be all style and no substance. We learn very little of the heroine's first husband, who is shrouded in myth, but presumably the shame of it is what sent her halfway round the world. Campion pauses for some majestic compositions, while the structure of this primitive community is barely sketched in and, in the end, it is the wilfulness of the enigmatic Ada that seems to matter more than the music. Nevertheless, the combination of Nyman's score, the New Zealand landscape and Hunter's performance conspire to leave indelible images in the memory, and the film remains Campion's finest work.