The Piano is a 1993 historical drama film written and directed by New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion. It stars Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, and Anna Paquin in her first major acting role. The film focuses on a mute Scottish woman who travels to a remote part of New Zealand with her young daughter after her arranged marriage to a settler. The plot has similarities to Jane Mander's 1920 novel, The Story of a New Zealand River, but also substantial differences. Campion has cited the novels Wuthering Heights and The African Queen as inspirations.[6]
An international co-production between New Zealand, Australia, and France, The Piano was a critical and commercial success, grossing US$140.2 million worldwide (equivalent to $295.7 million in 2023) against its US$7 million budget (equivalent to $14.8 million in 2023). It was noted for its crossover appeal beyond the arthouse circuit to attracting mainstream popularity, largely due to rave reviews and word of mouth.[7]
In the mid-1800s,[8] Ada McGrath, a Scottish woman with elective mutism, travels to colonial New Zealand with her daughter Flora for an arranged marriage to settler Alisdair Stewart. Ada has not spoken since the age of six, and the reason for this as well as the identity of Flora's father remain unknown. She communicates through playing the piano and sign language, with Flora acting as her interpreter.
Ada and Flora, along with their handcrafted piano, are stranded on a New Zealand beach by a ship's crew. The next day, Alisdair arrives with his Māori crew and neighbour George Baines, a retired sailor who's adapted to Maori customs, including facial tattoos. Alisdair tells Ada that they don't have enough bearers for the piano and then refuses to go back for it, claiming that they all need to make sacrifices. Desperate to retrieve her piano, Ada seeks George's help. While at first saying no, he appears to give in due to her keenness on recovering the piano. Once at the beach, he is entranced by her music and appears charmed by her happy ways when she is playing, in contrast to her stern behaviour when in the farm. George offers Alisdair the land he's been coveting in exchange for the piano and Ada's lessons. Alisdair agrees, oblivious to George's attraction to Ada. Ada is enraged by George's proposition but agrees to trade lessons for piano keys. She restricts the lessons to the black keys only and resists George's demands for more intimacy. Ada continues to rebuff Alisdair's advances while exploring her sensuality with George. George eventually realizes that Ada will never commit to him emotionally and returns the piano to her, confessing that he wants Ada to care for him genuinely.
Although Ada has her piano back, she longs for George and returns to him. Alisdair overhears them having sex and watches them through a crack in the wall. Furious, he confronts Ada and tries to force himself on her despite her strong resistance. He then coerces Ada into promising she will no longer see George.
Shortly after, Ada instructs Flora to deliver a package to George, which contains a piano key with a love declaration engraved on it. Flora delivers it to Alisdair instead. Enraged after reading the message, Alisdair cuts off Ada's index finger, depriving her of the ability to play the piano. He sends Flora to George with the severed finger, warning him to stay away from Ada or he will chop off more fingers. Later, while touching Ada as she sleeps, Alisdair hears what he thinks is her voice in his head, asking him to let George take her away. He goes to George's house and asks if Ada has ever spoken to him, but George says no. George and Ada leave together with her belongings and piano tied onto a Māori canoe. As they row to the ship, Ada asks George to throw the piano overboard. She allows her leg to be caught by the rope attached to the piano and is dragged underwater with it in an attempt to drown herself. As she sinks, she appears to change her mind and struggles free before being pulled to safety.
In the epilogue, Ada describes her new life with George and Flora in Nelson, New Zealand, where she gives piano lessons in their new home. George has made her a metal finger to replace the one she lost, and Ada has been practicing and taking speech lessons. She sometimes dreams of the piano resting at the bottom of the ocean with her still tethered to it.
The film was originally titled The Piano Lesson, but the filmmakers could not obtain the rights to use the title because of the American play of the same name, and it was changed to The Piano.[9]
Casting the role of Ada was a difficult process. Sigourney Weaver was Campion's first choice, but she was not interested. Jennifer Jason Leigh was also considered, but had a conflict with her commitment to Rush (1991).[10]Isabelle Huppert met with Jane Campion and had vintage period-style photographs taken of her as Ada, and later said she regretted not fighting for the role as Hunter did.[11]
The casting for Flora occurred after Hunter had been selected for the part. They did a series of open auditions for girls age 9 to 13, focusing on girls who were small enough to be believable as Ada's daughter (as Holly Hunter is relatively short at 157 cm; 5 ft 2 in tall[12]). Anna Paquin ended up winning the role of Flora over 5,000 other girls.[13]
In July 2013, Campion revealed that she originally intended for the main character to drown in the sea after going overboard after her piano.[18]
Principal photography took place over 12 weeks from February to mid-May 1992.[19]The Piano was filmed in New Zealand’s North Island. The scene where Ada comes ashore and the piano is abandoned was filmed at Karekare Beach, west of Auckland. Bush scenes were filmed near Matakana and Awakino, while underwater scenes were filmed at the Bay of Islands.[20]
Campion was determined to market the film to appeal to a larger audience than the limited audiences many art films attracted at the time. Simona Benzakein, the publicist for The Piano at Cannes noted: "Jane and I discussed the marketing. She wanted this to be not just an elite film, but a popular film."[21]
Reviews for the film were overwhelmingly positive. Roger Ebert wrote: "The Piano is as peculiar and haunting as any film I've seen" and "it is one of those rare movies that is not just about a story, or some characters, but about a whole universe of feeling".[22]Hal Hinson of The Washington Post called it an "evocative, powerful, extraordinarily beautiful film".[23]
The Piano was named one of the best films of 1993 by 86 film critics, making it the most acclaimed film of 1993.[24]
In his 2013 Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin gave the film three and half out of four stars, calling the film a "haunting, unpredictable tale of love and sex told from a woman's point of view" and went on to say "writer-director Campion has fashioned a highly original fable, showing the tragedy and triumph erotic passion can bring to one's daily life".[25]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 71 reviews, and an average rating of 8.50/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Powered by Holly Hunter's main performance, The Piano is a truth-seeking romance played in the key of erotic passion."[26] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[27]
Box office
The film was the highest-grossing New Zealand film of all-time surpassing Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale (1986) with a gross of $NZ3.8 million.[28]
It grossed over US$140 million worldwide, including $7 million in Australia, $16 million in France, and $39 million in the United States and Canada.[29]
In 2019, the BBC polled 368 film experts from 84 countries to name the 100 best films by women directors, and The Piano was named the top film, with nearly 10% of the critics polled giving it first place on their ballots.[34]
The score for the film was written by Michael Nyman, and included the acclaimed piece "The Heart Asks Pleasure First"; additional pieces were "Big My Secret", "The Mood That Passes Through You", "Silver Fingered Fling", "Deep Sleep Playing" and "The Attraction of the Pedalling Ankle". This album is rated in the top 100 soundtrack albums of all time and Nyman's work is regarded as a key voice in the film, which has a mute lead character.[58]
Home media
The film was released on VHS on May 25, 1994. Initial fears in leadup to its release were in relation to the films status as "arty" and "non-mainstream," however its nominations and success at the Academy Awards guaranteed it profitability in the home video market.[59] It finished in the top 30 video rentals of 1994 in the United States.[60] It was released on DVD in 1997 by LIVE Entertainment and on Blu-ray on 31 January 2012 by Lionsgate, but already released in 2010 in Australia.[61]
On 11 August 2021, the Criterion Collection announced their first 4K Ultra HD releases, a six-film slate, will include The Piano. Criterion indicated each title would be available in a 4K UHD+Blu-ray combo pack, including a 4K UHD disc of the feature film as well as the film and special features on the companion Blu-ray. The Piano was released on January 25, 2022.[62]
^Bourguignon, Thomas; Ciment, Michel (1999) [1993]. "Interview with Jane Campion: More Barbarian than Aesthete". In Wexman, Virginia Wright (ed.). Jane Campion: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. p. 109. ISBN1-57806-083-4.
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Bogdan, Deanne; Davis, Hilary; Robertson, Judith (1997). "Sweet Surrender and Trespassing Desires in Reading: Jane Campion's The Piano and the struggle for responsible pedagogy". Changing English. 4 (1): 81–103. doi:10.1080/1358684970040106.
Chumo II, Peter N. (1997). "Keys to the Imagination: Jane Campion's The Piano". Literature/Film Quarterly. 25 (3): 173.
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Davis, Michael (2002). "Tied to that Maternal 'Thing': Death and Desire in Jane Campion's "The Piano"". Gothic Studies. 4 (1): 63–78. doi:10.7227/GS.4.1.5.
Frankenberg, Ronnie (2016). "Re-presenting the Embodied Child: the Muted Child, the Tamed Wife and the Silenced Instrument in Jane Campion's "The Piano"". The Body, Childhood and Society. Springer. p. 125. ISBN978-0-333-98363-8.
Frus, Phyllis (2010). "Borrowing a Melody: Jane Campion's "The Piano" and Intertextuality". In Frus, Phyllis; Williams, Christy (eds.). Beyond Adaptation: Essays on Radical Transformations of Original Works. McFarland. ISBN978-0786442232.
Gillett, Sue (1995). "Lips and fingers: Jane Campion's "The Piano"". Screen. 36 (3): 277–287. doi:10.1093/screen/36.3.277.
Molina, Caroline (1997). "Muteness and mutilation: the aesthetics of disability in Jane Campion's "The Piano"". The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability. University of Michigan Press. pp. 267–282. ISBN978-0472066599.
Pflueger, Pennie (2015). "The Piano and Female Subjectivity: Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" (1899) and Jane Campion's "The Piano" (1993)". Women's Studies. 44 (4): 468–498. doi:10.1080/00497878.2015.1013213. S2CID142988458.
Sklarew, Bruce H. (2018). "I Have Not Spoken: Silence in "The Piano"". In Gabbard, Glen O. (ed.). Psychoanalysis and Film. Routledge. pp. 115–120. ISBN978-0429478703.
Wrye, Harriet Kimble (1998). "Tuning a clinical ear to the ambiguous chords of Jane Campion's "The Piano"". Psychoanalytic Inquiry. 18 (2): 168–182. doi:10.1080/07351699809534182.
Zarzosa, Agustin (2010). "Jane Campion's The Piano: melodrama as mode of exchange". New Review of Film and Television Studies. 8 (4): 396–411. doi:10.1080/17400309.2010.514664. S2CID191596093.
