The first film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes (it shared the victory with Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine), New Zealander Jane Campion made a sensation with her erotic drama that went on to win three Academy Awards. The Piano is a passionate love story in colonial New Zealand in the 1800s where a distant land causes unforeseen emotional connections.
A mute woman, Ada (Holly Hunter), and her daughter, Flora, (Anna Paquin, then aged 11) go from England to New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a frontiersman (Sam Neill) settled there. Ada communicates in two ways: through sign language her daughter translates, and playing her beloved piano she took from home. Then, a sailor named George (Harvey Keitel) who now lives with the Maori and has adapted to their ways shows his attraction to her, and a love affair begins.
Campion uses the setting as a stimulant to express the exotic with its gorgeous beaches and towering hills. The cinematography captures the entire mood and the piano score by Michael Nyman is sweeping like a dance across the stage. It transports us to a place where intuition is heightened between the passion of the foreign visitor and the adopted native in a time before accepted integration.
Hunter, who won the Oscar for Best Actress at a canter, goes the extra mile in expressing the emotions as Ada, exploring her sensual side with comfort with George. The performances of Hunter and Keitel are brave, showing the physicality of Ada and George’s affair, without being exploitative, something many actors would shy away from.
The symbolic piano is much more than just an instrument. The piano is the catalyst of the consequences of what arises and it comes in a handful of keys. It starts as Ada’s passion, refusing to let it sit on the beach and soak in the tide. Ada chooses to stay with it at the start down there before being finally carried up the mountainside.
By the end, however, it turns into a source of pain. Paquin, who is the second youngest competitive Oscar winner in history for Best Supporting Actress, is so mature in such a demanding role for a minor that it is one of the greatest performances by anyone at that age. Her historic win absolutely stands the test of time.
The Piano remains an important piece of female-centric cinema. Thirty years later, following the acclaim and second Oscar win for her film The Power Of The Dog, we are reminded of Jane Campion’s mastery of storytelling with such originality.
