The Piano
Short description
The Piano is a drama set in the mid-nineteenth century. Ada McGrath, a Scottish woman who has not spoken since childhood, travels to New Zealand for an arranged marriage, bringing her young daughter Flora and her piano. Her new husband, Alisdair Stewart, refuses to have the instrument carried inland, and it is left on the beach. A neighbour, George Baines, retrieves it and offers Ada a bargain: she can play again if she accepts his terms. Their arrangement develops into an affair that Flora resists, while Ada's marriage grows more fraught.
Jane Campion wrote and directed the film, her fourth feature after Sweetie and An Angel at My Table. Holly Hunter plays Ada, with Harvey Keitel as Baines, Sam Neill as Stewart and Anna Paquin as Flora; Cliff Curtis and Kerry Walker also appear.
Made for about 7 million dollars, it took roughly 40 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.5 from around 101,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.4 from about 1,700. The critics' rating of 8.7 from 72 reviews is markedly higher than either audience figure.
What's left behind the scenes
- Holly Hunter, who plays the main role, has been playing the piano since the age of nine. She played most of the piano pieces in the film herself.
- For her role as Ada, Holly Hunter was nominated for various film awards 15 times and won 14 of them.
- Initially, Jane Campion planned to make a film about the history of several owners of a tool passed from hand to hand. But as she worked on the script, she concluded that the film would be quite sufficient with a single storyline.
- Jane Campion received the Palme d'Or at Cannes for this film, becoming the first female director to be awarded the prize.
- The performance shown in the film is a production of "Bluebeard." It refers to Charles Perrault's (1628-1703) fairy tale about a man who married, killed his wives for disobeying him, and married again. The main heroine of the tale (Bluebeard's current wife) managed to escape her husband and find her happiness.
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