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Drama, Romance 120 min R
Rotten Tomatoes90%Metacritic89IMDb
Silence affects everyone in the end.
When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited pre-teen daughter Flora to the wilderness of 19th-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
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Prestige, contemplative, meticulous and intimate.
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Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Taste Buds's numbers.
Holly Hunter is on good form here as "Ada", a mute who is adept with her piano. Soon to be married to a Kiwi farmer, she sails with her daughter to his remote home where he "Alisdair" (Sam Neill) seems to be rather indifferent to her presence. The same cannot be said for their neighbour "Baines" (Harvey Keitel) though, and he engineers a land for piano swap with her husband as a prelude to inviting her round to his home to play. After a few meetings they work out a peculiarly unique bartering system that might see both get what they ultimately want from the arrangement. It's at this stage that "Alisdair" feels frustratingly cuckolded and things take a turn for the violent and the brutal. It's a beautiful film to look at, the cinematography and the costumes are perfect for the period and despite a fairly sparse dialogue, the performances - especially from Keitel and the young Anna Paquin ("Flora") are quite compelling to watch. To be honest, Neill adds very little of value and I did get a little fed up with the repetitious refrain of Michael Nyman's theme but as the story develops, we are introduced to some thought-provoking issues of ownership - and not just of the piano. A big scr
Read the whole review on TMDB**A great movie.** For me, this is one of the great films of 1993. The story is not pretty, and we could almost call it “love in times of mud”, not only because of the continuous rain and the amount of mud on the set, but mainly because of the rudeness and brutality of the male characters. However, the film is very good, it's engaging, captivating and really deserves to be brought back these days. Winner of three Oscars (Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay), I believe it just didn't win more due to fierce competition from "Schindler's List". The film also won the prestigious Palme d'Or for Jane Campion in Cannes. Set in the mid-19th century, the film begins with the marriage by proxy of Ada, a young, single mother, to a middle-class farmer settled in New Zealand. The British colony was still developing, there is a tense relationship between the whites and the native Maori, and Ada's new husband is trying to buy more land on the island. We never understand what he does or what he intends to use them for, and the film ignores these details and focuses on the couple's relationship. Ada is mute, but she has a special affection for her piano and plays very
Read the whole review on TMDBJane Campion's third feature film, THE PIANO is a historical drama that tells of a Scottish woman, Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), who is married off to a colonist in New Zealand that she has never met. Ada is mute, a development that mysteriously came upon her in childhood, but she is a virtuoso pianist and her cherished instrument is one way she communicates her feelings to the world. As Ada and her illegitimate daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) land on the shores of New Zealand's South Island sometime in the mid-19th century, her new husband Stewart (Sam Neill) ignores her sign-language entreaties to carry her piano inland along with their other belongings. Feeling no love for this man she has been forced to marry, Ada is drawn into sexual bargaining with another colonist, Baines (Harvey Keitel) who offers to get her the piano back if she does what he wants. The first half of this film is an interesting study in sexual power and the tragedy of a woman's lot during this historical era. Neither Stewart or Baines are admirable men; Stewart is uncaring of Ada's true passion for the piano, but Baines exploits her distress and powerlessness to get what he wants and he doesn't respect consent.
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61 profiled raters. Loved most by The Archivists; disliked most by The Comfort Seekers.
If you loved this film, the television, the book, the music, the game.
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