The Piano
Introduction
Oscar-winning Australian film The Piano (1993) was written and directed by Jane Campion script, starring Holly Hunter playing a nineteenth century mute Ada who travels to the sparsely settled area in New Zealand for an arranged marriage. Holly Hunter’s portrayal of the mute Ada ranks as one of the most blockbusting and expressive movie performances of all time. As Marcelle Clements observed ‘‘Hunter manages to express so much, just behind the eyes, just under the skin, by the music of her piano, and of her own aura, that one walks out of the theater feeling that this mute woman has had as much to say as anyone we’ve met in a long time’’ (Premiere, December 1993).
The Piano
It is obvious that The Piano is a feminist film with a very strong heroine Ada who struggles against and survives the terrible gender pressures and discrimination. The structure of the Piano obliges the spectator to recognize that the interpretations of the film based only on analysis of its plot hardly can be made. There is no character’s story presented with clarity giving the viewer information about Ada. The heroine cannot tell the viewers about her life and the secrets of her soul. At the same time, however, interpretation of The Piano can be made by other means; Ada’s body movements and speechless behavior allow the viewer to understand not only her life, but also the inner world of the main character, revealing in a single gaze or movement so much about how her social surroundings touch her character and soul.
Ada has expressed determination not to speak since she was six years old, but the viewer never understands why. It can be supposed that she was as resolute in her childhood as in her adulthood and refused to speak as an act of pride or vengeance; or maybe the child suffered a psychological trauma at that age. There is no evidence that would enable the viewer to confirm these speculations. Thus, Ada’s muteness focuses the viewer’s attention intensely on this resolute figure who, at the end of her long sea voyage, seems brave at being left apart from the world with her daughter and her piano on a wild and empty land. The interest in Ada’s personality encourages the viewer to search for a more complete understanding of this woman in her movements and relationships with her piano, music, and other characters.
Ada’s muteness emphasizes such qualities of her personality as stubbornness, blind certainty, and self-liberation. Although Ada submits to her father’s will, she continues her resistance in a clear form of speechless insolence through her muteness. This resolute personality is a trait that her husband Stewart (Sam Neill) first is faced with when he finds her abandoned on the desert beach with her piano and her daughter. Ada soon after meeting with her husband discovers that, although she is now in a completely unfamiliar area, the traditions of patriarchy in this community have been imported on a large scale from the country in which she lived. Despite her resolute decision to take the piano, her new husband makes clear that the instrument is too heavy for his workers to move, and leaves the instrument on the beach. But Ada resists Stewart’s decision by declining to accept his rights of a husband. Ada’s position deeply repressed Stewart’s sexuality.
There is a powerful struggle going through the whole of the plot, which centers on Ada’s gradually deepening recognition of her own naturalness. Living in the untamed landscape the woman begins exploration of the outer world. She adapts to the environment and the isolated colonial community. This adaptation simultaneously triggers her exploration and discovery of her inner self. The wild world stimulates new beginnings in the instinctive mind of the heroine.
The forest, deep within which lies the house of Ada’s new husband, is therefore an important image that helps to define Ada’s character. As the plot of the film develops, the viewer explores the forest with Ada and her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin). Flora, forced to find her own amusements by her mother’s preoccupation with her own affairs, begins to use it as a playground and a way of exploring the world. Her sense of the forest coincides with her mother’s in being an expression of her inner state of mind. The things in her mind in many ways are similar to the Ada’s view. On the other hand, Stewart’s colonial policy of expropriation maps the woods as property-ownership. While Ada sees the woods as a world that helps her enter unconscious, Stewart uses woods as a tool to subordinate both the women and the indigenous people.
The person who helps Ada adapt to the new environment is Stewart’s estate manager, Baines (Harvey Keitel). Feeling pity for her as she misses the piano, the man buys the instrument from Stewart offering him instead a piece of land. He wants to receive music lessons, because something in Ada’s music appears to be exciting the deep emotions in him. Soon Ada falls in love with Baines and their relationship is very strong since the lovers’ influence on each other is equally powerful. When Ada and Baines become lovers, Ada makes a symbolic connection with her interior side. Baines helps her make progress towards the wholeness of consciousness and the unconsciousness.
It seems that Ada’s music in some respects substitutes for her speaking voice. The heroine’s intimate performances are primarily the only way to express the romanticism and feelings of her soul. Later, when Baines’s interest is awakened, Ada is able to put herself in contact with him through her instrument. While playing she is communicating some of the unconscious impulses that drive her soul and body. Ada’s music gives her a mysterious awareness of things that she does not yet fully understand; and this can be seen in her gradually developing love with Baines. Her communication through her play is the catalyst for them. Music becomes the gradual release of their deep-seated sexual and spiritual rejection of thoughts and impulses.
The drive that urges Ada towards Baines is the strong desire to escape into the new stage of spiritual development. When Ada and Baines become lovers she experiences transformation. When Ada returns home from Baines, Stewart forbids her to see Baines again, he seals up the windows and doors and makes her a prisoner in his house. The feelings and powerful emotions however that Baines has aroused in Ada are not easily suppressed, and by night she comes to her lover again.
Stewart attempts to force Ada to live according to the principles of his authority. This presents the danger for Ada to live in a calculated, cold way in which her world of emotions and feelings is neglected. He is completely untouched by her arts and her resistance. Ada’s husband is associated with patriarchal values, while Baines is associated with Ada’s rebirth into language and life. Ada reaches her new stage of development after Stewart gives way when he realizes that he can neither kill Baines nor shake Ada’s will to be with him. The lovers leave this wild land, accompanied by Flora. They are rowed across the sea to their new home. The piano goes with them, balanced dangerously across the boat’s transom. Ada decides to throw it into the water. But as it sinks, Ada allows catastrophe to seize her as she quietly watches her foot becoming made twisted in one of the binding ropes, and is dragged after it into the dark blue deeps. While it sucks her down and she is facing death, her will suddenly chooses life, probably discovering the beginnings of her new life. Her desire for suicide can be interpreted as a symbolic expression of the need to bring to an end an old way of life before beginning a new one.
Conclusion
When Ada is last seen with Baines in her new home, she is practicing the rediscovered art of speech. Viewers cannot, however, see her face because it is covered by a black veil. It seems that the veil represents a symbol of a woman mourning for her old self but who finally found truths and new knowledge about herself.
Jane Campion’s The Piano is a film the lead character in which is a woman who faces unresolved gender problems. She overcomes this oppression however by committing herself to muteness and then discovering her new self. She becomes connected to her instinctual and emotional nature after she becomes Baines’ lover.
Works Cited
Marcelle, C. Premiere, December 1993, in Curran, D. Guide to American Cinema, 1965-1995. Greenwood Press: Westport, CT, 1998.
