After a brief framing device of its protagonist reflecting on her life, Jane Campion’s The Piano begins in earnest with Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) arriving by boat from Scotland at a patch of untamed New Zealand, her young daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), in tow. As the camera glides among the members of the landing party, a vulgar parody of colonial “discovery” is carried out as a group of seamen, like animals, mark the terrain with their piss. For her part, Ada vomits from seasickness, the first indication of her world having been turned upside down.
Sold by her father into an arranged marriage to an English homesteader named Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill), Ada is so alienated from her surroundings that her muteness scarcely registers as an additional impediment to communication. Even if the woman could speak to her new husband or his mostly Maori servants, she would have nothing to say. But Ada, a gifted pianist, is left truly silent when Alisdair arrives and refuses to carry the handcrafted piano that she also had shipped from Scotland.
These early images are blatantly symbolic, but the film gradually complicates the metaphors that it wears on its sleeve. The piano, for one, quickly loses its standing as an embodiment of Ada’s inner voice and becomes a kind of anchor point for tracking the erotic drama that develops between the woman, her emotionally unavailable husband, and Alisdair’s mysterious friend, George Baines (Harvey Keitel). While Alisdair treats his wife like a possession, even talking about her as a pet with some society ladies, George takes a clear interest in Ada that manifests as granting her access to her instrument in exchange for increasingly bold romantic favors. Alisdair’s disinterest in Ada’s piano mirrors his lack of engagement with her, while George’s fetishized displacement of his desires unlock a reciprocal amorousness from her inspired, in part, by her gratitude in his enjoyment of watching her play.
Campion captures such sexual interplay with direction that regularly upends the stuffy elegance of period drama. Though the film has more than its share of gently floating shots or precisely arranged static tableaux, it is most frequently visualized in psychologically charged images, especially a plethora of perspective shots of characters voyeuristically peeping on each other through gaps in log cabin walls. Close-ups match, say, Ada’s fingers delicately playing the keyboard while George caresses the skin of her leg through a small hole in her stocking.
Even the trappings of period cinema, of showing the complex social mores and displays of etiquette, are shown in ways that give away characters’ pent-up emotions, as in insert shots of the married women in Alisdair’s social circle who are constantly waving their fans with just a bit too much zeal as they take their afternoon tea. As if to emphasize the kinds of films that Campion considers the true forebears to The Piano, one shot pushes in on the back of Ada’s coiled hair until the curl of her bun resembles Kim Novak’s in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
Eventually, these formal displays of roiling internal tensions explode into external violence, mostly as a result of Flora being too young and naïve to understand why she shouldn’t tell her new stepfather about how much Ada likes George. An earlier reference to the story of Bluebeard in a school play prefigures an act that, in context, feels more grotesque and sadistic than outright murder, sending Campion’s film entirely off its axis.
Campion’s originally written ending, which takes cues from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening in its nihilistic confrontation of a woman realizing the impossibility of freedom, is the logical conclusion of where the last act heads. But even the compromised, vaguely uplifting finale that was ultimately filmed brims with a marrow-deep sadness, one that suggests that the only thing as painful as never fulfilling one’s desires is getting to do so only for a brief moment.
Image/Sound
The Criterion Collection’s budding 4K line continues to set a standard for the format and its potential for legacy titles. The full range of day-for-night blues and muted jungle greens that dominate Stuart Dryburgh’s cinematography are now evident thanks to the Dolby Vision boosting. Color separation and depth is greatly improved over the old 2012 Lionsgate Blu-ray of the film, with improvements especially noticeable in dimly lit interiors where subtle gradations of brown and amber from wood and light can now be easily perceived. The disc also offers a significant upgrade to the soundtrack, replacing the Lionsgate Blu-ray’s 2.0 mix with a full 5.1 surround track that beautifully renders the ambient noises of waves, jungle fauna, and the like amid Michael Nyman’s inventive and often disquieting piano score.
Extras
Criterion’s release boasts a bounty of extras, starting with a 2006 commentary track with writer-director Jane Campion and producer Jan Chapman. Campion gives copious insight into how she translates her scripts into images, and breaks down the minutiae of technical decisions like lenses and focal lengths, while both devote a great deal of discussion to the actors and working with everyone from seasoned stars to Maori supporting players to the then-10-year-old Anna Paquin. The accompanying Blu-ray disc contains the remainder of the extras, a combination of new and archival features on the film’s production and interviews with cast and crew. The interviews, especially, abound in fascinating details, such as Michael Nyman’s discussion of his unorthodox approach to his score and cultural advisor Waihoroi Shortland’s thoughts on the film’s depiction of indigenous people. Campion’s excellent 2006 short The Water Diary is also included, and the accompanying booklet contains an essay by critic Carmen Gray that places the film within the lineage of Gothic romance.
Overall
This release of The Piano makes for yet another stunner in Criterion’s expanding 4K UHD catalog, offering significant upgrades in A/V quality and bonus features from previous home-video releases of Jane Campion’s lauded 1993 breakthrough.
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