The Piano Film Review

GAGGED ANIMOSITY OF A MYSTIFIED SOUL

An irrevocable, aesthetic and gothic film, The Piano brought me in a dreamlike world of myth, ego, sex, passion and violence. It’s a compelling story about seeking life’s freedom from imprisonment through the drive of passion and love.

With the film starting off with shadow-like bars that was created by the hands of Ada, the mute protagonist of the story, it suggests that it is a character-driven film taken from her point of view. This beginning depicts a symbolism of the lead character’s seclusion from the world. Ada’s silence is willed and not inborn. She chose to silence herself for the rest of her life. With this silence, she expresses her thoughts only through the touch of her fingers and the music that her piano resonates from her feelings.

Ada explains that there is something inside of her that she cannot resist to follow and also cannot understand. This “something” is a sort of ego that Ada possesses and brought her to choose a state of imprisonment over freedom.

Her illegitimate daughter, Flora, is a mesmerizing child that is also not an ordinary character in the film. She is like an eye that sees beyond what an ordinary child must see and utterly conscious of what is good from what is evil. She is also like Ada’s voice that speaks with the same tone that Ada would’ve had while expressing her thoughts. After the voice over of Ada explains that her marriage has been fixed for her by her and she’s going to be sent out to him in a faraway land, Flora comes in a roller skate down the hall which symbolized that she is a happy spirit, a perfect complement to the silent rage of her mother.

The cinematography is as good as its plot’s flow in the film. There were no unnecessary scenes and each scene was efficiently established by the director. With minimal or almost no subplots, the focus of the plot was not lost and it was commendable indeed. The setting was also astonishingly perfect and each actor/actresses’ costume and make-up surely helped in building their characters (ex. Ada’s fixed hair helps us in concentrating upon her facial expression)

After the marriage of Ada, she went with Flora to Baines (a white Maorian native) to help her go back to her piano which was left in the beach during their first meet up with her husband because it was too heavy to carry along with them. After a reunion of Ada and her life’s only mean of expression, Baines obviously leaves the audience with a hint that he was captivated by Ada’s music and this captivity could explain something more than awe. Surely, Baines salvaged her piano and demanded for Ada to become her instructor. However, instead of learning, he made a deal with Ada that she’d become his sexual toy and she can have her piano back. This could’ve been painful for Ada at first but eventually awakens her sexual thirst. Though evidently masochistic, it was a good way of unlocking Ada’s desires.

I don’t know if the child actress really saw the sex scenes of Ada and Baines but the movie surely did trigger my suspense of disbelief that I pitied the child for seeing such kind of immorality at a very young age.

            A lot of symbolisms unraveled the greatness of the film at the end of the story. The willingness of Ada to cut off a piece of her beloved piano to write a letter to Baines symbolized how she truly loves him. The part wherein her finger was amputated by her husband was also another way to depict how much anger her husband felt for being betrayed upon. Lastly, when Ada willed to throw away her piano and it anchored her together with it underneath. Ironically, the only thing that liberated her became her final imprisonment. But it didn’t end that way. Ada fought against the current but it was again not her will but it was the same will that made silenced her throughout the years – ironic, compelling, highly commendably film.