In 1993 Jane Campion became the first woman to win the best director prize at the Cannes International Film Festival. She received it for The Piano, her fourth feature.
In the early European colonization in the late 19th century, a Scottish woman named Ada McGrath was sent by her father to the wilds of New Zealand for an arranged marriage to Alisdair Stewart, a man she never met. She brings along with her her dear piano and her illegitimate daughter nine years of age.
Upon arrival, the piano is left on the beach because of expediency and economics.
Holly Hunter plays Ada in a controlled, sustained performance, and Anna Paquin plays her daughter. Paquin's performance is greatly aided by the editor Veronika Jenet. She makes her performance better and more shocking than it actually is.
The movie itself has been called by a noted reviewer "a highly original fable."
How original is this, really? Let me count the ways.
Like all heroines of the fairy tale, Ada is an orphan. She does not have a mother anymore and her father is in a faraway land.
Like Rapunzel, she is a captive in a tower, locked up by the beast (Stewart).
Who would rescue her, of course, but the knight in shining armor? Who comes in the form of George Baines (played by Harvey Keitel). We know he is Prince Charming because unlike Stewart, he does not buy any more land than he needs. Unlike the beast, he is one among the natives.
When Stewart finds out Ada is having an affair, he severs her finger so she can no longer play the piano. Just like Ariel had to give up her voice to be with her man.
The template for this story, then, is the fairy tale.
It is easy to see how The Piano can be considered a feminist allegory on female expression of the self. Ada chooses Baines not only because he is a strange man and therefore fascinating. She chooses him because he picked up the piano from the beach. He let her play it, and he would let her play any piece she wanted. He allowed her to earn it back.
"To be deaf. Awful, terrible."
"Actually, to tell you the whole truth, Mother says most people speak rubbish and it's not worth the listen."
"Well, that is a strong opinion."
"Aye. It's unholy."
It shows us that the piano had become her voice, and without it she cannot speak. Baines had given her voice back, and he listens to her, allows her to say whatever she'd like.
In a key scene, Stewart forces himself upon Ada and stops to find her speaking, even though her lips are not moving. It becomes clear, then, the many ways we have suppressed the woman's right to speak and be heard. We took their voice away, so they learned to speak in other languages. But if we only listened closely enough, they do have something to say, and it is well worth listening to.
But when what we see is essentially a fairy tale we've seen many times before, how original does that make it, really?
