The Piano

A hauntingly beautiful meditation on the transformative force of music, The Piano is the most celebrated film of Jane Campion’s career – one that made her the first woman to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), originally from Scotland, has not spoken since childhood. When her father marries her off by correspondence to a settler, Alistair (Sam Neill), she and her young daughter set sail for New Zealand. Upon arrival, Ada is forced to abandon her beloved piano on the beach – an instrument she considers an extension of herself. Alistair refuses to transport it, ultimately trading it to his neighbor, George (Harvey Keitel). Determined to keep playing, Ada agrees to give George lessons. Described as “the feminist manifesto of a generation,” The Piano begins as a colonial melodrama but soon subverts expectations, challenges conventions and negotiates the terms of female emancipation. And long after the screen fades to black, what lingers is Michael Nyman’s score – a story of love and longing told entirely in music.

Joanna Najbor

Jane Campion, born in 1954, is one of the most internationally successful New Zealand directors. Campion attended the Australian Film Television and Radio School early in its history. Her first short film, Peel won the Palme D’Or at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. Sweetie (1989) was her feature debut, and won international awards. Further recognition followed with An Angel at my Table, followed with another Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1993 for The Piano, which also won three Oscars in 1994. Campion’s work since that time The Portrait of a Lady (1996), based on the Henry James novel, Holy Smoke! (1999) teamed Campion with Harvey Keitel and Kate Winslet and an erotic thriller In the Cut, has tended to polarize opinion.

Catalog MFF Nowe Horyzonty 8. edition