Acclaimed writer/director Jane Campion's third movie following a series of remarkable ... more
shorts and the features Sweetie and An Angel At My Table, The Piano arguably remains one of the best loved cinematic works of the last thirty years.Combining elements of Gothic romance and Victorian melodrama with a startlingly original take on a traditional love story, Campion's film is one of savage intensity as it follows Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), a mute from the age of six, and her strong-willed young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) from nineteenth century Scotland to an arranged marriage and a new life in the barely colonized New Zealand wilderness. Ada takes an immediate dislike to new husband Stewart (Sam Niell) when he refuses to transport her beloved piano to their home. A neighbouring settler turned half-Maori (Harvey Keitel) offers salvation, buying the piano and then allowing Ada access to it as his tutor. The lessons become a series of increasingly charged sexual encounters and pent-up emotions of rage and desire soon rise to the fore.A poetic, sensory delight in which Michael Nyman's haunting score and stuart Dryburgh's cinematography illuminate the savage wasteland. The Piano is an intelligent, erotic and extremely powerful account of sexual awakening. The co-winner of the Palme d'Or, and the recipient of eight Academy Award nominations - including Best Picture and Best Director - it offers an acting master class that unsurprisingly saw both Hunter and Paquin rewarded by the American Academy. Campion also triumphed in the Best Original Screenplay category.
?The Piano Teacher? is a powerful and controversial new drama from the award winning ... more
filmmaker Michael Haneke. Isabelle Huppert (Merci pour le Chocolat, Amateur) gives a performance of astounding emotional intensity as Erika Kohut, a repressed woman in her thirties who teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory and lives with her tyrannical mother (Annie Girardot), with whom she has a volatile love-hate relationship. But when one of Erika's students, the handsome and assured Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel), attempts to seduce her, the barriers that she has carefully erected around her claustrophobic world are shattered, unleashing a previously inhibited extreme and incontrollable desire.
Michael Nyman came of age as a classical composer in the radical London of the late '60s. ... more
His work embraces multiple vernaculars (jazz, avant garde, conceptual art) and helped cement the foundation of what came to be known as minimalism. Decades into his career, Nyman's score to Jane Campion's film The Piano made him a star. The movie's themes of colonialism and silence (its protagonist, portrayed by Holly Hunter, cannot speak) were perfectly aligned with his longtime interests in world and ambient music. Horn players assist members of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in fleshing out Nyman's stately, hymn-like motifs. On the more heavily orchestrated cues, sentimentality wins out over minimalist restraint; the best tracks feature Nyman on solo piano, playing the rudimentary, faux period repertoire of Hunter's character. --Marc Weidenbaum
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Advantages: Excellent physcological study of character. Disadvantages: Grim, brutal, shocking scenes of a sexual nature.
The Piano Teacher
The Piano Teacher is a subtitled film of the Phycological Drama genre. Released in 2001 it is also known by it's French name La pianiste. Directed by Michael Haneke, it is based on the novel by Die Klavierspielerin which won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004.
Graphic in it's content this film delves into the darker side of sex, including fetishism, bondage, and sado/masochism. It also touches
on the delicate subject of genitalia self harm. This is not a light film, and is not recommended for family viewing. ~
I will be reviewing FILM ONLY
Synopsis
This is a tale revolving around a professor at a music conservatory in Vienna. Her name is Erica and she is played played by the wonderful actress Isabelle Huppert, Who has an impressive 75+ films under her belt. Erica is ...
Morning_Becomes_Electra 20.01.2008 (25.01.2008)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Piano Teacher
Advantages: A great film to watch, a very emotional film which is gripping to watch.. Disadvantages: none
. Understandably is then enraged when her new husband refuses to take the piano because it is too too heavy.
The piano is rescued by her husband's friend, a neighbouring farmer, George Baines (Harvey Keitel). He uses it as a bargaining tool. He allows Ada to earn her piano back, by giving him lessons, she can have one key back per visit. Baines has no interest in the piano lessons but instead uses the private sessions to maniuplates Ada into performing sexual favours. This soon escalates into an erotic affair. After Flora tells Alistair about the affair's continuence, Ada is brutally disfigured when Alistair chops of her...Im not going to tell you anymore, but there is penty more, emotionally gripping scenes to watch.
The soundtrack, by Michael Nyman is a joy to listen to and really sets the tone for the film.The melody of main theme, "The Heart ...
Advantages: interesting story, excellent acting, Disadvantages: expected more
I went into this movie knowing about the oscars it had won and having been recommended by several friends, I expected something good.
As a fan of period films, this movie is set in the 1850's, New Zealand. Ada (Holly Hunter) is a mute who with her young daughter Flora(Ann Paquin) braves the dangerous journey across the world. We see the movie start with them landing with all their belongings, including the priceless piano. Life begins in the leafy forest with her new Husband, Stewart (Sam Neill). Life is not what she expected in this remote area. Things take a turn for the worse when her new Husband sells her piano a neighbour, George (Harvey Keitel). George however, tells Ada she may earn back her piano by giving him piano lessons. Through the lessons, we see a turbulant but intreging relationship form.
This movie wasn't what I ...
rafomania 16.11.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Piano (DVD)
![The Piano: The Ultimate Piano Collection of the Century [Boxset] - Various Artists](http://images.ciao.com/ide/images/icons/no_pic_generic_S1.gif){kind=icon}
![The Piano: The Ultimate Piano Collection of the Century [Boxset] - Various Artists](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/89357111.jpg)
