The Piano: Film Essay and Exploration of Music and Emotion

The Piano: It conveys the emotion of voice, the feelings of the heart, the troubles of the mind and the excitement of nature.

The Piano, such an interesting film featuring a main character that does not speak.
Jane Campion’s 1993 hit not only won an Academy Award for Best Original Screen Play but also won the Palme D’Or (the highest prize) at Cannes Film Festival, making her the first female ever to win the award. Anna Paquin, who plays the young Flora, won an Oscar for her performance making her the second youngest winner in history. The movie and its performances are exceptional.

Thesis: Music is a language of its own. It conveys the emotion of voice, the feelings of the heart, the troubles of the mind and the excitement of nature.

            Ada McGrath is a 30-something, mute bride-to-be arranged to marry a man whom she’s never met in New Zealand. Her daughter, Flora, communicates to others for her mother and seems to cause trouble on purpose, shaping to be an undercover antagonist of sorts. Alisdair Stewart is her new husband, a wealthy land owner who spends much of his time away. George Baines is their neighbor who Ada begins to give piano lessons in exchange for working to get her prized piano back from him. Their love affair becomes the catalyst in the story plot.

            “I don’t think of myself as silent. This is because of my piano,” Ada says in the opening scene of the movie. The narration of her voiceover explains that it’s her mind speaking, as she has not spoken since she was 6 years old. Her piano is how she communicates. In the film Campion brilliantly incorporates Ada’s reaction to emotion, that most of us would use spoken word, but instead Ada uses her piano. In scenes where she’s happy the sound of her piano is upbeat and her key stroke is soft. In scenes where she is frustrated the sound is overwhelming and her stoke on the keys is heavy.

            She uses the music she hears in her head to translate her inner-self. In link between Ada’s erotic, raw emotion and how she expresses it through touch, Campion crafts imagery to reveal the way Ada moves her hands on the keys of her piano is how she moves her hands on her lover. The film explores the intensity of touch, a form of emotion needed to play the piano, and way for her to speak. A scene with a close-up shot on the keys of the piano reveals a drawing of a heart with an arrow through it (Cupid’s arrow) and the letter “A.” No explanation is made to whether the “A” stands for “Ada” and was from Flora’s father or if Flora’s father’s name began with an “A,” but it leaves contemplation in the viewer’s mind. It reveals she once loved, therefore is capable again.

Campion tells the story thoughtfully with subtle messages. Later in the film when Ada seeks to give George a secret message she confesses her love on a key she removes from her piano and writes in the same area the earlier close-up revealed a love note on a different key. Again no confirmation is made but the action tells the viewer that not only does she communicate through her piano but her piano speaks for her. It holds the secrets in her mind. In a scene early in their love affair, George touches Ada’s shoulder when she plays the piano and the sound she plays immediately becomes strong and chaotic, revealing to the viewer that she urns for his touch and is stimulated by it.

Even though Ada never tells the viewer with dialog of her emotions, Campion uses editing techniques to reveal them. In scenes involving or leading up to involving her husband, there is a slight blue tint of the frame. The interpretation hints that her feelings for Alisdair are cold, as is their relationship. In scenes involving George, specifically in his home, the tint is a red symbolizing lust and love. The imagery is subtle and gentle similar to the depths of a woman’s heart. Campion’s own femininity helps portray Ada’s character in a complicated yet understandable manner. The story is told in time, not too quickly, and nothing is assumed or obvious.

Campion took two minutes to show the viewer how much Ada’s piano was a piece of her rather than just telling the viewer through dialog. When Ada and Flora are first delivered to the beach where Alisdair was to pick them up, they are unloaded with their belongings and left to wait. When Alisdair arrives he refuses to take the piano. “The piano is mine. It’s MINE!” she writes in a note to him, which he ignores. Without her piano she plays a table in the house like it’s a piano and sleep-walks while mimicking the movement of playing a piano. She is restless without it, she is unable to communicate. A loss of words is not an issue for her but a loss of communicating the music in her head is devastating. Her first smile in the film is not revealed until George takes her back to the beach to reunite with her beloved.

The structure of the film makes one wonder if Alisdair had allowed the piano to come when they first left the beach whether she would have loved him. In a conversation with Flora, via sign language, Ada tells her daughter that her father is no longer around because, “He became frightened and stopped listening.” It begs insight of whether Ada accepts those who listen to her through her piano being the ones she allows into her heart. George accepted her piano and he loved to hear her play. Would she have loved her husband if he would have accepted her voice? The Piano explores the realm of music as a language of its own.

Although Alisdair views her as weak and small in stature, she is actually quite strong as her will reveals. George, a bit of a misfit himself, spends most his time with the indigenous people who were thought of as the lowest class. Ada and George together were able to bring their differences from other people during the time period, and where they lacked social skills with others, they found it possible with each other. In a confrontational scene between Alisdair and George, Alisdair asks if she speaks to him. Surprised by his answer it’s obvious that Alisdair doesn’t understand how George could love a woman that does not speak. The ignorance on his behalf reveals that he simply does not speak her language. He doesn’t deserve her love.