Jane Campion's film The Piano

Jane Campion's film The Piano creates a series of oppositions and uses them to advance the narrative and to indicate certain thematic concerns on the part of the filmmaker. The story unfolds as a series of meetings and confrontations in which these oppositions are evoked. Opposing forces are shaped around individual characters who confront one another or interact in ways that conflict. The film sets up a series of contrasts, or oppositions, between other elements as well--interior versus exterior setting, interior versus exterior psychology, Scotland versus New Zealand, male versus female, self-absorption versus love, and so on.

The opening of the film sets up a contrast between the visual and the verbal that is carried throughout the film and which becomes a strong metaphor for the way the main character reacts to the world around her. The visual element is given added importance by being muted in the opening first by the fact that we are looking through Ada's eyes as she covers them with her fingers and second by the way the camera keeps in close in the scenes in Scotland, giving this world a sense of enclosure that will contrast with the lushness of New Zealand. The fingers held before the eyes mimic bars and show that Ada is a woman trapped in this world. She will travel from Scotland to New Zealand and be just as trapped in an arranged marriage. She is at the same time her own jailer, for her refusal to speak imprisons her and sets her apart from th

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of the world. However, it is nearly impossible for this man to achieve any sense of intimacy with this silent woman even if he knew how to do so. His clumsiness is evident as he approaches her and her daughter and knocks a hanger down onto himself--she has brought things into his world that he does not understand, and he has no idea what to do with them or with her. The fact that he leaves her piano behind without any sense that doing so would hurt her shows how little she means to him--she is a wife because he believes he needs a wife, one who can do chores and add to his stature in the community. She is not an individual to him. He has said he likes silent women, and this is telling in the context of the film--she is a wife who will not interfere by speaking, or so he believes. In fact, she is much stronger and more willful than she might seem to be. If he wants only a compliant woman who serves his needs, he will find she is more than this. The fact that the piano is her soul and her voice also means nothing to him--he is interested in neither of those things and is a man who would not recognize a plea that he should. He views transporting the piano as an expense as well as a very difficult proposition, and it wold se

Category: Film - J