The Piano

At one point I received a collection of DVDs, and one of them happened to be the film The Piano from 1993. I tried to sit down, and watch it at one point in the past, but I found the plot simply uninteresting. I liked the first few minutes of it. It told a story about a woman who once had a husband, but then that husband died, and she ended up a widow with a daughter and she in addition lost her voice. Then her father decided to arrange a marrige between her and some man from New Zealand. In the first scenes there's said that the man wrote somewhere in his letter that ,,God loves mute beings.'' - I found that very poetic, and from this I was thinking that the man would be this person who speaks beautifully and profoundly. - Well, he wasn't. He was very socially awkward, and very simple minded. When she arrived to the island with her daughter and her belongings, he acted as if he had forgotten that she was mute. He also completely disregarded her wishes about taking the piano together with the other baggage not taking her into account whatsoever.

Then another character called George appears. Since the piano stayed at the beach, the woman comes to him, and ask him to take her back to the beach, so she could play her piano. First he resists, but then gives in, and takes her there. After hearing her play a few times, he falls head over heels for her. He decides to buy the piano from her husband, and then because she's terribly desperate for the piano, she comes to him to give him ,,lessons''. He then by that baits her that by doing gradually more intimate acts, he gives her back more and more keys. At one point he realizes that she doesn't love him, so he gives up on that and returns her back the whole piano. But, at that point she actually realizes that she loves him back, so she returns to him and they sleep together again.

Maybe this is due to the fact I am not a very romantic person, but up this point the plot was simply so lengthy with nothing interesting happening. A sex scene here and there, some scene where her husband almost catches on, then some useless scenes where the natives talk together bringing nothing to the plot, et cetera.

Then at that point when she returns, her husband decides to follow her to his house, and finds out about it. The whole movie he shows absolutely zero interest in her. He solds her piano, he doesn't even properly try to get to know her, but now that she's cheating on him, he suddenly goes mad, cuts off her finger, and tells her to go away and never return.

Only at this point the movie started to get interesting, because it's to say very simply - morbid and eye catching. But I still can't get behind it, because it simply doesn't make sense to me how he went mad. It could make sense if he had loved her, but I just can't see how he loved her. He didn't whatsoever properly know her, and he couldn't fall inlove with an idealised version of her. He also didn't seem like a narcissistic type of character. It simply makes no sense for why he cut off her finger like that, because he was just so overall bland and not elaborated upon.

Then she left the New Zealand, and I must admit there were some interesting bits concerning the fact that she almost drowned in the sea, and that she started to learn how to speak again. It had a good ending, but the plot was dragging for the 3/4ths of the movie, and I was simply unable to finish it in a single sitting.

Overall I'd give it 4.8/10. Think what you want to. Not my cup of coffee.