The Piano

The Piano is a 1993 film about a mute woman pianist and her daughter, set during the mid-19th century in a rainy, muddy frontier New Zealand backwater. The film was written and directed by Jane Campion, and stars Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill and Anna Paquin. It features an impressive score for the piano by Michael Nyman. Hunter played her own piano pieces for the film, and also served as teacher for Paquin, earning herself three different screen credits.

Story

The Piano tells the story of a Scottish woman whose father sells her in marriage, by mail, to a New Zealand frontiersman, and is shipped off with her young out-of-wedlock pre-adolescent daughter to live with him. She has not spoken a word since she was six years old, apparently without cause, and her daughter serves as translator for her sign language communications. She has mastered the piano, and obsessively plays it.

Related Topics:
Scottish - New Zealand

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Her new husband does not appreciate this fixation, however, and abandons the piano on the beach where she, her daughter and their belongings have been unceremoniously deposited by the ship which has transported them from Scotland. Furious with him, she enters into an affair with his best friend who, attracted to her, has rescued the piano to his own cabin to lure her into his company.

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