#1110: CAMPION, Jane: The Piano (1993)

CAMPION, Jane (New Zealand, Australia, France)
The Piano [1993]
Spine #1110
Blu-ray


With this sublimely stirring fable of desire and creativity, Jane Campion became the first woman to win a Palme d’Or at Cannes. Holly Hunter is achingly eloquent through silence in her Academy Award–winning performance as Ada, an electively mute Scottish woman who expresses her innermost feelings through her beloved piano. When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter (Anna Paquin, in her Oscar-winning debut) to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her ineffectual husband (Sam Neill) and a rugged frontiersman (Harvey Keitel) to whom she develops a forbidden attraction. With its sensuously moody cinematography, dramatic coastal landscapes, and sweeping score, this uniquely timeless evocation of a woman’s inner awakening is an intoxicating sensory experience that burns with the twin fires of music and erotic passion.

121 minutes
Color
5.1 Surround
in English and Maori
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2022

Director/Writer

Jane Campion who was 39 when she wrote and directed The Piano.

Other Campion films in the Collection:


The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by critic Carmen Gray.

Commentary

Featuring Campion and producer Jan Chapman.

Conversation

Between Campion and film critic Amy Taubin.

Interviews

With DP Stuart Dryburgh, production designer Andrew McAlpine, and Maori adviser Waihoroi Shortland.

Interview 1

With actor Hunter on working with Campion.

“The Piano” at 25

A program featuring a conversation between Campion and Chapman.

Interview 2

With composer Michael Nyman.

Excerpts

From an interview with costume designer Janet Patterson.

Inside “The Piano”

A featurette including interviews actors Hunter, Keitel, and Neill.

2006 short film

By Campion: The Water Diary.

Trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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