There's a huge amount to write about this film, from a feminist perspective as much as any other – although it does, of course, lend itself to feminist analysis precisely because of the way it (deliberately, if we're allowing the writer-director some agency!) deconstructs and plays overtly as well as more subtly with norms and conventions of mainstream narrative film (which, it turns out, is as patriarchal, phallocentric and objectifying of women as much of the rest of popular culture and society more generally).
Some of the most inventive and interesting examples of how The Piano (and/as Campion and her editor, Veronika Jenet, and cinematographer, Stuart Dryburgh) plays with and undermines the established norms of narrative cinema that serve to further what Laura Mulvey famously theorised as the “male gaze”.Jaime Bihlmyer sets out some of these in a great article that was I think published in Cinema Journal, and one of the neatest is the way in which the film frustrates the "male gaze" early on: when Ada McGrath (the film's protagonist, played by Holly Hunter) and Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill) pose for a wedding photo, he looks through the viewfinder to frame/capture Ada, but the film's not interested in eyeline matching or any such nonsense. Similarly, Ada stares at the viewer at least once, and there are other playful moments... and then there's the whole refusal of Ada to speak, that is to engage in language, which has itself been theorisied as a patriarchal form. (For those who know, this relates to the notion that language acquisition is related to the realm of the Symbolic, and is part of acculturation, while the pre-language stage is also associated with "the Mother" and with not (yet) being part of society... Ada's refusal to speak, then, is a crucial aspect of her refusal to comply with social norms, and of her defiance of patriarchy.)
One thing that's always interested me, especially in respect of whether Ada's resistance to patriarchy is in fact broken down (or, for that matter, partially given up voluntarily, due to her relationship with Baines [Harvey Keitel]), is the end of the film. Bihlmeyer among others has theorised that the last few short scenes are in fact in Ada's – and/or the film's – imagination; that in fact Ada does not “choose life,” but dies in the ocean where she throws herself along with her piano. On successive viewings of the film – and after discussing it several times with various groups of students, too – I thought this a very convincing reading. However, especially after considering the film's evident relationship with and to the fairy tale, or fable, of “Bluebeard,” my reading is actually that Ada does far earlier – in fact, as a result of Stewart's violent act against her with the axe (mirroring Bluebeard's violence against his wives who failed to do his bidding).
This first crossed my mind because when the boat leaves at the end, with Baines, Ada and her daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin) as well as the piano, it looks to me like a funeral boat, and the Maori song that accompanies it also seems funereal. I also felt that Ada looks ghostly, just not-of-this-world as we see her leave the house... I also found it odd that Ada would (a) be permitted to leave with Baines as she does, and (b) that she would want to (much as I like the character of Baines, and agree with readings of his character s being quite sympathetic to “feminism”). When I then read analyses that suggest the final few shots (of Ada and Baines in their new home, of Ada's new finger fashioned from metal, and of Flora doing cartwheels on the lawn) were fantasy rather than a “real” ending, and that Ada had died in the sea, I felt more sure that she in fact died earlier.
To me, her death at the hands of Alisdair makes sense (sadly), especially as the film is in many ways a re-write, an adaptation, or what-you-will, of the Bluebeard story. However, of course in Bluebeard, one young wife does manage to escape – so this too works if a viewer refuses the reading that Ada dies/is killed by Alisdair. The point is, The Piano is a film – and despite its Oscars success, a pretty non-traditional narrative one – so multiple readings and multiple possibilities for what “really” happened are entirely possible, and can work alongside each other, without disproving or proving one is “right” or “wrong”.
But for me, even though Baines is an attractive character, and even though Ada seems strong in her fight against social norms, I think that the ending the film nominally – or, superficially – offers, that is, of Ada and Baines living together “happily ever after” is a self-conscious fantasy, and not the “real” ending. I think that Ada would “choose life” were she allowed to make the choice, but for me the reality of the film is that she was not allowed that choice, because her resistance was too much for Alisdair to bear, and for that she died.
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