The Piano
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CinemaThe Piano and the Will a Body Can Carry Before LanguageRead the essayStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
A mute Scottish woman traded into a New Zealand marriage buys her piano back one key at a time.
In the mid-nineteenth century Ada McGrath, a Scottish woman who has not spoken since she was six, is sent with her young daughter, Flora, to colonial New Zealand to marry a settler she has never met, Alisdair Stewart. Ada speaks through sign language, through Flora, and through her piano. Mother, daughter and piano are left on a remote beach. Alisdair arrives with Māori bearers and his neighbour George Baines, a former sailor who has taken on Māori ways, and leaves the piano on the sand.
Ada gets Baines to take her back to it, and her playing entrances him. He trades Alisdair land for the piano and for lessons from Ada, then offers her a bargain: she can earn the piano back one key at a time, each lesson a trade of keys for intimacies he asks of her. Ada, furious, resists him, and she keeps refusing her husband too. Yet she begins to discover her own desire. Baines, seeing that the bargain can never make her care for him, returns the piano.
Ada returns to him of her own will, and they become lovers. Alisdair watches them through a gap in the wall. He attacks Ada and tries to rape her, then makes her promise never to see Baines again. When Ada sends Flora to Baines with a piano key engraved with a declaration of love, Flora, who has come to see Alisdair as a father, takes it to him instead. In a rage, Alisdair cuts off one of Ada's fingers so that she cannot play, and sends Flora to Baines with a warning to keep away.
Later Alisdair tries again to rape Ada as she sleeps, and seems to hear her voice in his head asking him to let Baines take her away. He lets them go. As they row out to the ship in a Māori canoe, Ada has the piano thrown overboard, and in that moment tries to take her own life. She changes her mind, struggles free and is pulled to safety. In Nelson she lives with Baines and Flora, teaches the piano with a metal fingertip he has made her, and is learning to speak. Sometimes she dreams of the piano, silent at the bottom of the sea.
Starring
Holly Hunteras Ada McGrath
A Scottish woman who has not spoken since childhood, sent to New Zealand to marry a stranger, whose voice is her piano.
Ada McGrath’s story
Ada comes ashore with her daughter, Flora, and her piano; her husband, Alisdair, leaves the piano on the beach, then trades it to his neighbour, Baines, for land. She accepts Baines's bargain, the piano back a key at a time for intimacies he asks of her, and sets her own price in keys; her husband she keeps refusing. When Baines gives it back, she goes to him of her own will, and they become lovers. Alisdair tries to rape her and boards her in. She sends Baines a key carved with her love; Flora takes it to Alisdair, who cuts off one of Ada's fingers. Leaving with Baines, she has the piano thrown overboard and tries to take her own life, then changes her mind. In Nelson she teaches with a metal fingertip and is learning to speak.
Harvey Keitelas George Baines
A neighbouring settler and former sailor who has taken on Māori ways, and who buys Ada's piano to be near her.
George Baines’s story
Baines, with Māori tattoos, refuses to take Ada back to her piano on the beach, then gives in, and her playing entrances him. He trades Alisdair land for the piano and for lessons, and offers Ada a bargain: the piano back one key at a time for intimacies he asks of her. Then he gives it back, telling her, 'The arrangement is making you a whore and me wretched'; he wants her to care for him. She comes back of her own will, and they become lovers. When Alisdair sends Flora with a warning to keep away, Baines wants to kill him, and Flora begs him not to. Alisdair comes to his hut at night, asks whether Ada has ever spoken to him, and lets them go. In Nelson, Baines makes her a metal fingertip.
Sam Neillas Alisdair Stewart
Ada's new husband, a settler hungry for land, who leaves her piano on the beach and turns violent when she loves another man.
Alisdair Stewart’s story
When Ada comes ashore, Alisdair leaves her piano on the beach: there are not enough bearers, and everyone must make sacrifices. He trades it to Baines for land he covets, and tries in vain to win a wife who keeps refusing him. Then, through a gap in the wall, he watches her with Baines. He tries to rape her, boards up the windows, and lets her out when she promises never to see Baines again, telling her she will come to like him in time. When Flora brings him the key engraved with Ada's love for Baines, he cuts off one of Ada's fingers and sends Flora to Baines with a warning. Later he tries again to rape Ada as she sleeps, seems to hear her voice asking him to let Baines take her away, and lets them go.
Anna Paquinas Flora McGrath
Ada's young daughter and interpreter, who comes to see Alisdair as her father and gives her mother's secret away.
Why it matters
The Piano is about a woman whose voice is her own business. Ada has chosen silence and speaks through music and through her daughter, while the men around her treat her, her piano and her body as property to be carried, traded or punished. Its love story begins as a coercive bargain, keys bought back with intimacy, and the film does not pretend otherwise; what it asks is whether desire can grow inside such a bargain and still belong to the woman who feels it. Jealousy turns to violence, and a child becomes the go-between for adults' secrets. Jane Campion became the first woman to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and the film won three Academy Awards, for Holly Hunter, for Anna Paquin and for Campion's screenplay. It ends with Ada choosing life over the piano, and learning to speak.