The Piano (1993)

When Stewart refuses to transport Ada's piano from the beach, an illiterate settler, Baines (Harvey Keitel), who sports facial tattoos just like the Maori, takes possession of it and proposes a deal: If she gives him lessons, she can earn the piano back. Baines, though, has something more in mind. During the lessons, he begins to make sexual requests of escalating intensity, offering to trade Ada several "keys" of the piano for the right to touch her, several more to remove items of her clothing, and so on. Is Baines an exploiter, turning his mute victim into a prostitute? For a while, it certainly seems that way. Yet beneath his gruff exterior beats the lonely heart of a primitive romantic. Keitel, with his pleading eyes and squat, muscular body, makes Baines' coarse gamesmanship seem the result of a yearning he can't voice in any other way; he's almost as mute as Ada is. In a series of scenes distinguished by their startling erotic purity, the two become lovers, a union destined to erupt into tragedy when it's discovered by Ada's husband, whom she has never shown any interest in sleeping with.

Far more than the raw wilderness setting, what's distinctive about this triangle drama is that its three main characters appear to be discovering their own natures as they go along. When Stewart learns of Ada's betrayal — he's bothered less by her literal infidelity than by her deep love for another man — he punishes her in the cruelest way possible. It's a shockingly brutal moment that seems to come echoing through a chasm of feminist despair. This, Campion seems to be saying, is what men have always done to women, and what some men always will. Yet Baines, having won Ada's love, is finally able to save her. More powerful than Stewart's stunted rage is Baines' virile understanding, his intuitive respect for Ada — that is, for the feelings she is able to express with her piano. By the end, Campion views all her characters with a compassion bordering on grace, a humanity — like her heroine's — as dark, quiet, and enveloping as the ocean. A