FEMINIST FILM SOCIETY

Thank you to everyone who came to the screening last night. I hope you enjoyed the film as much as I did! Sorry about the confusion about the start time - I told people 7 but had 6 listed on here.

THOUGHTS/QUESTIONS:

Was this a happy ending? I'm not sure it was. Ada and Flora seem happy and free enough living with Baines, but he did so many things that I was uncomfortable with.

This definitely raises, in my mind, a huge issue for feminism and movies: sexual assault on film. In a medium that is designed to "show, not tell," what kind of responsibility do filmakers have to showing assault in certain lights? Baines and Ada's relationship could be described as this:

A man tells a woman she can only have an item she wants in exchange for acts that gratify him sexually. She has little choice but to agree. She then falls in love with him. They end up together.

I am totally uncomfortable with this. Movies too often give the impression that women can be persuaded into love with acts of violence or stalking. (The movie Say Anything always comes to mind as an example of movie romance that, in the real world, I would be disturbed by.) And yet in the movie, I was rooting for Baines. Is he endeared to us through his apparent passion for Ada's music? Are we as viewers being told that he "gets" her in a way that her husband never can? Does his "getting" her music make up for the fact that his propositioning takes advantage of her vulnerable situation? Or are we supposed to forgive him when he gives the piano back, and says he does not want to continue turning her into a "whore"? What exactly makes viewers root for Baines? It bothers me that he seems to be this sort of obvious representation of masculinity: brooding and mysterious, physically overpowering but unable to understand his emotions, and very defensive of the woman he wants as his own.

I think maybe we are also sympathetic towards Baines because he is portrayed as a sort of troubled soul, so it makes sense that he is drawn to Ada, who has that same depth. We don't want her to have to stay with her husband, who doesn't seem to understand her music (voice? self?). Later in the film he assaults her and we definitely turn on him, but why is it that his violence is so much more of a betrayal than Baines'?

Something else I noted was that while some random people are practicing for the shadow play, the old man says something about the axe shadow being a "great effect." One of the most powerful moments in the movie is when Ada's finger is chopped off. This makes me think that Champion is very aware of the strength of imagery - why are we as viewers generally more shocked by Ada having a finger chopped off than by Ada being sexually assaulted? (Not to speak for everyone, but I generally felt that was the most suspenseful part...) It seems to me like Champion has definitely put time into thinking about imagery and the way that certain moments can be loaded with meanings. On the surface, it seems like many people would be more willing to lose a finger than to be subjected to sexual assault, and yet in this film Ada's piano acts as a piece of her body, so taking her finger is denying her access to what she might consider the most important part of herself. (For a moment at the end, she is even willing to die with it, or for it.)

Final question: What IS the piano? I consider its use as a symbol for women's bodies - constantly under attack, exploited for sexual purposes, bought and sold and left behind. There is an excellent part where housekeeper call Ada's music "creepy" - as though women are allowed to enjoy their bodies only on the terms of others. So my question is this: is the ending that Ada finally finds comfort within her own body, and doesn't need to rely solely on the piano anymore? Is her loosening the rope at the end her refusal to be defined by and suffer her female body?

Please comment!

Other interesting moments/ideas: Flora scrubbing the trees, the husband watching Baines and Ada have sex, lots of male nudity as opposed to the female nudity that is more frequently found in film, parallels between imperialism and gender, the brief moment of animation showing Flora's father going up in flames

"The strange thing is, I don't think myself silent. That is because of my piano."

 

I watched this movie a few weeks ago and I was really struck by all the male nudity. Viewers see a lot more of male bodies than female bodies, which is completely the reverse of most movies. Also, I think that there is a really different type of "sexiness" or what have you in this movie. For example, physical bodies aren't sexy in the conventional film sense. It seems to me like Champion was really working against the idea of the "male gaze" - when we did see Ada naked, she seemed very human and imperfect, I remember one shot where you see her climbing on to a bed and it is very unflattering. Where most movies are obsessed with always showing the female form in what is thought to be the most appealing shots, this one didn't do that. The nudity was much more natural, not all glossy.

Some of the most sensual scenes actually involved just one person and the piano - Baines or Ada.

 

analyzing narrative film makes me nervous, but i will attempt to put a few things out there anyways...

observation: so many different kinds of language were represented in the film. english. indigenous. signing. music. telepathy. communication between mother and child...

something that kjersten and i were talking about was racism in the movie. was harvey keitel's character supposed to be mallory (sp)? if so, why did they cast a white man? just curious. could they have portrayed the mallory people more sympathetically?

visually, i particularly liked the shot where just after her finger is chopped off, her dress deflates, and she sinks into the mud. i also loved the split second of animation that was included.

i thought it was really great that, though she chose to endure a metaphorical death, she did choose life, and i thought that was in someway very feminist.

sorry, not feeling very articulate lately, but there you go. xoxoxoxoxoxox

 

YES Very interesting stuff with Baines and the Maoris. It was my impression that he was a white man, who was on better terms with the Maoris than say, the husband who wanted to destroy their graveyard area. I wondered if he was meant to be endeared to us by his less imperialistic relationship with them - a sign that he was also less blind to Ada's humanity?

I was sort of bothered by his tattoos. First impression: what a jackass, he doesn't deserve those, what does he know about being Maori. Second impression: who am I to think that the (fictional) Maoris aren't capable of deciding who they give their tattoos to? I shouldn't assume they are so helpless and dominated. Third impression: No, it was a choice of the filmaker to give him those, taking a specific and heavily connotated, culturally specific body modification and apply it to a white man for characterization purposes. Fourth impression: Confusion.


There is a very interesting article on Maori representations in the media online:

"For Maori people 'The Piano' is dangerous. It is dangerous in its portrayal of Maori people that is linked solely to a colonial gaze, which is uncritical and unchallenging of the stereotypes which have been paraded continuously as 'the way we were'."

full article: http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/articles/maori.htm

 

According to imdb:

The play performed in the movie is an adaptation of "Bluebeard", which is a French fairy tale recorded by Charles Perrault about a man who marries, kills his wives after they fail a test, stashes their bodies in a small chamber, then marries again. In the original story, the main character (Bluebeard's current wife) escapes her psychopathic husband and finds happiness elsewhere.

AND

The Piano was the last movie Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain watched before he died.