No Country for New Marriages

I watched the 1993 movie The Piano, at the behest of my mother as it happened. She wanted to know what I thought about it.

It's ridiculous. [Spoilers follow.]

First things first. The economy made no sense at all. The film opens as Holly Hunter (I will be using actors' names throughtout as I can't be bothered to remember character names unless they're in a multi-installment franchise) arrives at a remote New Zealand settlement to begin a contracted marriage (she was "sold by her father") to homesteader Sam Neill. By "remote", I mean that the settlement is not on a natural harbor (e.g. Plymoth) or inland waterway (e.g. the James River), but inland from a beach on the ocean. A fair interpretation is that this beach is the settlment's only access to the outside world, yet not only does beach have no supporting structures, nor at the time of arrival any other vessels, but there isn't even a path from beach to the settlement. After being dropped on beach by rowboat (waka taua I think is what the filmakers were going for; a fair interpretation is that she was most immediately coming from another settlement rather than her native Scotland), she and her considerable stock of belongings (including eventually the eponymous piano) must be hand-ported through the forest up a hill to get to her new home. This homesstead's visible food production hardly looks like it would support Sam Neill, let alone a family of three (Hunter has a ten-year-old daughter, more about whom in a second), still less the gaggle of Maori odd-jobbers who mostly laze about telling dirty jokes. Not that I'm judging, but . . . how do these people eat?

Sam Neill, in negotiation with his best friend Harvey Keitel over a piece of land (more on this in a second) says he has no money. So, how did he afford whatever he allegedly "paid" to marry Holly Hunter? How did he afford the manufactured goods he is later shown trying to barter with the Maori? The movie might have offered some explanation for these anomalies, but I can just hear Ryan George answering with, "So the movie can happen!" during the pitch meeting.

Holly Hunter only ever wears hoop skirts (the mechanics of which are emphasized, about which more in a second), notwithstanding that most of the settlement's ground surface is mud. She does no useful work anywhere in the movie that I could see.

Then you have Neill's best friend Harvey Keitel, whose homestead has zero visible food production and who also does no useful work during the course of the movie. At the end of the movie, Keitel apparently has the wherewithal to take Hunter (more on this relationship in a second) back to what I gather is town life, so a fair interpretation is that he has other resources. But then, what was he doing out there? And what did he eat?

As a segway, a moment on the movie's spiritual economy. The settlement is large enough to support a community theater, but there is apparently no church, nor are there any religious observances shown. I get that New Zealand's settlement was not as religiously based as America's, but it was still settled by nominal Anglicans and Presbyterians. (Fun fact from Wikipedia: 19th century Maoris, having converted to Christianity, attended church at higher rates than Englishmen at the time.) The movie offers no context for this omission either, but it would have been a good place to explain why the settlement's menfolk apparently have no tools other than violence to kepp their women away from predatory neighbors, even their best friends.

Which brings me to the movie's primary narrative. In summary: Holly Hunter, having consented to an arranged marriage and then denying her new husband its associated covenant duties, throws herself at the neighbor who extorted sexual favors from her by bartering the beach-stranded piano from her husband and then offering it back to her one key at a time.

That's it. That's the movie in a single sentence.

On the one hand, women make bad decisions. It's a meta-theme of this blog, and the reason pimping exists as a skill set. But this movie didn't sell it. Harvey Keitel wasn't handsome enough, wasn't rich enough, wasn't dominant enough. His negotiation with Holly Hunter was needy beta supplication. He doesn't even ride to her rescue when Sam Neill sends him her severed finger as a warning. So why does Holly want to be with him? Holly doesn't say. Literally, she doesn't say anything -- the conceit of the film is that she is a mute. That's hard for an actor to pull off, but also relieves her of having to explain her motivations.

This failure of plausibility extends even to minor plot points. For instance, Anna Paquin (the daughter) is depicted as fiercely loyal to her mother from the get-go, yet she betrays her mother's adultery to her step-father. Why? (Ryan: "So the movie can happen!") It would have been simple to have a couple of scenes where the daughter bonds with her step-father to support a scenario where her loyalties become divided, but no, nothing like that. There is a scene that, in retrospect, could be construed as the daughter learning that adultery might be bad (remember, there is no religion in the movie), but this scene was mostly played for giggles.

Since this is a movie review, I should admit that the movie was well acted, especially considering what the cast had to work with. Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin plausibly earned their Oscars on the merits -- 1993 was a strong year for movies, but not especially a strong year for female leads. That said . . . taking her clothes off probably put her over the top.

An aside in the genre of writing about the decline in the quality of movie sex. As other writers have explored, there isn't nearly as much in mainstream American movies as there used to be. There is still some in foreign and independent films, but it strikes me as low in quality. If I had been asked to list the hottest actresses of the '80s and '90s, Holly Hunter would not have been on the list. But I was struck by the fact that her 1993 appearance was easily top 10% of anything I've seen lately.