2 - The Last Patriarch

Summary

There is a scene two-thirds of the way through The Piano in which the film's heroine, Ada, lies stretched out on a bed gazing at herself in a small hand-mirror. Just a few hours earlier she had ripped off her clothes and foresworn her marriage vows with the next-door neighbor; now, as is more usual, she is self-contained and inscrutable. From the intensity of her gaze into the mirror, it seems as if she is involved in some kind of confrontation with her own idea of herself, but the nature of that struggle remains undefined. Having chosen to be mute, she has no chance of expressing her feelings in spoken language.

If one is an involved spectator of this film, one is most likely trying to divine what Ada is feeling. Is she satisfied? frightened? desirous? shocked? Does she feel her life has begun again? or does she fear that her actions will soon bring it to an end? Is she in love? Is she able to love?

There are many different answers to these questions and whichever satisfies you, whichever you add to the developing text of The Piano's narration, will likely be the one or several that fit your own life experience and structures of fantasy. For, in The Piano, Jane Campion and her production team have created a compelling and distinctive film that is also unusually open in terms of the opportunities it supplies for the construction of meaning.