The Piano Shot By Shot Analysis Of

The Piano: Shot By Shot Analysis Of The Opening Scene Essay, Research Paper

There is passion in all of us. Some of us struggle all our lives to express this vivid personal sense. Others find companions who have that mutual understanding of their shared emotions, overcoming any obsticale that seems to prevent this fusion. This is just one of the many themes discussed in Jane Campion’s The Piano. Ada, our beautifully articulate, but silent heroine is the closest to feeling this fulfillment. She, consciously or subconsciously, chooses to ignore society’s conventional way of communication and, instead, decides to speak through her piano. No one seems to understand Ada’s cry until she and her daughter Flora are reluctantly sent off by Ada’s father to live with their arranged husband/father, Stewart, the epitome of the 19th century colonial nature rapist, in the rainforests of New Zealand. Ironically, Stewart is not the man who hears Ada’s cry. It is Baines, an English born Maori cultured naturalist who aids Stewart in his negotiations with the Maori people, the local natives who own most of this region of the rainforest. Because, at the time, there was a strong emphasis on loyalty to one’s parents and Catholicism, social standards trap her rampant emotions for Baines. Ada, being the most passionate character in the text, rebells against these constricting religous standards and allows her emotions to run wildly and freely. This strong movement away from the constrictions of the Catholic religion in the 19th century is expressed very vividly in the opening scene of The Piano.

In the opening scene of The Piano, Campion gives us a very obstract image that we later learn to be of Ada covering her eyes with her fingers. This we’ll get to later. To illustrate the idea above, we must skip the first five or six shots. The seventh and longest shot is of Ada roaming about in what seems to be a storage room for porcelain pots and tapestries. She moves along about the room with a look of wonder and curiosity. It seems as though she in search of something moving her head from side to side. The camera pans to the right slowly maintaining her central position in the frame until a rather ridged and cold wooden cross enters the frame. The camera allows the cross to take the center of the frame, pushing Ada to the left of it. While this is happening, Ada’s voice discusses Stewart’s opinion on her muteness (I started the quote from the middle of the previous shot to maintian its coherence).

My husband said my muteness does not bother him. He writes – God loves stoned creatures, so why not he. We are good he has God’s patience. For silence affects everyone in the end.

As Ada finishes the last sentence, she pauses, as does the camera, and looks directly away from the cross, off into an opposite space in the room. She continues to move back into the center of the frame, she looks at the wooden cross for a split second, and her voice continues, “The strange thing is I don’t think myself silent.” The camera tilts downward to reveal Ada’s instrument of passion. “That is because of my piano.” She then sits down and allows her emotions run freely through her fingertips, creating a sweet and wild collection of melodic sounds. While Ada continues to express her euphonious passions, the camera continues to pan to the right slowly. A shadowed figure appears through the window looking out into the next hallway. The shadowed figure is followed untill its womanly counterpart appears in the door, staring at Ada. This long take ends and we get a shot of Ada who abruptly stops playing. In this frame we see Ada with a rather angered look, and a viberent redcarpert glowing from the mise-en-scene highly contrasting Ada’s gloomishly gray European garb.

Campion and Director of Photography Stuart Dryburgh packed this long shot with wonderful imagery within the frame. As Ada wanders through the storage room aimlessly, her narration discusses Christianity and God’s patience (not the far greater qualities of God). The camera stops and swaps the central positioning of Ada with the ridge cross. The image of this cross itself suggest a cold and almost ridged constricting quality. The cross symbolizes the cold and contricting qualities of religion and forshadows the obsticles that will block Ada’s wild passion in the future. As Ada continues her search, she finds what she’s looking for in the room, her piano, her ultimate symbol of passion. Ada chooses free unrestricted passion over the cold ridgelines of Catholicism. Campion gives this shot the longest duration in this serise of shots to emphasis its importance to the overall idea of the film. This next shot is of Ada angered because she was rudely interupted. This framing reiterates the idea of Ada choosing to follow her heart rather than her religion because of the abundance of red brightness. This color motif is used in the mise-en-scene when Flora is passionately exaggerating her real father and mother’s wedding and it is also used in Baines’s bedroom where Ada and Baines display their overbearing emotions toward each other. Strong emotions are attached to this color from the begining of the film, and are very prevalent throughout the film. Campion and Dryburgh exhibit wonderful talent in mise-en-scene manipulation to reinforce the importance of unrestricted passion in these two shots.

This idea of passion is so complex and multifacet