Introduction

Summary

I think that it's a strange heritage that I have as a pakeha New Zealander, and I wanted to be in a position to touch or explore that. In contrast to the original people in New Zealand, the Maori people, who have such an attachment to history, we seem to have no history, or at least not the same tradition. This makes you start to ask, “Well, who are my ancestors?” My ancestors are English colonizers – the people who came out like Ada and Stewart and Baines.

(Jane Campion, “The Making of The Piano”)

Although President Clinton is quoted as saying that he couldn't understand “what all the fuss [was] about,” The Piano won three U.S. Academy Awards in 1994, for best actress (Holly Hunter), best supporting actress (Anna Paquin, the youngest actress ever to win the award), and for best screenplay (Jane Campion). In 1993 it also shared top French honors, the Cannes film festival's prestigious Palme d'or (with Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine), making Jane Campion the first woman and the first New Zealander to win this award. In the wake of its Cannes success, The Piano received extraordinary critical and popular attention, and by the time it opened in the United States, in late 1993, word of mouth about it practically assured its commercial success.

Like Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991), though, The Piano generated a popular discussion that was often as divided as it was intense.