I've just finished The Piano, and it's quite a movie. From the Netflix description:
Holly Hunter stars as Ada McGrath, a mute but strong-willed 19th-century Scottish expatriate who arrives in New Zealand with her daughter (Anna Paquin) and her beloved piano in tow. Although betrothed to a landowner (Sam Neill), she's pulled into an affair with a laborer (Harvey Keitel). Hunter and Paquin both won Oscars for their performances in this haunting drama from writer-director Jane Campion."She's pulled into an affair with a laborer."
What they mean by that line is that when her new fiance takes her posessions, all but her piano, up from the beach to his house inland, the laborer hauls it up to his house, and asks her to prostitute herself to him as payment for later returning her piano to her. Where I come from, the sexual acts she engages in are called "coercion" and are fucking messed up. Somehow, in between the groping, frotteurism and later rape, he expects her to fall in love with him. At one point he rips her shirt, trying to get at her, and wonders why she resists. Later, they have sexual intercourse, he is wracked with sadness, not because he raped her, or has been forcing her into ever-more-escalating acts of sexual degradation, but because she doesn't love him. He is so distraught by this that he gives her back her own piano, even though by their agreement, she hasn't paid for it fully.
"A mute but strong-willed 19th-century Scottish expatriate..."
She's disabled. We've seen countless examples of disabled people being taken advantage of - financially, sexually, emotionally - and it seems like this is not a new trend. Her father marries her off to a man living in New Zealand, whom she's never met. But of course her father knows better than her what she needs - not only is she a woman, she's a mother, and a disabled one at that! We Should Definitely Help Her, because We Know Better.
The laborer takes advantage of the fact that she can't scream, can't tell her new fiance about his disgusting proposition and proceeds to sexually exploit her, using the only other thing she loves besides her daughter- her piano- as the hostage that she's willing to do anything for to rescue. We Should Definitely Love Her, because We Know Better.
Somehow, via the magical coercion-as-courtship romantic pathway, she does fall in love with him. She goes to him willingly, and they have magical love-at-last sex. You know, the kind that abused women have after their sense of self has been stripped away and abuse is all they understand anymore. Oh hey look, We Did Know Better. Told You So.
When her fiance finds out that she doesn't love him (not that he's made more than a cursory effort to get to know her, and leaves her fucking piano on the beach as his first action as fiance), he tries to rape her in the forest. She can't scream, but she fights, fights, pulls herself away using the trees, and the attempted rape is not completed. He then boards up the windows on his house, and nails a board to the door - the outside. He forbids her from seeing him. She pines. On the news that the laborer is leaving for good, the fiance takes off the boards. She goes to her fiance in the night, and touches him, tries to be with him like she is expected to, even though the closest they've ever been was the earlier attempted rape in the forest. We Should Definitely Have Her, because We Are Owed.
When she sends a message to the laborer the next day, telling him her heart belongs to him, it's intercepted by her fiance. Guess what he does? CHOPS OFF HER FUCKING FINGER. She goes in to shock, he sends her finger wrapped in a cloth with her daughter* to give to the laborer, with the message that he's never to see her again. While she's recuperating from the loss of her appendage, like, hours after its removal, he decides it's a fantastic time to rape her. Again, his rape isn't completed, because she wakes up. We Told You Not To Make Us Angry, because This Is What You Get.
Eventually, he lets her and her daughter go with the laborer. He admits his defeat, and she happily goes with her first rapist off to live a happy life somewhere else. We Told You We Loved You, and We Always Win In The End.
The portrayal of the Maori people in this movie was also troublesome - I feel like their alternative sexual mores (as depicted in the film, I don't know how accurate they are compared to real life) were presented without judgment other than the cultural biases of the white characters, but the majority of their actions aside from sexual mores was really paternalistic. The Maori were treated as little better than slaves, and while they weren't quite "yessuh massah," the behavioral resemblance between them and The Good Black Slave was really obvious. They often stopped what work they were doing for their white "employers" to go off and do "native" things, and were greatly looked down upon by the white characters for their childlike actions, occasionally even regarded with fear. This is also pretty fucked up, it seems like directors can't figure out a way to depict a group of brown people as anything other than slaves, villains, or Noble Savages. We Fear Your Otherness, so We Try Our Best To Keep You Down.
Feminism is all about intersectionality. This film portrays a few of the many indignities that people suffer as women, mothers, disabled persons and non-white persons. It however, fucks up entirely in its portrayal of coercion-as-courtship as something good, romantic, dramatic, worthy of merit and accolades. This movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director. People swoon over the "sexy" scenes with Harvey Keitel, and Sam Neill. You know, the rape scenes, the sexual coercion scenes. Netflix tagged this movie as "Emotional, Steamy, Romantic."
This movie is actually "Fucked Up, Triggering, Horrific."
* Majorly fucked up. Beyond-words-fucked-up.
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