72. Worn Down Piano &...

Lyrics

Each Tuesday morning, they'd all stand in line;
the auction would open promptly at nine.
The gavel came down on the auctioneer's block
and the bidding began on a grandfather's clock.

Next up for bids in the rear of the room,
a piano worn down and a bit out of tune.
Whoí•ll start the bidding?, the auctioneer cried.
No voices rang out, so just put it aside.

Shouts filled the room and the auction went on
when the cries of the crowd were stopped by a song.
Everyone turned to the rear of the room,
to that worn down piano, a bit out of tune.

Oh the days long ago when the crowds came around
to hear that piano ring out with sound,
but the crowds have all gone and the symphony's through
and the piano cries out: 'let me play once for you'.

A man with a torn coat and a hole in one shoe
sat playing the song that nobody knew.
The music rang out and that song filled the room
from that worn down piano, a bit out of tune.

Then from the crowd a man shouted a bid
One thousand dollars for that piano I'll give.
Two thousand, Three thousand, and the bidding went on
as the man in the torn coat kept playing that song.

The bidding grew tense each bid more and more
í”till the five thousand figure rang out from the floor,
the man in the torn coat just sat there and stared
playing that song as if no-one were there.

Oh the days long ago when the crowds came around
to hear that piano ring out with sound,
but the crowds have all gone and the symphony's through
and the piano cries out: let me play once for you.

The man in the torn coat played as if to say
I too want you, piano but I've nothing to pay.
I'd give all I own if you could be mine,
but all I can bid is this bottle of wine.

The sound of the gavel rang out through the air,
the auctioneer cried: Top that bid if you dare.
Just give him the piano, maestro play on.
but where has the man, in the torn coat gone?

It's a quarter past five and the bidding is done,
everything's sold and now leave one by one.
The auction is over and left in that room
is that worn down piano, still a bit out of tune.

Oh the days long ago when the crowds came around
to hear that piano ring out with sound,
but the crowds have all gone and the symphony's through
and the piano cries out: let me once play for you.


I like this song. It's basically a, slightly silly, tribute to piano music that shows John Miles how to write a song in praise of music. I didn't think very hard about what movie to link this song to. I simply chose to watch a famous movie involving a piano I had not seen yet. 

The Movie:  The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

The Piano often feels like Jane Campion's response to Out of Africa. Obviously Campion probably didn't care about criticizing Out of Africa when making this movie, but while I was watching it I couldn't help but think how this movie basically does everything right that Pollack's movie did wrong. But before writing about that the performances by Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel have to be mentioned. They both seem to relish the fact that they get to play characters quite unlike any they are usually asked to play and fully commit to their. Especially Holly Hunter's Ada McGrath is the kind of character that seems to have no real reference point in American film. She is a mute (but not deaf), though we never really learn why and it is implicated that she is mute by choice. And her muteness is never presented as a handicap. She communicates through written notes, sign language which her daughter (Anna Paquin) translates, and her piano. Apart from her muteness Ada is presented as a relatively normal woman. Holly Hunter presents her without ever resorting to showy acting and creates enormous sympathy for her character. She won an Oscar for this performance and it could not have been more deserved. Anna Paquin won one too, but while she gives a good performance, I didn't find it anything special. Interestingly she beat, among others, Holly Hunter who was also nominated for her (much more showy, but also pretty good) supporting role in The Firm. 

The Piano won one more Oscar, for Jane Campion's screenplay. It would have won the whole thing probably, if it wasn't for Schindler's List. It would have been highly deserving. The plot is not highly original, but it is told with great invention. In the 1850's Ada is sent to New Zealand for an arranged marriage with a colonialist landowner, named Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill). It's clear from the start that this is not going to be successful and soon Ada starts an affair with George Baines (Keitel). When Allisdair finds out, things go wrong.

Campion tells this relatively generic story in a very interesting way. She is helped by the great, darkened cinematography and the weird (coastal) landscape of New Zealand, which create an eerie, otherworldly mood. There are some utterly fantastic shots when Ada arrives on the beach and has to leave her piano there. The sight of a sole piano on this otherwise enormous, abandoned beach is quite astonishing and disorienting. That piano eventually finds its way to the canny trader George, who proposes to give the piano to Ada if she will let him watch her play. Anytime she plays, she'll get a piano key in return. For every time she lies next to him, she'll get for keys, and if she'll 'lie with him naked', she'll get five keys, etc. Obviously Ada hates this arrangement and hates George too, but the piano means so much to her she goes through with it. At this point I sort of expected how the movie would proceed, but it does a rather surprising thing. One day George stops the arrangement, claiming it makes Ada a whore and him wretched, and gives her the piano back, while declaring his love for her. We realize that George is basically a decent guy and a shy romantic. Eventually Ada realizes this too and only now does she start to love George and have an affair with him. Campion's feminist message is quite clear here and it's laid out in an original and smart way. The affair is only acceptable once Ada has freely chosen for it and has consented to it. That's in a nutshell the main point Campion is making throughout this movie, for example in the depiction of the failing marriage between Ada and Allisdair. 

While Alisdair claims George to be a silly 'oaf' who cannot read, it is actually he, who is the oaf. George, though he really cannot read, is the one who understands both Ada and New Zealand. Allisdair is a dumb colonialist, who doesn't understand why Ada doesn't love him. In order to find out what to change he asks stupid, wrong questions to the elderly ladies there. He also doesn't understand the Maori and is flabbergasted to learn that they wouldn't want to sell him their land. He wonders why they would want it, and why it is considered their land in the first place. He behaves like a stereotypical British colonialist, who believes the British have some sort of natural right to rule over New-Zealand. Had this movie been made with the mindset of Out of Africa (or of many other Hollywood pictures) it would have sort of agreed with him, in regard with both his views on Ada as his views on New-Zealand. The Piano quite unambiguously presents him as a doofus. This is contrasted with George who not only tries to understand Ada, but also the Maori's. He tries to adapt to their ways and to live together with them, to speak their language. The other European colonialists therefore see him as a wild, unstable, weirdo. Again, this is completely different to how in Out of Africa Karen's relationship with the Africans was presented. There, it were the Africans who were forced to learn the ways of the European colonialists. 

After all this praise, it is fair to note that I absolutely hated the final scenes of the movie. Using cheap, terribly cliched sentimentality, complete with an on-the-nose musical score, they aim for profundity and never get there. Besides that, they are really unfair to the character of Ada. Luckily the filmmakers did not do, what I for a second feared they would, but they put a dent in what was otherwise a really good movie.