Ada and Flora have traveled from Scotland for Ada’s arranged marriage to Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill), a colonist trying to forge a Europeanized life on the relatively untamed New Zealand frontier. The mood of mystery and melancholy reflects the emotional makeup of the most important characters: Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), a woman who has not spoken since she was six years old, and her young daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), who translates her mother’s sign language into speech but doesn’t always follow her eccentric will. Nyman’s smoothly pulsing music was written while the cameras rolled, and when shooting began in a lushly overgrown area of Campion’s native New Zealand, she wanted the ambient blues and greens to convey a sense of being underwater, indirectly foreshadowing the death by drowning that almost happens at the picture’s climax.

These elements were in Jane Campion’s directorial plan from the start, as extras in the Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray/UHD edition show.

But what’s most striking of all is the sheer sensory appeal of the film, which envelops its melodramatic story in sumptuous colors and textures, expertly supplied by cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, and a score blending Michael Nyman’s artfully repetitive riffs with a mellow romanticism unusual in his work. The Piano packs enough material into its 120 minutes for auteurists, feminists, postcolonialists, postmodernists, musicologists, and almost any other variety of critic to find a foothold. Produced by Jan Chapman directed by Jane Campion screenplay by Jane Campion cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh production design by Andrew McAlpine edited by Veronika Jenet starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin, Kerry Walker, and Genevieve Lemon.

The piano jane