With this sublimely stirring fable of desire and creativity, Jane Campion became the first woman to win a Palme d’Or at Cannes. Holly Hunter is achingly eloquent through silence in her Academy Award–winning performance as Ada, an electively mute Scottish woman who expresses her innermost feelings through her beloved piano. When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter (Anna Paquin, in her Oscar-winning debut) to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband (Sam Neill) and a rugged frontiersman (Harvey Keitel) to whom she develops a forbidden attraction. With its sensuously moody cinematography, dramatic coastal landscapes, and sweeping score, this uniquely timeless evocation of a woman’s awakening is an intoxicating sensory experience that burns with the twin fires of music and erotic passion.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Jane Campion and director of photography Stuart Dryburgh, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Campion and producer Jan Chapman
New conversation between Campion and film critic Amy Taubin
New interviews with Dryburgh, production designer Andrew McAlpine, and Maori adviser Waihoroi Shortland
Interview with actor Holly Hunter on working with Campion
“The Piano” at 25, a program featuring a conversation between Campion and Chapman
Interview with composer Michael Nyman
Excerpts from an interview with costume designer Janet Patterson
Inside “The Piano,” a featurette including interviews with Hunter and actors Harvey Keitel and Sam Neill
Water Diary, a 2006 short film by Campion
Trailer
New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Carmen Gray
