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100It is one of those rare movies that is not just about a story, or some characters, but about a whole universe of feeling.
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100In Jan Campion's The Piano, the emotions are deep, fierce, primordial. Sexuality overwhelms the film's characters like ocean waves blasting against a cliffside. [19 Nov 1993]
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100Magical and haunting, The Piano has the power and delicate mystery of a gothic fairy tale. [19 Nov 1993]
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100Campion's script is very well received, but the film finally makes it on cinematics: bleakly beautiful photography, haunting score, and good acting. [12 Nov 1993]
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100Great art is both immediately accessible and eternally elusive, having at its centre a powerful simplicity that speaks to anyone who cares to listen, that rewards every interpretation while embracing none. The Piano is great art.
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100By the end, Campion views all her characters with a compassion bordering on grace, a humanity-like her heroine's-as dark, quiet, and enveloping as the ocean.
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100Prepare yourself for something very special...Here's a severely beautiful, mysterious movie that, as if by magic, liberates the romantic imagination. [16 Oct 1993]
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100With its breathtaking visual style and careful attention to sound and movement, the movie provokes contemplation about the ways people communicate – through words, through music, through sex, and, most significantly, through touch. [14 Dec 1993, p.A14(E)]
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100The Piano plays itself with such contrapuntal richness, it resonates in you forever.
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100The Piano is dark, sublime music, and after it's over, you won't be able to get it out of your head.
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100The story worms further into the guts of Victorian experience than most historical dramas, because it aims at the most neglected aspect of that age, and the most alarmingly modern: its surrealism. [29 Nov 1993, p.148]
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90It takes exceptional acting to enable a story like this to take hold, and Campion has gotten it here. [19 Nov 1993]
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90Campion has spun a fable as potently romantic as a Bronte tale. But The Piano is also deeply cinematic. [22 Nov 1993]
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90The Piano confirms Campion as a major talent, an uncompromising filmmaker with a very personal and specific vision.
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89The wonder of The Piano is that such an outwardly simple story could emerge into such a complex swirl of lingering memories.