Gail Jones,
The Piano.
Sydney: Currency Press, 2007.
ISBN: 978 0 86819 799 9
AUD$16.95 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by Currency Press)

Flagrant poetics: rendering Jane Campion’s The Piano new Gail Jones’ monograph on Jane Campion’s The Piano is the next in the Australian Screen Classics series published jointly by The AFC/National Film and Sound Archive and Currency Press. Others in the series include a variety of films from The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Australia 1972) through Mad Max (Australia 1979), to Walkabout (UK 1971) and The Devil’s Playground (Australia 1976). Each provides a writer with a unique opportunity to develop their style of criticism in the form of a long essay, as a complementary work-of-art to the object under scrutiny. Each functions both as an evocation and as a memorial. They are acts of preservation in that they bind a plethora of material – (in the words of the series editor Jane Mills) opinions, memories, responses, knowledge – into a resource that is at once useful and poetic. The series is predicated on ‘a love of cinema’ and Jones’ essay fulfils this tenet in her homage to Jane Campion’s artistry and her film’s complexity. That The Piano is included recognises precedence of economics over content in defining a national cinema project such as this. The Piano then is an Australian classic – its Australian ownership an assumption not generally supported across the ditch – but confirmed by the film’s iconic status here and internationally.

A long essay on The Piano begs the question – what more can be said? Jones’ stated aim is to assess the film’s ‘unearthly and controversial visions, its attractive powers, and its capacity to alienate and to entrance.’ (5) Her facility as a novelist is evident in the shape of the essay, taking us chronologically from Ada’s Victorian Scotland to the enigmatic ‘Three endings’ in colonial New Zealand. The sections (chapters) are structured so that they mirror the form and the experience of the film. The essay begins at the beginning, with an evocative and compelling discussion of the relevance of the film’s opening sequences and the iconic place the sea and water take within the image system. In this opening and later Jones contextualizes Campion’s intentions by referring to one of her never-produced projects, Ebb, which anticipated this film’s deeper themes. This is an example of the extent of Jones’ research and her skill in using her findings to offer new reflections. Here she develops an argument that the film maker’s primary influences are as literary – Gothic (Goya) and Romantic (Bronte) – as they are cinematic (Bertolucci, Antonioni, Huston…). Jones’ mines Campion’s body of work and other interviews to establish her place in the world, ‘I am not English, I belong to a colonial culture and I had to invent my own fiction,’ (Campion quoted on p 9).

These first two sections also reveal Jones’ other intention – to invoke the poetics of viewing by close analysis through lyrical re-description. This is a great strength of the book. Jones renders shots, scenes, sequences into striking prose that is imbued with Campion’s aesthetics while simultaneously offering dense analysis. Consider:

After this comes one of the most beautiful images in The Piano: filmed in long-shot, Flora and Ada are carried on the shoulders of the sailors, held aloft above the crashing waves. They are transformed by collective labour into composite creatures and pass like multi-limbed mythical figures above the churning foam and silver stripes of a rowdy ocean. Lasting only a few seconds, it is a radical vision of arrival, and of being held against the forces of engulfment. (17-19)

This is one of many instances when Jones couples the sensuousness of the shot with a thematic or theoretical contextualisation of the image.

The Piano is a provocative film in many ways, contesting Aotearoa/New Zealand’s colonial representations, depictions of female and male sexuality and the nature of intimacy between men and women and between mother and daughter. Each part of Jones’ essay addresses particular issues – the influences, the racial, sexual and colonial politics – negotiating deftly the sometimes difficult terrain such a film opens up. Jones suggests a range of theoretical frameworks, feminist/anti-feminist, post/neo-colonial, semiotic/aesthetic, post-structuralist, rather than employing or advocating any one in particular. Often she alerts the reader to the influences within a section with figurative or emblematic titles. ‘Too Strangely Near: the Romantic Plot’ considers the literary influences and storytelling devices. ‘The Mutilation’ and ‘The Uncanny Child’ prompt psychoanalytic musings obliquely. ‘The Colonial Economy’ implies the specifics of the colonial project in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the position of Maori and the use of trade to weight racial and sexual relations. The representation of Maori is the most contentious section of the essay, as it is one of the most controversial aspects of the film. Jones raises the question of Maori representation and includes descriptions of the ways in which the cinematography, for example, replays the colonial project. She voices the radical objections of bell hooks and Leonie Pihama and others to the racialised representation of Maori, then sets about refuting this net of arguments. Jones’ means of recovery is to argue that such representations can be read in a positive light and claims that, ‘This is a very politicised script and the critique of colonial ideology seems direct and clear.’ (28) Defence of this aspect of the film is well-argued but overwrought. It might have been enough to leave these questions open rather than taking an opposing position; Maori/Pakeha relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand remain dynamically precarious.

Jones employs extensive sources including reviews, interviews, critiques, production notes in sometimes lateral ways. A particularly delightful example in ‘Erotics, Feeling and the Masculine,’ is her reference to the diary notes of Claire Corbett (second assistant editor), who describes Campion’s tradition of having ‘a dress day’ every shoot – when everyone had to wear a dress. It is suggested that this practice informs Campion’s understanding and depictions of male sexuality. Examples of remnant lines and scenes from the final draft script that are not in the exhibited film are cited to provide a deeper analysis in places. These vestiges provide a sense of a world not ordinarily accessed. Jones’ account gives fresh insights to an already thoroughly scrutinized film. Her approach suggests new ways to experience The Piano and its accompanying ephemera through poetic reflection and contextual engagement as pleasurable re-enactment.

Hester Joyce,
La Trobe University, Australia.

Created on: Monday, 3 December 2007