As a sounding instrument, the piano plays an important role in the film. The heroine Ada has been aphasia since she was six years old. She can only talk to herself. If the aphasia in childhood is understood as some kind of resistance and resistance in the inner world of a woman to the rules of the outside world, then the piano is the way she formed a dialogue with the world when she was growing up. The piano side shows Ada's inner world, and the piano is saturated with her views and expectations of the world. Therefore, in a sense, the piano is one of the most important things for her in this world.
Ada was married to New Zealand by her father, so she set foot on the uncivilized and desolate island with her daughter and piano. If marriage takes women from a familiar environment into an unfamiliar and unknown environment—the unknown comes with fear—if love and companionship dispel fear, then Ada is nothing. Even, in this marriage, she even lost the piano. She was a lonely person.
What love does Ada need? When watching the movie, I always have this question. Why did she choose cypress? When Ada mentioned Bo for the first time, she angrily said to her husband, "He's a rough man!" This is the truth. When Bo's hand stroked Ada's skin, he could even clearly see what was hidden on his fingernails. Nasty dirt. But Bai understands what is most important to Ada, and he is willing to listen to the emotions and content expressed in Ada's piano. Even if he doesn't understand the rhythm, he may not understand what Ada is playing and what he wants to express.
As a big difference from Bai, Ada's husband, Stuart, may not understand, but he is unwilling and unable. As one of the products of the same civilization system, Stewart has his own strong theory. In his heart, he has a strong premise of what his wife should "look like", and "piano" is not a consideration for the qualities a wife should have. Aside from being cranky, he's a good man. The tragedy between him and Ada, apart from external intervention, is the root cause of the strong presuppositions and strong theories held by the two against the world and marriage.
After losing her fingers, Ada tried to sink to the bottom of the sea with the piano. Then maybe she can really talk to herself. However, she survived, wearing steel fingers and strangely continuing to play her own piano.
If the director is telling the story of how a woman gets on with herself, that's a heavy and inconclusive topic. Because everyone has their own answers, and in the end, they can only choose and meet their own destiny.
The tragedy of the story is that the director presupposes the fate of women's aphasia from the very beginning, the dissonance of mind and body (aphasia), and the impossibility of achieving such harmony.
Such films may be able to achieve more profound ideas, but they are still not enough. Because, in this film, in the process of women's exploration, the role of daughters and the roles of men are the real characters in aphasia. If you want to understand yourself better, you might as well understand others first. The world is a mirror, and when Ada's mirror always has only her own face, her world is always incomplete.
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