Wedge: the piano is in the storage room. This paragraph is dedicated to Ada’s personal situation.
Beginning: The piano is on the beach. This part is divided into several smaller parts.
1. Landing: This paragraph mainly reflects Ada's resistance to the new environment. The vulgarity of the local men also sets off Ada's nobility and purity.
2. Welcome: Stewart and Bain come on stage, ready to take Ada back to the city. The conflict here is mainly in the quarrel between Ada and Stewart over whether to take the piano. Stewart won, but what this victory showed was his incomprehension of Ada, which was a very bad start to their marriage.
3. Marriage: Some trivial montages, showing Ada's incompetence with the rude and human affection of this place, and how bad her marriage is
. 4. Xunqin: This is a very exciting section. Ida hoped that Bain would take her to the beach to find a piano, and then played a piece, showing a very happy side.
Development: The piano is at Bain's house. Bain had an idea for Ada, and wanted to reach out to her through piano lessons. In this period, on the one hand, Bain and Ada's contact is heating up, and Stewart is also trying to save their awkward marriage.
Climax: The piano is at Stewart's house. Here are a few more parts.
1. Confession: Bain felt that his behavior was overdone and decided to return the piano to Ada, but Ada felt a little awkward to play the piano alone. She realized that Bain was already a very important person to her, so she confessed.
2. Confinement: Stewart was very angry after discovering the relationship between the two, and confined Ada in the room. He also tried his best to make Ada fall in love with him.
3. Severe fingers: Bain is about to leave the colony. Ada hopes to convey his love before he leaves, but Stewart finds out. In a rage, Stewart chopped off one of Ada's fingers and gave it to Bain.
4. Standoff: Stewart came to Bain's house at night and decided to let Bain take Ada away according to Ada's wishes.
Ending: The piano is at sea. Ada and Bain left the colony, and Ada attempted to commit suicide at sea, but a voice in her told her to let her live, and finally she chose to live.
Epilogue: The piano is on the bottom of the sea. Ada and Bain live happily together, and then a meaningful monologue——
At night I think of my piano in its ocean grave
and sometimes of myself floating above it.
Down there everything is so still and silent,
it lulls me to sleep.
It is a weird lullaby, and so it is...
It is mine.
There is a silence where hath been no sound.
There is a silence where no sound may be
In the cold grave, under the deep deep sea .
in fact, this larger narrative framework is composed by two clues that progress Ida and two men's relationship, we look one by one.
Let me talk about Bain first, this is the so-called "main line". The starting point of the relationship between these two people was when Bain took Ada to find the piano. Ada, who was happily playing the piano, was undoubtedly beautiful. Baine was attracted by this beauty and had the idea of contacting her. But in fact, we have reason to believe that he has long been enamored with Ada, otherwise he would not saddle his horse while saying "I can't take you there".
Next is the very erotic piano lesson. Some people think that Bain's activities are driven by love. I can't agree with this view. There is only desire between these two people, no love. Bain's purpose from the beginning to the end of the class is very clear, that is, to get to bed with Ada step by step. How can this be called love? And what does the director think of true love? In fact, there are instructions in the film. When Ada and her daughter were talking about the girl’s father, she said in sign language: "I don’t need words with your father. I can directly convey my heart to him. He can hear him. But then he became scared and afraid. Listen to my voice." This is the meaning of true love-the courage and desire to listen, a kind of understanding.
There is no such wish for Baine. He has never understood Ada from beginning to end. When Ida found him to confess his confession, he said: "I want you to care about me, but you don't. Now you are back. If you don't come with a little feeling for me, then I hope you will go out." After Ada dedicated her body to her, he still asked: "Why are you doing this? Will you come again?" Even when the little girl brought him the finger that Ada dropped for him, he still asked: "What did she say?" ——Ada's strong emotions couldn't be let him know, and it was obvious that there was no communication between the two of them.
Look at Stewart again. There is no doubt that he and Ada are not creatures of the same world-he does not understand music, only knows how to do business, and he is self-righteous, and cut off Ada's finger... So many people take it for granted that he is a bad person, in fact, the opposite is true. His love for Ada is the most sincere. He has been trying to understand Ada, hoping to get her love, but he can't do anything about it. Many shots tell us that Stewart's attempt to understand Ada is much stronger than Bain's "I just want you" behavior. When he finally found a way to communicate with Ada, Ada's heart was already with Bain. When he confronted Bain, he said that he heard Ada's voice, just like Ada's original husband. This proves that he loves Ada more than Bain. Regardless of success or failure, he at least tried to listen to Ada's voice and finally understood her, but Bain did not understand her in the end.
What about Ada's feelings for these two men. First of all, she didn't have any feelings for Stewart from start to finish, because she gave him the hat "This man can't understand me". The reason for this hat is that Stewart left the piano on the beach. Because of this, she didn't try to communicate with Stewart at all, and Stewart didn't understand women's minds. These two factors combined were the reasons for the subsequent series of tragedies, not all Stewart's fault.
His feelings for Bain are more complicated. Bain is like a key, opening a lock in Ada's heart, a lock of lust. What Ada wants from Bain is not love, but flesh-Ada has not been touched by a man for many years, and if he is unwilling to be touched by her husband, he will naturally be lonely. After all, Bain is still very attractive The man who has been acting on her all the time, no wonder Ida's heart is itchy. This tickling can also be seen in her transformation to Stewart. She went from ignoring Stewart to caressing and paying attention to Stewart's lower body, which is seeking a kind of obscenity. Her sensuality had been provoked, but she just didn't want to let Stewart touch it, and the other colonists were so rude, she didn't like it, so she could only go to Baine to solve it. So the most important thing about his feelings for Bain is his lust. But there is something else in their relationship, that is the desire to be understood.
The concept of "silence" was mentioned in the monologue at the beginning of the movie. Here, Ada connects silence to death ("silence affects everyone at the end"), and at the same time, she claims that although she cannot speak, she is not silent. Because she has a piano. Silence can of course refer to death, but at the same time it is a state of being unable to communicate. For her, the piano is a symbol of her life itself, and it is also a means for her to communicate. At the end of this part, a maid interrupts Ada’s piano performance-this is a very intriguing scene. Why did she stop playing the piano because a maid found her? Maybe she doesn't want others to hear her voice. She is a very closed person and doesn't need any audience-in this way, the piano has another meaning: Ada's self-world.
She is a person who does not need an audience, but when Bain returns the piano, she always has to look back when she plays the piano. Of course, this can be understood as she wants Bain, but in a broader sense, she Perhaps what I want is not Bain, but a listener, someone who can understand her. Her personal world can no longer satisfy her-this is another meaning of Bain's key. He freed Ada from his closed inner world, whether it was Bain's original intention or not. She needs someone who can understand her piano. The only person in the colony who understands him is Baine. After all, he can listen to her playing the piano well, although she doesn't know what he thinks when he is listening. Bain became Ada's only choice.
So the relationship between these three people became like this: Stewart wanted to communicate with Ada, but he didn't know how to contact her, and Ada didn't want to talk to him; Ada's heart was liberated by Bain, and Ada was right. He has feelings, so Ada wants her to listen to her own voice, but Bain doesn't. Ada's relationship with these two men was lame, but as her only choice, she chose Bain-this choice was a compromise of her own desires, and it was also an illusion of a woman's sensibility. She thought Baine loved her, but in fact it was Stewart who loved her.
The ending of the film feels very unbelievable. Stewart agreed to give Ada to Bain, which was supposed to be what Ada wanted, but in the end she wanted to throw the piano away and die with the piano. She committed suicide and escaped in the middle of her suicide. Why? This requires studying the symbolic meaning of the piano. As mentioned above, the piano is the way she communicates and the meaning of Ada’s life. If her finger is broken, she can’t play the piano, so she can’t communicate with others, and her life doesn’t seem to be anymore. It makes sense; in addition, the piano also represents the world of Ada's self. She wants to abandon this old self-that self contains her purity and has not been contaminated by lust-but when she discards this self, she again Reluctant, maybe it is a bit of disgust for the self that is no longer pure, so I want to end my own life. She finally chose to live again, which was considered a kind of Nirvana—he realized that the piano was not the only means for her to communicate. She abandoned the old way of communication and prepared to find a new meaning for her life; she also accepted it. I got lust, accepted my impurity, and accepted my liberation. At the end we see Ada learning to speak, this is the new way of communication she has found. She will dream that she is dead, and feel the real silence-she is indeed dead, that is her in the past, that pure self.
In fact, the whole movie is about a liberation process, or the growth of a woman. The characters in Chop Pien movies often can't distinguish between lust and love, and some even directly embrace lust and give up love. The director sees this behavior as a kind of progress, a kind of female liberation. So this is a very feminine movie. It is teaching lesbians to affirm their desires and grow up, abandon the social morality that restrains them, and finally get liberation and Nirvana-this is why I can't give four stars, this The reason is too unacceptable.
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