The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition) (2002) Review

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The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition) (2002) ReviewWhen I first heard about Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher", about a sexually repressed instructor at the Vienna Conservatory, I thought it was exactly the kind of movie I didn't want to see. In a world awash in pop music, South Park and Britney videos, how could a film about the stultifyingly uptight classical music world have *any* relevance for a post-modern, post-everything film buff (even if he is American?) Didn't Bergman tread this ground 40 years ago? Didn't Bunuel make savage fun of the hypocrisy of bourgeois sexual respectability in "Belle de Jour" (1966)? Wasn't Haneke a little behind the times?
Walking - or I should say staggering - out of the theater 2.5 hours later, I was humbled by the scope of Haneke's and Huppert's achievement. Rarely have I seen a film both so clear-eyed about sexual psychosis and yet so compassionate as well. Isabelle Huppert, who probably wasn't nominated for an Oscar only because the film can be so off-putting to some, gives what can only be described as an intense performance. Her clenched face and the darting movements of her eyes reveal more about her character - her inner rage, her self-hatred - than most actors can achieve with sheets and sheets of dialouge. That's the essence of the film, everything is very formally *controlled* - so that when violence, self-inflicted or otherwise, breaks out, it is startling because it emerges from such as civilized veneer.
If the point of the film were to demonstrate the High Culture spiritually deforms those who engage in it (and I don't think it does), the film would have minimal interest. High culture has been on the defensive so long, it doesn't need to be blamed for driving Isabelle Huppert nuts as well. Rather the film gains its strength from watching a seriously damaged human being - damaged in ways only suggested at - construct a protective cocoon around herself that fails to protect her from troublesome feelings and desires. The film is somewhat similar to Neil Jordan's great film, "The Butcher Boy" whose protagonist uses an opposite strategy - relentless good cheer -to mask the absolute misery he's sinking into. In these two films, as well as other recent films like Noe's "I Stand Alone", Nyutten's "L'Humanite", Haneke's other recent film "Code: Unknown" and Tim Roth's "The War Room", European filmmakers are portraying contemporary Europe as a society rife with cultural and psychological malaise - along with a great uncertainty as to ability of others to ameliorate the misery that man hands to his fellow man.
"The Piano Teacher" is important - essential even - not because Isabelle Huppert is asked to do things on camera few major actresses would willingly agree to. The film gets right to the dark heart of our contemporary malaise - our declining faith in the ability of culture - or anything - to ease us out of our despair and mitigate the cruelty we often see around us. The film is extremely distributing, enraging but not empty - it was the most provocative piece of cinema to be release in the US last year.The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition) (2002) OverviewPIANO TEACHER - DVD Movie

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