If you require action and special effects, The Piano is not your movie. If, instead, good acting and elaborate symbolism is your thing, The Piano should be a wonderful experience. Personally, I found Anna Paquin the worthwhile part of the movie, the rest of it being finely made but ultimately not fully captivating.

The Piano revolves around Ada (Holly Hunter), a mute Scottish woman who has been sent as a wife to New Zealand. Together with Ada travels her piano – Ada's only means for communication – and her eight year old daughter Flora (Anna Paquin). Ada's fresh husband Stewart (Sam Neill), a man of British origin, deems the piano too difficult to transport all the way to his house through the wet, muddy jungle. The piano is left on the beach despite Ada's wordless protests.

Stewart's closest neighbor is Baines (Harvey Keitel), who has also moved from England, but abandoned the British ways in favor of Maori life style. Ada persuades him to take her down to the beach to the Piano. Listening to Ada play gets Baines interested in Ada. He buys the piano from Stewart, who never asks Ada's opinion on the matter. So gets started the love triangle between the three, the central plot of the movie.

The acting performances range from good to outstanding. The story has many layers, the characters are deep and real. It's an all around great movie according to many people, but it failed to completely capture my attention. What did capture my attention was Anna. It's hard to say if it's her outstanding acting or her natural charm that makes me watch her over and over again in this movie. It could be the acting: she did win an Oscar for it, making her the youngest ever Oscar winner at the age of 11. The picture at the top left corner of this web site (http://youngactressreviews.org, in case you're reading this review elsewhere) is of her at the Oscar ceremony.

But it could be just her being herself, too, as she is a beauty, and a delight to see in even the worst of her movies. In The Piano, she makes a believeable child character, with a broad range of emotions and expressions. If it's not obvious by now, I'm biased when speaking about Anna, but in my opinion the way she speaks her lines is quite unparalleled, and they are such interesting lines too: Ada speaks often in the sign language, and Flora translates that, speaking the words the way Ada would want them spoken, in a manner that is delightfully headstrong and often cute for a child – and all that in Anna's unique New Zealand accent.

The audio track is full of good piano music. While Ada's playing – which the actress, remarkably, performed herself – works best when heard in the context of the movie, it's enjoyable even as stand alone music. The technical quality of the DVD leaves something to hope for. The movie is not available in widescreen and the film is grainy. This is a shame, because the cinematography is otherwise beautiful.

Many reviewers praise The Piano highly. It's an "art movie," the sort that movie reviewers and connoisseurs appreciate. If you're interested in that aspect of the movie, I recommend the many lengthy reviews at IMDB, to which there is a link on the right. Myself, I regard The Piano as the best child actress performance I've seen, and by a wonderful, beautiful actress at that. I gave Anna four and half stars for this movie, and would have given five had she been the main character.