When I first heard about Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher”, about a sexually repressed instructor at the Vienna Conservatory, I concept it was exactly the kind of movie I didn’t want to witness. 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 effect savage fun of the hypocrisy of bourgeois sexual respectability in “Belle de Jour” (1966)? Wasn’t Haneke a limited unhurried 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 squawk more about her character – her inner rage, her self-hatred – than most actors can attain 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 explain the High Culture spiritually deforms those who buy in it (and I don’t judge 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 – gain a protective cocoon around herself that fails to protect her from troublesome feelings and desires. The film is somewhat similar to Neil Jordan’s ample film, “The Butcher Boy” whose protagonist uses an opposite strategy – relentless obedient cheer -to cloak the absolute misery he’s sinking into. In these two films, as well as other unique films like Noe’s “I Stand Alone”, Nyutten’s “L’Humanite”, Haneke’s other modern 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 expansive uncertainty as to ability of others to ameliorate the misery that man hands to his fellow man.
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“The Piano Teacher” is critical – famous even – not because Isabelle Huppert is asked to do things on camera few major actresses would willingly agree to. The film gets legal to the sunless 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 spy around us. The film is extremely distributing, enraging but not empty – it was the most spicy fraction of cinema to be release in the US last year.
The Piano Teacher shows us a few days in the life of a terrorized woman who is both victim and victimizer. Isabelle Huppert briliantly plays the portion of Erika Kohut, a middle-aged piano teacher at a music college in Vienna. Annie Giradot is no less effective as her domineering and watchful mother. The two women abuse one another physically and verbally. This relationship is long standing and comes to a crisis as the film progresses.
Erika is unable to atomize the bonds that set aside her to her mother. Instead, like a child who has never grown up, she wants to please her mother, but is driven to act out her have fantasies secretly. Her mother appears to be unaware of the deep seated repression that is tantalizing her daughter. What she does peruse is an inflamed, hateful person who lies to her and deceives her frequently.
Erika’s sexual frustration takes the gain of physical and pschological self-hate. She visits porn shops to degrade herself and she mutilates her body to distract her from the intense psychological damage she suffers constantly.
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At school her madden takes the produce of verbal abuse to her students who are unable to attain the artistic integrity she demands. What appears to be an inflated sense of her hold importance as an artist masks her frustration at being second-rate. She is not obedient enough to be recognized as an artist in her beget accurate. Her hatred of herself and her inadequacy as an artist prompt her to strike out at students and colleagues alike.
Into her seething cauldron of despair comes a young engineering student, Walter Klemmer, wonderfully played by Benoit Maginel, who wants to spy Schubert with her. At first she refuses him, but pressure by the school to rep him forces her to work with him. The sexual tension between teacher and pupil is immediately apparent and moves forward to a collision some reviewers have likened to a dreadful car accident.
In the extinguish we recognize Erika and her student reduced to the lowest well-liked demoninator as human beings. At first Erika is successful at dominating her young student, but the tables are turned as she becomes dependent on him. Both teacher and student are playing a zero sum game to lose. The final climax and its denoument leave Erika a wounded, broken woman.
The director, Michael Haneke, elicits finely tuned performances by all the players, particularly Huppert, who is ravishing in the title role. Haneke has made this film for adults only. It is gloomy and disturbing from beginning to waste with moments of harm and violence that are as trusty as anything one is likely to leer on the mask.
Huppert as the piano teacher has no redeeming qualities we are able to observe in the short set of time covered by the film. Viewers looking for a fine and friendly entertainment are urged to search elsewhere. Haneke shows us a shadowy side of life and he is unflinching in its portrayal.
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