894 The Piano Teacher

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swo17
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894 The Piano Teacher

#1 Post by swo17 » Fri Jun 16, 2017 4:52 pm

The Piano Teacher

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Academy Award–winning Austrian director Michael Haneke shifted his focus from the social to the psychological for this riveting study of female sexuality and the dynamics of control, an adaptation of a controversial 1983 novel by Elfriede Jelinek. Haneke finds his match in Isabelle Huppert, who delivers an icy but quietly seething performance as Erika, a middle-aged piano professor at a Viennese conservatory who lives with her mother, in a claustrophobically codependent relationship. Severely repressed, she satisfies her masochistic urges only voyeuristically until she meets Walter (Benoît Magimel), a young student whose desire for Erika leads to a destructive infatuation that upsets the careful equilibrium of her life. A critical breakthrough for Haneke, The Piano Teacher—which won the Grand Prix as well as dual acting awards for its stars at Cannes—is a formalist masterwork that remains a shocking sensation.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Michael Haneke, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with Haneke
• New interview with actor Isabelle Huppert
• Selected-scene commentary from 2002 featuring Huppert
• Behind-the-scenes footage of a postsync session for the film featuring Haneke and Huppert
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Moira Weigel

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domino harvey
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#2 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jun 16, 2017 4:57 pm

No Zizek no sale

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knives
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#3 Post by knives » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:03 pm

I assume it will be the uncut version, but is there any official indication?

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Big Ben
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#4 Post by Big Ben » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:05 pm

For whatever reason this film just never worked for me. It just feels "off" to me. I don't know if this opinion is shared by other members of the board but I remember individuals on old film boards praising it like it was the second coming of Christ.

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rohmerin
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#5 Post by rohmerin » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:42 pm

The only French language movie made by Haneke that works for me. Terrific in all senses, including the hateful Huppert who is superb.
I rewatched two weeks ago and it's hipnotical on its hard auto - degradation. After my shock on its initial release when I saw it in Madrid, I could enjoy it now: complex sexuality meets self represion and unhappiness. That dirty post Freud Vienna (I cant stand Austrians) is described as I saw them.

Spanish DVD is rubbish but my French is not fluent enough. Merde!

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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#6 Post by JabbaTheSlut » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:47 pm

Yes! Haneke's best film.

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colinr0380
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#7 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:47 pm

Great news! This is a very dark film about the desire to be 'used' and the harsh realities of that actually happening as we watch the main character who wields that cruel power of holding the future of her pupils in her hands, whilst also being dominated domestically by her own mother. Also of someone only being able to live vicariously through the experience and expertise (and desires) of others, something which seems to tie Erika here in with the camera wielding protagonists of a number of Haneke's other films, including that sense of moving from being on the passive audience member's side of the screen towards starting to actively participate and manipulate the circumstances of the 'storyline production' of their lives. That's likely the reason for the early explicit scene of Erika's visit to the porno film booth before eventually building up the courage (and equipment!) to test things out for real!

I've started to also think of it as being sort of a perverse story about parents living vicariously through their children (thwarted desires getting revived/dashed through their children), with the final section being a kind of brutal table turning moment. And that kind of generational conflict, betrayal (or at least suspicion and miscommunication between parties as to the different things they want out of life!) is also a major Haneke theme.

I'm also fascinated by that really difficult sadomasochistic relationship between the teacher and her pupil. Is it possible to be submissive whilst also retaining full control? Can you want the excitement of having power taken from you and be dominated whilst also wanting to orchestrate the exact scenario and equipment that will be used in your domination? Is organising the circumstances of your own assault the ultimate act of self-hatred and the only way to have an 'acceptable' sexual experience (where you're just the passive victim of some man's forced desires, instead of someone with your own 'unacceptable' needs. Its an incredibly disturbing yet weirdly moving scene, especially seeing the main character's reactions to what she is going through) whilst being so under the eye of your parents, even if your mother is still haunting the edges of the frame? And has that experience made the central character even more withdrawn, as if now that the darkest desires have actually taken place they still haven't liberated her from her prison? And life goes on, numbed against all pain and needing ever deeper marks inflicted just to feel anything at all.

I'd also add that this has an excellent small role for Susanne Lothar (previously the mother in the original Funny Games) as a parent of one of Huppert's aspiring pupils. Lothar had that amazing haunted look that Haneke put to great use in The Castle, Funny Games, here and later in The White Ribbon too. (Though another favourite Susanne Lothar performance is in the short film from 2001, To Have And To Hold, in which she plays a woman trapped post-car crash in the middle of nowhere with her husband holding her wrist in a death grip and has to work out a way to escape. It feels a bit in the vein of Stephen King's Gerald's Game story)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:07 pm, edited 11 times in total.

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CSM126
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#8 Post by CSM126 » Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:02 pm

Big Ben wrote:For whatever reason this film just never worked for me. It just feels "off" to me. I don't know if this opinion is shared by other members of the board but I remember individuals on old film boards praising it like it was the second coming of Christ.
I found it to be the brutally dimwitted product of a brutally dimwitted filmmaker who thinks the most blunt, obvious metaphors are somehow profound and artistic, but then again I feel that way about every Haneke film I've ever watched. I guess it's not as humiliatingly bad as Funny Games US, but that's damning with faint praise.

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Malickite
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#9 Post by Malickite » Sat Jul 22, 2017 4:53 pm

"New, restored 2K digital transfer" changed to "New, restored high-definition digital transfer"

It seems these new "Kino" titles are being rushed out.

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Ribs
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#10 Post by Ribs » Sat Jul 22, 2017 7:33 pm

Certainly seems to be a generous definition of "rushed."

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Never Cursed
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#11 Post by Never Cursed » Mon Aug 28, 2017 9:08 pm


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mfunk9786
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#12 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Aug 28, 2017 9:23 pm

Still doesn’t shed any more light on the source of the restoration - one would hope this info is in the booklet, at least

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cdnchris
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#13 Post by cdnchris » Mon Aug 28, 2017 10:46 pm

Notes say: "Approved by director Michael Haneke, this new digital transfer was created in high definition on an ARRISCAN film scanner from the 35mm original camera negative at Listo in Vienna. The restoration was performed at Listo, andbthe color correction was supervised by Haneke."

I haven't watched it yet.

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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#14 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Aug 28, 2017 10:54 pm

Great to hear that it’s from the original negative at any rate. The Beaver caps look great.

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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#15 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Jul 25, 2019 4:14 pm

Re-watched this earlier in the week and I think it stands as one of Haneke's stronger films--perverse and chilly, but with more dark humor than one typically finds in his films, and touches of wackiness that I appreciate more with each subsequent viewing.

A question for those with a deeper knowledge of French: is Walter's final line to Erika ("I look forward to hearing you play") meant to be a suggestive pun? To my ear the French word for play (jouer) sounds similar to the word for "to cum" (jouir) but I have no idea whether a native French speaker would hear it that way.

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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#16 Post by dda1996a » Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:29 pm

I watched it for the first time, along with first watches of Funny Games US and Happy End, and rewatched of Seventh Continent, 71 Fragments, Code Unknown and Cache.
I generally prefer Haneke in cryptic mode (the ones I rewatched basically), but I'm a fan of most of his films (Happy End and Benny's Video are the only lesser ones to my eyes).

Which is why I worried at first, because I hated the mother character and all she stands for. Luckily, Huppert is brilliant as ever, and the film started moving towards what made Phantom Thread so good for me, this underlying need of another person, trying to do what your partner wants when it doesn't always allign with yours. I have no clue regarding BDSK outside of watching 50 Shades and Secretary, but like Thread this is as close as I'd probably come to understand this mind set.
Although I'm still unsure about the ending

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TheKieslowskiHaze
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Re: 894 The Piano Teacher

#17 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Sun Aug 02, 2020 4:12 pm

EDIT: I'm messing around with video essays (see Two-Lane Blacktop as well). I made this post a video essay, which you can see here.

I chose this movie for this month's post on my blog. Full text of the post is below:

Beautiful piano music, according to a recital hostess early in The Piano Teacher, is a spiritual experience, hopefully un-sullied by the baser, more gustatory pleasure of a mid-recital buffet. Later on, a young girl’s anxiety about creating said spiritual experience in front of an audience gives her explosive diarrhea. This contradiction—that music is both transcendentally beautiful and also the cause of unstoppable shitting—is the key to the movie’s central motif: the war between Body and Art. Take the titular protagonist, for example, whose hands are as adept at playing Schubert as they are at genital mutilation. Erika seems to truly love music, as conveyed by the glazed-over wateriness of her eyes when she hears piano. But she also seems afraid of art’s divine promise, often following these performances with pedantic nit-picking, fleeing the scene, or actual violence. Perhaps this explains the arc of the movie, her spiral into self-destructive sexual deviancy as an escape from the demands of a decidedly non-deviant art form. Or perhaps not. Huppert’s face is so brilliantly inscrutable that you often question what you think you see in it. That “glazed over wateriness”? Maybe she’s having, as Ben Lerner would say, “a profound experience of art,” or maybe she’s just pining for her next visit to the hardcore porn emporium. Either way, her tragic downfall teaches us that there is little hope of reconciling Art and Body. Perverts can make beautiful art, and everybody, even Schubert, poops.

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