Essay: “The Piano” and “Raise the red lanterns”

Introduction
“The Piano” movie was released in 1993, in New Zealand. Action takes place in 1850s and the movie makes an emphasis on the role of women in a male-dominated society of nineteenth century. The film was directed and written by a woman director – Jane Campion. The Piano won lots of prestige awards such as Oscars for best actresses in leading and supporting roles, also for a best screenplay. In addition, Jane Campion became a first female woman to win a reputable and honorable award as a best director on Cannes film festival and Los Angeles critics association film awards, which was a phenomenal occurrence in a film history. “The Piano” had a gross of $34 million US dollars just in five months of release. The main genres of the movie are romance, drama and music. Moreover, the primary audience are adults, for the reason that movie is rated “R”.
Synopsis
“The Piano” is a story about a mute woman, who was sent to New Zealand – along with her little daughter – for a marriage arranged by her father, her voice is a piano and her interpreter is her daughter. While they were moving, she was separated with her piano. Ada was feeling depressed because of the separation with her piano and she makes multiple attempts to return her piano back by showing her anger with crushing the dishes. Ada’s husband and Baines make a deal: Alistair trades Ada’s piano teaching lessons to the land, which he desired to own. Consequently, Baines offers to give back one key for doing some sexually related actions. Ada had mixed feeling about this deal, but she agrees to do it. As time passes, Ada and Baines became closer, at the same time, Ada and Alistair did not have any sexual relationship throughout the period of their marriage. One day, Alistair witnesses the moment of his wife’s disloyalty, but he acts as he has not seen anything and gave Ada a chance. Soon her husband left home for a journey with Ada’s promise not going to Baines. Nevertheless, she broke the promise and sent her daughter to Baines with a piano key, which had a confession on it. Flora, not liking the relationship between her mother and Baines, told the truth to her “papa”. Touched on a sore place, Alistair chopped off Ada’s finger, divorced and sent her off along with Flora and Baines. At the end of the movie Ada had a happy life with Baines, even trying to learn how to speak with a great progress in it.
Contrast
“The Piano” and “Raise the red lanterns” have a list of similarities and differences. One of the differences is how both female protagonists face adversities. Although Ada is mute and cannot express herself with words, she never gives up, which shows the presence of determination in her personality. For example, how Ada insists to return the piano and she shows her anger by crashing the dishes and telling “The Piano is mine”. Only with that action she showed her power and grit. If she makes a decision for herself, it means that she must reach her aim. Songlian, on the contrary, simply complied to the difficulties in her life and let them to brake her not only physically, but mentally as well. The first time she showed her vacillation was when she obeyed her stepmother’s decision, instead of continuing her studies at the university. Unlike Ada, Songlian lacked the courage and fortitude, which obviously lead to tragic ending of the film. For instance, even though she had to be a rich man’s concubine, she was attracted to her husband’s son. Nonetheless, she preferred to stay imprisoned in that house, living unhappy life, without fighting for her own happiness.
Similarity
The main similarity between two films is the gender inequality. One common scene in both movies was unfaithfulness of wives to their husbands. In the “Raise the red lanterns”, Meishan – the third mistress, who used to be Master’s beloved wife, a former opera singer, had an affair with the family doctor Gao. When her husband found out about her dishonest behavior, he punished her extremely cruelly: she was killed. The same situation occurred in “The Piano”. Similarly, to the Meishan’s and Doctor Gao’s affair, Ada and Baines had a secret relationship. Actually, Ada’s husband not only finds out about their relationship, but witnesses the whole process. The same as in Raise the Red lanterns, Alistair punishes Ada, by chopping off her finger, which is not as grim as Meishan’s punishment. These scenes describe women’s primary role and the common quality that they must had at that time – faithfulness. From these scenes we can easily observe the gender inequality in terms of relationship, if women are cheating on their husbands, then they must be punished, but at the same time there is no punishment for a cheating husband.