Review: The Piano Teacher (2001)
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel
Director: Michael Haneke
Country: Austria | France | Germany
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here
The following review continues Ronan Doyle’s Michael Haneke Director Spotlight.
Passion, like the burning fire to which it is inevitably compared, can both light our lives and destroy them. The hollow existence that is humanity finds fulfilment in the things which drive us most; those which we find ourselves inexplicably consumed with. Life would be cold, dark, and a great deal more difficult without the things about which we are passionate. For some, these are the banal pleasures of stimulating conversation or fine art. For others, life is made worth living by the presence of friends and family. Those that lean more toward the combustible side of the aforementioned metaphor find their fulfilment in passions altogether more dark, primal, and inevitably corrosive.
Though undeniably an artist whose vision was always concerned with the big issues of a growing society in the modern age, Haneke’s work has often been no less singular in its approach, focusing on particular characters whose lives best epitomize the problems he sees in the world. From the depraved Benny to 71 Fragments‘s range of troubled protagonists to those more relatable occupants of Code Unknown’s narrative, many of those around whom Haneke shapes his stories have been fascinating and fully-realized paragons of the human condition. In no other of his films, however, do we meet someone of whom this is as true as The Piano Teacher’s Erika Kohut. An accomplished professor at a Viennese music conservatory, she represents Haneke’s most nuanced and effective capturing of humanity at its most raw and desperately vulnerable.
…capturing of humanity at its most raw and desperately vulnerable.
A distinguished player of Schubert and Schumann, Erika’s consummate professionalism is the result of decades’ worth of hard study of her craft under the stern guidance of her domineering mother, with whom she still lives. It is clear that their dynamic has changed little since Erika was a child; indeed, the film’s very first scene involves her mother chastising her for returning home three hours late and tearing up the dress she bought for herself. “That frock was far too gaudy anyway,” she later adds. “At your age, you should know what suits you.” The two share a relationship that seems stunted in Erika’s teenage years, the minor quibbles they have followed by tearful shows of making-up far more befitting of a pair thirty years their junior.
Caught between the routine drudgery of her job—Haneke here employs a dull and oppressive mise-en-scène brightened only by the glimpses of sunshine beyond the window’s veil—and the regressed entrapment of her domestic life, one would think music Erika’s only escape, the sole vent through which to allow some pleasure into her life. Yet even this, for her, is tainted with a rigidity that has robbed her of the ability to express herself. Any joy she may have once garnered from her instrument has long since faded, the clinical iciness with which she discusses aspects of her playing betraying the reality that even this pursuit to which she has dedicated her life yields no more rewards. We get the distinct impression that her path in life was chosen for her, that her talent saw her forced into more disciplined study that has robbed her of the pleasure this passion once provided. She speaks of the emotion behind the music, yet it is clear that she feels none of this herself, that this too has become just another empty everyday experience.
Isabelle Huppert won the best actress award at Cannes for her portrayal of Erika, and few prizes were ever better deserved. Hers is the kind of performance that seems almost one-note at the film’s beginning—deliberately so—but slowly blossoms, each amended mannerism reworking all that which came before. Huppert builds her character over time, Erika’s icy demeanour and austere façade deconstructed further with each scene to expose more of the vulnerable human being beneath. When we first meet her she is stern in her aloofness, almost content in her emotionlessness. As she remarks at one point: “I have no feelings… if ever I do, they won’t defeat my intelligence.” The way Huppert carries her character’s development is remarkable, layering the frankly unlikeable exterior with little details that slowly bring us around to sympathize with her, however depraved she may come to be.
The way Huppert carries her character’s development is remarkable, layering the frankly unlikeable exterior with little details that slowly bring us around to sympathize with her, however depraved she may come to be.
Few things are more corruptive and dangerous than apathy. The vivacity of life lies in finding ways to escape its drudgery; the little things that give us pleasure make all the more difficult aspects of existence tolerable. Erika, her passion even for the piano lost through her mother’s fascistic commandeering of her playing—“No one must surpass you, my girl”—is apathy incarnate. Her lack of any form of outlet drives her to find expression in darker ways; we find her in the booths of sex shops, sniffing the just-used tissues of the previous customer. Previously a reserved and positively bland woman, the increasingly disquieting sexual acts which Erika engages in—including, but not limited to, masochism—are the expression that explodes from the repression, the disturbing consequences of her unfulfilled life.
It is Erika’s involvement with a new student, Walter, which truly brings out the twisted mentality her years deprived of have produced. Meeting her at a recital, he is drawn to her closed-off coldness, perhaps because it so sharply contrasts with his vibrant energy and passion for piano playing. He is far less technically skilled than she, but the pleasure he still derives from the music is the quintessential difference between them. The turning point in their relationship comes when Erika sees him reassuring a distressed fellow pupil as she cries nervously before an important rehearsal. Perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps out of pity—many aspects of the girl’s mother mirror Erika’s own—she takes action, leading to Walter declaring his love for her. She desires him only sexually, he seeks her emotionally. Their relationship is fraught with misunderstandings and misinterpretations through which interesting questions are raised about love, sex, and the difference between the two.
She desires him only sexually, he seeks her emotionally. Their relationship is fraught with misunderstandings and misinterpretations through which interesting questions are raised about love, sex, and the difference between the two.
Perhaps because it is not a story of his own invention—his television work aside, The Piano Teacher is the director’s sole adaptation—Haneke’s style here is somewhat different, considerably more inclined toward cuts and overlapping audio tracks than all his prior work; a testament to his versatility and willingness to adjust to the demands of the story he is telling. The source novel, nonetheless, seems as though it was written just for Haneke, the narrative’s filtering of a wide study of humanity through a single intimate life and the sudden and striking explosions of violence fitting in perfectly with his own original works. The Piano Teacher is Haneke’s most intimate film, and manages to be so without sacrificing for a moment the universality and relevance to real life that makes his work so appealing and unforgettable. Erika is an extreme example of the potential effects of a passionless life, the events which eventually befall her somewhat unrestrained reckonings of the possible fallouts of an existence without pleasure, yet it is hard not to consider ourselves in relation to her story. Here is a great film, and one which provided for me that same fulfilment which Erika sadly lacked, that same sense of impassioned stimulation she was unable to find herself.
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