Chris Holmlund

Campion-Keitel Connections, a.k.a. “We are the Piano”

Jane Campion often speaks of her respect for Harvey Keitel as an actor, emphasizing how much he contributed to The Piano (1993) and Holy Smoke (1999). Of The Piano, she comments: “I didn't find anyone who had the presence of Harvey. [He] was linked to strong memories of cinema that I had when I was very young.... His work is tender and masculine.... It's the depth of his inquiry into life that makes Harvey so interesting.”   Keitel returns the compliments, referring to Campion as “a goddess... mystical ... a little girl ... a friend ... with all the qualities of being a great guy.”

The blended attributes with which each describes the other say much about the nature of their collaborations. Yet though mass market publications comment frequently on Campion's casting choices because, as Wexman says, “actors figure so prominently in most people's perceptions of what movies are about,” to date there has been no thorough exploration of the ways Keitel's performances help create “George Baines” and “P.J. Waters” as (anti)heroes and counter forces to heroines played by actresses of strikingly different physiques and acting styles.

Attending to those “fragmentary moments when actions and gestures . . . impart significant meanings about the relationships of the character to the narrative” (MacDonald), I propose to examine Keitel's multiple connections in these films to Campion and her “ladies.” While costuming, lighting, make-up, and more of course count, as I'll indicate, I'll argue that it is thanks to facial, postural, gestural and vocal registers that Keitel's method-informed performances really matter. (Remember: his co-star in The Piano is a mute, while Holy Smoke is wound around dialogue.) Trained by Stella Adler, Frank Corsaro, and Lee Strasberg, Keitel is adept at bridging the gap between self and “other.” Surely, then, his acting is key to why academic critics frequently describe these characters as “figures of hybridity and reciprocity”, with all this entails for gendered, sexual, generational, ethnic, racial, and national identities!

Further influencing my decision to study Campion and Keitel as dynamic duo is the fact that The Piano marks a turning point in both of their careers, while for each Holy Smoke signals consolidation and additional shifts. The Piano represents Campion's first in-depth consideration of heterosexual relationships, and is the first of her films to employ international stars (with, as Annie Goldson remarks, Keitel incarnating the quintessential “Kiwi bloke”). In Holy Smoke, in contrast, Campion returns to the giddy surrealism of her early films, but the film's comparative box office failure subsequently impacts her choices of genre, location, and casting for In the Cut (2003). The Piano makes the then 53-year-old Keitel a global sex symbol, offering him the opportunity to investigate dimensions missing from his trademark tough guy roles and, at the same time, affirming his 1980s work in international art films. Meanwhile, with “P.J.” in Holy Smoke, Keitel and Campion further undo and mock Keitel's peculiar brand of swaggering machos, and probe his aging, too.

Not coincidentally, from 1993 and The Piano on, Keitel looms as the godfather of independent film. In hindsight, his remarks about his preparation for Holy Smoke reveal just how primordial these Campion-Keitel connections were. A sparkle in his eye, he spoke of how much he is enjoying his “search for the essence of the work,” then continued: “Stanislavsky said, ‘Find your own method,' don't you know? Because we are the piano, we are the instrument. We touch the key, it's a key inside [our] own soul; it's not a piece of ivory.” In the final analysis, it is thus not – as critics so far would have it – the screenplays and the characters, the cinematography, editing or soundtracks of The Piano and Holy Smoke that craft and trigger such a powerful reverberance in us, but also, and profoundly, the Campion-Keitel partnerships.

Biography

Chris Holmlund is a Professor of French, Cinema Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Holmlund's areas of interest and scholarship include contemporary film and video, including documentary, avant-garde, independent and mainstream feature work produced in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Francophone Africa. Her recent publications include: Contemporary American Independent Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream, ed. Chris Holmlund and Justin Wyatt (2004); Impossible Bodies: Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies (2002); Between the Sheets, In the Streets: Queer, Lesbian, Gay Documentary, ed. Chris Holmlund and Cynthia Fuchs (1997).