Film Narrative: The Piano

During our film narrative module on The Piano, some absolutely stunning work was produced.  One example is included below. 

 

The lonely old man, whose life was no longer happy but a never-ending pit of sadness, is playing a tune on the piano to keep him accompanied in his word of nothingness.  He is remembering the happy times when he and his wife would play the beautiful, black grand piano together.

Suddenly, someone lowers the anchor, which makes him remember his wife is gone and will never come back.  His smile slowly fades away to be lost in his broken, stone heart.  The lone light bulb flickers but continues to give off light, which highlights the glossy, black grand piano.  His hands continue to play a sad, touching tune which he and his wife played.

While he is playing the piano, he remembers being a medic in the war.  As he thinks, a World War Two medic hat appears on his head!  He reflects on when his friend was shot in the heard while fighting in the war.

"Continue on life, my friend; forget me," says his friend, struggling to get enough air into his lungs to live.

The man sighs heavily, "How could I have agreed to your suicide mission?"  He remembers holding his friend's hand in his, but the grip slowly loosened, the blood stopped pouring out of his wound, his chest stopped moving and his head dropped.  The man cried and cried and mourned, his tears dripping onto his dead friend's cold body slowly, sadly.

Slowly, the ancient, fragile old man's memories of the war fade into him getting the best present he had received in his childhood!  He remembers shuffling impatiently on the uncomfortable, cold, hard, creaky floorboards.  His hands were outstretched, ready for the carefully-wrapped, large, blue box with a beautiful, yellow ribbon to be put into them.  When the gift is placed in front of his knees, he pushes the lid out of the way to reveal what surprise he had got.  A smile lights up his face as his eyes settle on the hobby horse that he would ride until he got too big for it.

Time passes, and the hobby horse is handed down to the old man's grandson and the grandson starts riding around the room on his grandad's hobby horse.  The grandson departs from riding his hobby horse to play the piano with his grandad just as the old man is finishing his beautiful melody line.  The grandson finishes off the tune by pressing a note on the piano as he knew the tune off by heart: his grandad taught him well.  They look at one another with a smile.