The Piano on AllMovie

In Jane Champion's haunting 19th-century romance, Holly Hunter stars as Ada, a mute woman whose father offers her hand in marriage to a New Zealand farmer named Stewart (Sam Neill). Leaving her Scottish home with little more than her young daughter Fiona (Anna Paquin) and her beloved piano, Ada is forced into a loveless marriage, but soon enters into a clandestine affair with Stewart's neighbor George Baines (Harvey Keitel). Visually ravishing and emotionally harrowing, this film was nominated for just about every major award given out by the filmmaking community around the world, and the producer, director, screenwriter and actors won a great many of them, including Academy Awards, Palmes D'Or from Cannes, British Academy Awards, and Golden Globes, to name just a few. Eleven-year old Anna Paquin became the youngest person ever to receive an Academy Award.