by: Uel Ceballos
The Grand Piano with its empowering
title, main cast and music involving plot, brings out the great level of expectation
from its audience. This 2013 Spanish thriller film has captured my attention
for two reasons. First, is because of Elijah Wood whom I last saw in Eternal
Sunshine in the Spotless Mind. The last movie I remember where he was the main
cast was LOTR and I really miss seeing him again in the centre of scenarios
(haven’t checked yet his other film that followed after LOTR which mostly were
in thriller genres). Second, is because the film speaks about music,
particularly piano music and I’m looking forward to great exhibition of music
craft here like what I witnessed from Hilary and Jackie and La Vie En Rose.
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| http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/ 3/38/Grand_Piano_Official_Poster.jpg |
The film had established a good
start, with the mystery gradually foreshadowing along. Characters are building
up eventually along the film, with the significant details carefully left out to
spice the twist on the latter part. As a coming back concert pianist who has been
on the hiatus of his career for five years, Tom Selznick played by Elijah Wood
represents a man who is still haunted by his tormenting past. Again, Elijah
Wood’s wide eloquent eyes served him to his advantage of better portraying the required
role, and this time as woeful musician Tom Selznick, who keeps denying about
being haunted, but in fact sweating extremely through his tux even before he
gets on the stage to hit a key. The reason
for that emotionally-suffering behaviour
exhibited by Tom is brought out in the limelight, one piece at a time through
the character of Clem played by John Cussack.
The use of powerful music to backdrop
a sophisticated thriller is close to a perfect suspense film execution. As Tom goes
to the piano and gets ready his music sheet, there amidst the black and white
notes handwritten the phrase, “play one wrong note and you die”. From there the
spine tingling adventure begins as Tom performs his piece, quiet confused of
what’s going on and why somebody is suddenly posing a threat against him and
his wife.
Elijah Wood is undeniably a good
actor, doing Tom Selznick role as if he was really born for it. He had done
well to appear like he could really play the piano professionally. One of the
hardest challenges for an actor is to do the role of a virtuoso and act exactly
like one, the hardest pressure is laid in imitating that person as he delivers
his trade, especially when that trade falls under the category of arts and
performing. But Elijah had excelled himself here as the once celebrated
musician who is now doing a concert comeback with the ghost of the past still
clinging on his back.
However, it’s rare for a film to go
without a single flaw (that’s quite normal), and this film got some palpable
failings with regard to its story line which I believe is all films’ valuable
backbone. Tom’s part is clear and well established, while Clem’s was not. The
intention for threatening Tom Selznick’s life is vaguely established, and
though John Cusack’s performance is sure-fire effective (with 90% of his character’s
part on the film is presented only by his voice over), his character was weakly
developed. That though Clem’s has mentioned something about his personal attachment/relations
to the music, particularly to the unplayable “La Cinquette” piece which he
forced Tom to play, in the end Clem appeared nothing but a psychopath music
lover who trespassed a concert and mentally torture the concert artist before
he finally decide to shoot him. The acts of Clem in threatening Tom while the
latter is performing onstage could be more intriguing and effective if the
motivation behind that is made clear and well developed. Nonetheless,
the film was strangely appealing, with the grandeur music embedding the
thrilling scenarios of Tom playing (instead of running) for his life. So there, for this classy kind of thriller let’s cheer on it with 7 Espresso Shots!
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