You're Partly Responsible
Michael Haneke's films usually do not attract senior citizens,
and thus it was a bit surprising that the theater where I saw
The Piano Teacher was full of them. The director of
Funny Games and Code Unknown has made a habit of
depicting -- well, sort of -- horrific acts of inhumanity that
tend to shock and repel audiences. Some, like myself, find his
work to be brilliant, insightful comments on cinematic violence,
made by suggestion rather than exposition (the torture of the
family in Funny Games, for example, occurs entirely
off-screen; we know it's happening by reactions on other
characters' faces and by noises). But a lot of us, certainly
understandably, just want to walk out.
Haneke's films challenge not only media violence, but also
unsuccessful satires of media violence, like Oliver Stone's
indulgent, bloodily hedonistic Natural Born Killers. By
not showing violent acts, his work removes our enjoyment and our
defense mechanisms: hiding our eyes does no good, because the
terror is already unseen. We just have to sit there, squirming,
as Haneke implicates filmmakers and audiences alike in the cycle
of creating and consuming violence.
Surprisingly, no one walked out of The Piano Teacher,
which speaks volumes about Haneke's ability to hold viewers in
his grip. What's so seemingly cruel about his films, and in
particular, The Piano Teacher, is how hard it is to tear
our gaze from its reflection of ourselves, in full color, in
television sharpness, on screen. Not that anyone would want to
claim Professor Erika Kohut as a representation of him/herself.
Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) lives with her domineering mother
(Annie Girardot), with whom she trades both vicious slaps and
loving kisses. During the day, she schools hordes of Austrian
youth in the art of piano, but her teaching methods are
exercises in sadism. The thick insulation on the door to her
classroom looks less like soundproofing and more like padding
for an asylum cell; once it slams shut, Kohut torments her
students with barbed comments like, "Do you even know where the
melody is?" After auditioning for Kohut's master class, one
student exits so distraught that mucus drips, unwiped, from her
nose.
Outside the conservatory confines, Kohut acts out her twisted
sexual fantasies by going to porn shops and peep shows (where
she sniffs used tissues left by male patrons) and spying on
couples at the drive-in. Into this mess steps Walter Klemmer
(Benont Magimel), a young, handsome engineering student with
quite a talent for Schubert (who, Kohut reminds Walter,
eventually lost his mind).
Walter's growing obsession -- what he calls "love" -- with Kohut
signals the beginning of both her ultimate liberation and
terrible downfall. Magimel, who won the Best Actor prize at
Cannes (Huppert won Best Actress; the film, the Grand Jury
Prize), imbues his character at first with roguish charm and
bizarrely patronizing tenderness, and then, masculine arrogance
turned to testosterone-fueled rage. In his penultimate, utterly
devastating scene with Kohut, his boyish blond looks have been
completely transformed into a seething, furious maelstrom -- he
has become everything he thought he hated about his lover, minus
her ability to say "stop."
Huppert injects Kohut with precise sadistic tendencies,
desperate masochism, and a strange, painful vulnerability that
emerges when events progress in a different way than she had
planned. Her performance is brilliant. The power plays in which
she engages with her mother, Walter, and her students, form the
film's thematic core. When Walter tries to become her lover, he
finds himself in an unusual position: she will succumb to his
advances if he succumbs to her fantasies. This agreement becomes
increasingly layered as she reveals what she wants, to be
completely dominated by him, sexually and even in everyday
actions, like choosing clothes.
Walter rejects this idea, declaring, "You repulse me," right
after swearing that he does, indeed, love her. But what he finds
repulsive is actually her embodiment of his own desires, or more
precisely, that she is a woman with such desires. Kohut's
fantasies (which include ties, gags, and other accessories) are
certainly disturbing, but are always under control -- most
importantly, they are always under her control. Not only does
she know exactly what she wants, but she has also written her
instructions down in a very long letter. She wants to be taken
to the brink of reason (like Schubert), then hold on to and
exist within that moment. For Kohut, the ultimate rush of power
will be to feel herself on the edge of madness and still exert
control over the situation.
This is all impossible for Walter to handle. After their first
sexual encounter (a thoroughly odd, unfinished grappling in the
conservatory bathroom), he insists, "You should know what you
can and can't do to a man. The playing field must be level."
What's level to Walter, however, is a mutual tenderness, a
melting away of Kohut's steely exterior so that she rests,
languidly and beautifully, in his loving arms. His idea of
equality is really Kohut's being submissive to him, though in a
much more traditional way than her sexual games.
Walter's eventual retaliation against Kohut is so wrong and so
shocking because it involves such unchecked violence. Honestly,
I was not even sure what I thought of this film until this
horrifying sequence when Walter exerts his masculinity and
dominance. At this climactic moment, Haneke's goals in The
Piano Teacher become crystal clear -- it's an incredibly
compelling depiction of madness and sexual deviancy (as well as
their relations to musical obsession), but most importantly an
exploration of male-female relationships as they are inexorably
linked to dominance and submission. I might not share (or maybe
I just don't want to share) Haneke's bleak conclusion -- that
involvement between two people invariably leads to struggles for
superiority in one way or another -- but his point is both
shocking and, in many ways, inevitable.
"You have to admit it. You're partly responsible," Walter tells
Kohut, "You can't delve around inside people and then reject
them." At this point, Kohut is curled on the ground, eyes teary,
hair mussed, nose bloodied, her dignity and poise eliminated
because Walter has taken her by surprise. Not that Kohut has not
done some wretched things during the course of the film. But she
has bared herself so completely to her young lover, and his
betrayal is exacerbated by his refusal of culpability.
In a sense, Walter represents the audience viewing The Piano
Teacher. He blames Kohut for awakening his own perversions,
just as an audience might blame a filmmaker for showing violence
on screen. Yet, just as Walter is so clearly responsible for his
own actions, an audience is at least partially responsible for
passively consuming violence and continuing to attend movies
that contain it. The truth is that Walter enjoys the desires
Kohut has stirred in him, and audiences enjoy sensationalism.
Haneke is smart enough to point out the symbiotic relationships
between Walter and Kohut and between filmmaker and audience, and
to eliminate any chance of enjoyment here; after all, we can't
very well enjoy a finger pointed directly at us.
Ultimately, there's no chance for healing in The Piano
Teacher. At the end, we are left with credits rolling in
silence, as though closing music would be a possibly enjoyable
dinouement. If it's redemption you want, you must look
elsewhere; Kohut's only saving grace, fittingly, is her ability
to hurt herself before anyone else is able to do it. And really,
that's all the power that any of us have. Haneke has created a
character who walks the edges of madness and reason, who acts on
impulses that are odd and abhorrent, who seems totally foreign
to her audience, but remains entirely, terrifyingly, human.
— 4 April 2002
