Backbencher

This is the story of a young mute woman of marriageable age who was pushed into an arranged marriage by the events of her life. She had a daughter, and as a mute, probably did not represent the most marketable bride at home. The situation in far away New Zealand was different. It should also be mentioned that she had been something of a prodigy with her piano skills. New Zealand women were in short supply, and so she and her daughter were sent off to her new husband, along with her prize possession which was a grand piano. The new husband accepted her sans the piano, which he abandoned on the beach and later sold it to his neighbor. The neighbor bought the piano, but was obsessed with the wife. Romance between the neighbor and the woman ensued, jealousy erupted, climaxing with the husband having chopped off his wife's finger. Remorseful, he allowed her and her daughter to leave with the neighbor on a voyage, never to return. In accordance with the plot, it is deemed that the heavy piano is endangering the lives of the Maori that are taking them by canoe away from the shore, and as such it was dumped overboard. (Rather a preposterous notion, really... The canoe used in the film easily displaced more than enough water to handle the weight and unbalancing the weight distribution by the action of lifting it over the side would have unbalanced the canoe and swamped it if there had been any real danger. I suppose we will have to write it off to artistic license.) We are led to believe that the nine fingered pianist and her new man lived happily ever after with the lady sporting a metallic replacement finger.

All in all it is a moving, romantic film with excellent cinematography. I think that it makes a good choice for a a film review in this class because I think it fairly represents the situation New Zealand had, with too many single men and not enough women. I lived in a boom town once, the events are not only realistic for such a situation, but might even be understated for such circumstances.