Entertainment
Elijah Woods’ Twisted Hitchcockian Thriller Is So Good, You’ll Wish You Saw It Sooner
With his 2013 thriller Grand Piano, director and musician Eugenio Mira (famed for his ‘lost’ Corey Feldman vehicle The Birthday) paired Elijah Wood with a disembodied John Cusack for a very heightened trip into the anxiety of being a classical musician. Not content to simply be a movie about the difficulties of performance and seeking perfection, it gives its protagonist another crisis too: a sniper rifle trained at him from the nosebleed section, ready to shoot at the first missed note. The premise is so striking and high-concept that it would be easy to expect the movie as a whole to be pretty one-note and silly, but it’s grounded by Wood’s neurotic and soulful performance, as well as a screenplay coming from future Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle.
Chazelle’s screenplay balances the thrills of pianist Tom Selznick (Wood) performing under pressure while being targeted by mysterious gunman Clem (Cusack) with an intriguing study of what makes artistry possible. Tom, encouraged by his actress wife (Kerry Bishé), is performing for an audience for the first time after a very public mental breakdown during a performance five years before. The major piece that broke him is the complex (even impossible) La Cinquette, composed by his recently deceased mentor, and he’s considering performing it again to close out the evening. Additionally, the mentor has a massive fortune that has been missing since his death, which, if you’ve ever seen a movie before, might be a clue as to the true intentions of Clem.
10 Single-Location Thrillers That Are Gripping From Start to Finish
Four walls have never been so oppressive.
‘Grand Piano’ Features Excellent (and Hitchcockian) Direction from Eugenio Mira
Following Grand Piano’s dizzying plot is always easy thanks to Eugenio Mira’s perfectly controlled direction. Sweeping shots of the concert hall cut to extreme close-ups on Elijah Wood’s face, which then dissolve to the sheet music, giving viewers a musical thrill that rings like the climax of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 remake The Man Who Knew Too Much. In fact, Hitchcock (with some Brian de Palma notes) is all over the movie, even down to the frankly nonsensical plot at its core. Hitchcock loved playing with visual gags and the absurdity of his scenarios, wringing suspense from county fair carousels and the Statue of Liberty. Surely he could have appreciated the sniper rifle in the concert hall.
Despite taking place in Chicago, the movie was filmed in the home country of Spanish director Mira. A musician himself, Mira used the rhythm of the performance (three unique pieces before getting to the climactic La Cinquette) to build the walls, closing in on Tom. While Elijah Wood was given just a three-week crash course in piano performance to develop his character, Mira confidently shoots the actor from all angles, giving coverage that makes you believe in Tom’s talent and his anxiety simultaneously. He also draws from Hitchcock to create the voyeuristic sense of Clem’s tight focus on Tom’s performance. If Elijah Wood is making you believe this character is a virtuoso who’s lost his way, Mira is making you believe the life-and-death stakes of this concert.
‘Grand Piano’ Fits Perfectly into Damien Chazelle’s Thematic Concerns
Grand Piano writer Damien Chazelle’s filmography consists of many movies dealing with the central conflict of the artist (or astronaut): how to balance work with one’s personal life. You see it in Whiplash (whose screenplay won Chazelle an Oscar), which explored the relationship of a jazz drummer and his abusive teacher who encouraged him to make jazz his life with monomaniacal focus. In La La Land, a musician and an actress try to balance their relationship with their developing careers. And 2022’s Babylon, while much wider in focus, looks at the wave of an artistic movement (sound cinema) and how it disposed of industry veterans. In half a dozen different cases in Babylon, you see the same arc play out: the ride is over, and if you dedicated your life to your art, good luck with what comes next.
In terms of movies Chazelle wrote but didn’t direct, Grand Piano fits much better into his oeuvre than 10 Cloverfield Lane. Speaking with Indiewire around the film’s release, Mira referenced the script’s portrayal of musical anxiety as “subtle, but there.” The movie externalizes the conflict within any artist to the most ridiculous extreme, but still finds truth about stage fright and the search for artistic credibility and validation. To an extent, maybe most performers feel like John Cusack is somewhere in the back of the venue with a sniper rifle, looking closely to see if a note is missed. While Chazelle’s later screenplays emphasize internal conflict and the power of relationships to heal (or destroy) artists, Grand Piano stands out as an excellent thriller that explores the same themes with a bit more bloodshed.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login