Grand Piano (film)

Grand Piano
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Eugenio Mira
Produced by	Rodrigo Cortés Adrián Guerra
Written by	Damien Chazelle
Starring	Elijah Wood John Cusack Tamsin Egerton Kerry Bishé Alex Winter
Music by	Victor Reyes
Cinematography	Unax Mendía
Edited by	Jose Luis Romeu
Production company	Nostromo Pictures
Distributed by	Magnet Releasing
Release dates	20 September 2013 (2013-09-20) (Fantastic Fest) 25 October 2013 (2013-10-25) (Spain)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	Spain
Language	English

Grand Piano is a 2013 English-language Spanish thriller film directed by Eugenio Mira and starring Elijah Wood and John Cusack. The film is about a once promising pianist returning for a comeback performance, only to be the target of a sniper who will kill him if he plays one wrong note. The film premiered at Fantastic Fest on 20 September 2013 and was given a VOD release on 30 January 2014. It was given a limited release in U.S. theatres on 7 March.

Plot

Tom Selznick was an up-and-coming concert pianist until he developed stage fright while attempting to play a complex piece, "La Cinquette". Five years later, he is slated to reappear in public for a comeback performance in Chicago, dedicated to the memory of his late mentor, pianist and composer Patrick Godureaux. Godureaux posthumously acquired massive media coverage due to the mysterious disappearance of his vast fortune. Selznick's return to the stage is due to the encouragement of his actress-singer wife, Emma.

Before the concert, a house usher hands Tom a folder of sheet music. In the folder, he finds the manuscript to "La Cinquette" and discards it. During the concert, Tom finds a note in his sheet music that threatens to kill him if he misplays a single note. Believing it to be a prank, he ignores it, only to find further notes that threaten Emma and a laser dot that tracks his movement. Disturbed, Tom leaves the stage, shocking the audience. He returns to his dressing room, where he receives a text that instructs him to locate and wear an earpiece so that he can communicate with the assassin, Clem. When Tom returns to the stage, Clem demonstrates his rifle's stealth and range by shooting a nearby spot without alerting anyone.

Desperate, Tom surreptitiously uses his cell phone to contact his friend Wayne, who is in the audience. When Wayne's phone goes off, it momentarily disrupts the performance, and Wayne leaves the concert hall. As he plays, Tom taps a text message to Wayne, but the usher, who is revealed to be working with Clem, kills Wayne. Clem tells Tom to look up, and Tom sees Wayne's body on the rafters. Wayne's girlfriend Ashley goes to search for him, and she is killed, too. Clem then tells Tom that instead of performing Beethoven's "Tempest Sonata", as the conductor originally announced, he must perform "La Cinquette" flawlessly, as an embedded lock in the piano depends on a flawless performance. Tom insists he can only do so with sheet music.

During intermission, Tom runs backstage to find the crumpled manuscript, only to find the janitor has destroyed it. Tom feverishly listens to the piece in his dressing room and takes notes to help him remember. Norman, the conductor, announces Tom's solo performance, but Tom interrupts him and nervously but firmly announces he will perform "La Cinquette", much to the delight of the audience. Clem warns Tom to pace himself, so as not to wear himself out. Tom plays the piece completely free of error, until he gets to the very last note of the piece, which he deliberately misplays, infuriating Clem. Tom retorts that the audience does not know the difference, and he receives a standing ovation, having finally conquered the piece. Tom ignores Clem's shouted threats and introduces Emma. Much to her and the audience's surprise, he suggests that she sing a song as an encore. She reluctantly obliges, and Norman accompanies her. This gives Tom time to find Clem.

He races upstairs and finds the dead body of the usher. Clem chases him to the light fixture rafters, directly above the piano onstage. Their struggle causes a rivet to come loose, and to the horror of everyone in the concert hall, Tom and Clem come crashing down on the stage. Clem lands on the piano and is killed, but Tom survives. Emma rushes over to him, they embrace, and he says, "I think I broke my leg". Later, while waiting for their ambulance to leave, Tom sees the damaged piano loaded into a shipping truck. Inside the truck, he plays the last four bars of "La Cinquette" correctly, but nothing happens. Disappointed, Tom turns away until he hears the gears of the internal lock system turn and the sound of a metal key hitting the floor. He bends down to pick it up as the camera cuts to black.

Cast

• Elijah Wood as Tom Selznick
• John Cusack as Clem
• Kerry Bishé as Emma Selznick
  • Alice Ella as Emma's singing voice
• Tamsin Egerton as Ashley
• Allen Leech as Wayne
• Don McManus as Norman
• Alex Winter as Usher

Production

Elijah Wood had worked with a teacher three weeks prior to going to Barcelona and found it stressful having to play the piano and speak at the same time saying, "It was incredibly technical [...] lots of moments where it was jumping from where I'd play, listen to a click, listen to music, have to be in the right place and the right time and hear dialogue and repeat dialogue".

Reception

The film was met with mostly positive reviews, with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 78% and an average score of 6.6/10, based on 58 reviews. The site's consensus states: "Grand Piano is so tense in its best moments — and appealingly strange overall — that it remains rewarding in spite of its flaws." On Metacritic, it has a 61/100 score (indicating "generally favorable reviews"), based on 20 critics. Todd Gilchrist of Indiewire said, "Grand Piano succeeds as a whole for the same reasons that Selznick does—namely, because Mira brings all of its elements to work together in concert, and then executes them like a virtuoso". Guy Lodge, writing for Variety, commented on the film, saying "this not-quite horror film is refreshingly blood-shy even in bloodshed, preferring to let the scarlet soft furnishings of a plush Chicago concert hall provide the red menace". Stephen Dalton, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, found the film lacking but said "it has just enough stylistic swagger to excuse its utterly preposterous plot". He also found praise in the performances of Elijah Wood, John Cusack and Alex Winter, saying, "Together they elevate a risibly ridiculous plot into something akin to a pulp symphony".

Awards and nominations

Awards	Category	Nominated	Result
Premios Feroz	Best Drama		Nominated
	Best Original Soundtrack	Víctor Reyes	Won
Neox Fan Awards	Best Spanish film		9th
Saturn Awards	Best Independent Film		Nominated

External links

• Official website
• Grand Piano at IMDb
• Grand Piano at Rotten Tomatoes
• Grand Piano at Metacritic
• Grand Piano on Facebook