This film is about the ability to have a voice. In the opening of the story, we learn that Ada hasn’t spoken since she was six, and even she does not know why. But she is a master pianist and plays with nearly every waking hour. By the end of the film, we see that she has taken on the disciplines necessary to begin to learn how to speak. The journey to get to this point was one that demanded a great price and distance to be crossed.
The physical change in environment from her father’s home to Stewart’s home is the beginning of her journey to discovering her voice. And Stewart leaving her piano on the shore symbolizes that he will not know how to speak to her as her voice is in her music and he doesn’t understand nor empathize with that. He only wants his new wife to do as he asks her to do. But because she is not listened to, Ada must get the help of another man, Baines in order to get the piano back. But Baines can immediately hear every part of who Ada is in her playing and he does not want to relinquish that. And in what starts as an odd arrangement between Baines and Ada, there grows to be a connection between the pair as Ada begins to feel understood by him. He desires to hear her play and from this he hears her voice, and her voice turns him into a man that will stop at nothing to get closer to her in every way. They sleep together and this tears apart Ada and Stewart’s marriage as he sends her away after cutting off one of her fingers. Stewart cannot hear the piano and help but think of Baines and it is too much for him to bear.
Thus, Ada and Flora leave with Baines to start a new life and while on the ocean journey she demands that they throw the piano overboard and she gets herself caught in the rope attached to it and as the piano plummets to the ocean floor it drags her down. She is able to get free, but the symbolism is that it is not the piano that holds her voice, but it is her and she is the one who chooses to speak. And she chooses to live in this moment and come back to the surface of the ocean. This choice sets her free, and begins her journey to finding her voice.
