Film critics don't often write in the first person.

By not using "I," reviewers try to maintain a dispassionate stance that gives them the air of objectivity and intellectualism.

But any thought of remaining critically detatched evaporated in the first lush minutes of Jane Campion's breathtaking new film The Piano.

I'll be honest. In attempting to write this review 20 hours after I saw the movie, I'm still trying to come to terms with it. I have seen thousands of movies, many of which are considered classics, but never have I seen a movie that hit me in the gut like this one.

The Piano is as nearly flawless a film as I have ever encountered. And I have never seen a film with a greater emotional impact. The Piano packs more intense acting and gorgeous cinematography into two hours than a year's worth of Hollywood releases.

Holly Hunter plays a role unlike any she has played before. For starters, she doesn't speak a line. She plays Aida, a lonely mute woman who escapes her silence by playing the piano. Hunter -- who has previously starred in meaty-but-not-very-intense films such as Broadcast News and Raising Arizona -- tackles the role with a previously untapped emotional range.

Sent to rugged New Zealand to marry a man she has never met, Aida struggles to make a new life for herself in the mud and barbarity of the rain forest. Amid towering trees and buzzing insects, she meets her husband Stewart (Sam Neill). Struggling to understand her muteness, Stewart fails and loses her to an illiterate settler played by Harvey Keitel.

Aida and her piano form the core of the movie. While Neill, Keitel and Anna Paquin -- who plays Aida's daughter --turn in simply extraordinary performances, they pale in comparison to the chemistry that flares across the dimly lit screen as Hunter connects with the inanimate prop.

Caressing the ivory keys with a touch that would be sexual if it were not already overwhelmingly sensual, Aida brings the piano to life as she sends Chopin showering on the surrounding forest.

Incongruity reigns in the film. In the beginning, Aida's piano perches in the surf on a strand of New Zealand beach while Aida and her daughter take refuge inside a mammoth hoop skirt. Later, the two elegantly dressed Victorian ladies struggle through the churning mud, and Aida plays delicate concertos for the savagely tattooed Baines.

The exquisite cinematography captures the gritty reality of New Zealand life with heart-stopping beauty as cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh pushes the camera to look at its surroundings in ways that are surprising and inventive. Teacups, boat bottoms and mountains will never look the same.

The film's best -- and most horrific -- moment comes after an angry and spurned Stewart drags Aida from the house and attacks her with an ax. Clutching her wound and gathering her pride about her, Aida turns to Stewart and looks at him with eyes filled with the pure horror that a scream cannot express.

Never have I seen eyes look like that.

The film's wealth of detail makes it difficult for me to wrap up my reaction with a neat phrase or trite cliché. The film is too complex for that. The Piano is literary, and yet, like Aida, it transcends mere words.