THE STORY – Set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, “The Piano Lesson” follows the lives of the Charles family in the Doaker Charles household and an heirloom, the family piano, which is decorated with designs carved by an enslaved ancestor.
THE CAST – John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Ray Fisher, Erykah Badu, Samuel L. Jackson & Corey Hawkins
THE TEAM – Malcolm Washington (Director/Writer) & Virgil Williams (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 125 Minutes
“The Piano Lesson,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson play set forth in 1930s Pittsburgh, gets the cinematic treatment—much like “Fences,” courtesy of the Washington family. With father Denzel producing, his son Malcolm behind the director’s and adapting the script with Todd Black, and his other son John David as lead character Boy Willie Charles, the adaptation faithfully preserves the ethereal surrealism and symbolism of the play. More than anything, Malcolm, in his directorial debut, delivers a persuasive rendition of the story’s core idea, which is that to expiate the ghosts of one’s past, one must confront them. The Netflix film was one of the successful world premieres at this weekend’s 51st Telluride Film Festival.
The action opens amidst the disorienting flashing lights and booming noises of fireworks during a Fourth of July celebration in 1911 Mississippi. While the town is distracted in revelry, three young men break into the home of the Sutter family, a powerful local land baron and former slave-owning family, and make away with the titular piano, mixing through the shadows. This predictably results in mob-led revenge by the torch-bearing local town folk and a daring escape.
Twenty-five years later, Boy Willie Charles (John David) and his friend Lymon (a stupendous Ray Fisher) are concluding a cross-country drive of a truck full of watermelons and arrive at the Pittsburgh home of Willie’s uncle, Doaker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson). Doaker’s home is pure Wilson, and David J. Bomba’s production design renders it faithfully and beautifully. The floors are creaky and wooden, the spaces cramped and stuffed with knickknacks and heirlooms. You can almost smell the moth coming off the screen.
Doaker lives with Willie’s widower sister Berniece (a solid Danielle Deadwyler) and her young daughter. Willie announces he is there to raise the remaining cash he needs to buy out the hateful land baron Sutton, who has recently died, and that he plans to do so by selling his truckful of watermelons—as well as the ominous piano.
Doing so, however, will not be so simple. Uncle Doaker plaintively declares that Berniece will not allow him to sell the piano. Later, their other Uncle Wining Boy, Charles (Michael Potts), drunkenly agrees. Berniece herself soon makes plain that what now appears to be a family heirloom is not for sale. Later, with Uncle’s narration of the surreal family history behind the instrument, we understand why. The piano’s history and aura may as well be that of America, carved painstakingly into the wooden panels—violence, death, slavery, betrayal, suffused with some mysticism.
Beyond this relatively straightforward conflict, Wilson’s play’s profound symbolism and imagery are all faithfully adapted in this rendition of “The Piano Lesson.” Fundamentally, the dark, creaky house is Berniece’s own body. She inhabits it confidently, with that strong gait that Deadwyler easily conveys. But she also lives in it precariously and even afraid. Early on, Sutter’s ghost announces itself on the top floor. The house is a constant beehive of activity, like Berniece’s own life. People come and go and have extended conversations. At times, she wishes they would leave her alone, particularly her brother, who she views as causing nothing but trouble. Willie is the key character in the play, but Deadwyler’s arresting performance gives him a run for his money.
And the eponymous Piano may as well be Berniece’s very heart and soul. It carries the heavy history of their family, the suffering, but also the perseverance. Willie’s desire to rid their family of the instrument so that he can take over the land of the man who oppressed them for generations is superficially appealing and quite understandable. What better way of turning the tables on your enslaver than owning his land? In the face of this, Berniece’s desire to hold on to this piece of wood, to this shrine to the suffering of Charles’ family, seems to make no sense. However, the piano holds a lesson that does not immediately meet the eye, and as “The Piano Lesson” reaches its climatic third act, the beauty of Wilson’s lessons becomes apparent.
The point is that suffering can be expiated in more profound ways. Willie wants to simply move on from the past. But, for Wilson, it is not sufficient or satisfactory to just do so. Instead, confronting the past and bringing its souls with you will build out the true path toward redemption. “The Piano Lesson” gets a bit over the top in its climatic rendition, with Washington acting too much like he’s still on stage and not in front of a camera, and the schizophrenic editing by Leslie Jones betraying the director’s own inexperience. But the proverbial ghouls of a first-time director are exorcised just in time before they can bring down the entire edifice he had carefully constructed.
When the dust settles, and the Charles Family contemplates its future, Wilson’s signature humanism will be on full display, together with the compelling, complex nature of his characters, thanks to the talent of this remarkable cast. And the principal motif of his play, the piano’s core lesson—that a single, perhaps unremarkable object can hold the key to personal salvation—will take your breath away.
