Revered for his profound ability to write about the African American experience, August Wilson is often referred to as the poet of Black America. The Piano Lesson is the third play by the late, acclaimed playwright that Denzel Washington brings to the screen. This time, Washington, who acted as a producer on Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, makes it a family affair, bringing in his children Malcolm, John David, Katia, and Olivia to revive a play that grapples with honouring the legacy parents pass onto their children.
The film, a promising debut from Malcolm Washington, follows a Black family living in Pittsburgh during the Great Depression. Boy Willie (John David Washington) with his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) in tow, arrives in Pittsburgh with a truck full of watermelons and the intention of buying the land of the recently deceased Mr. Sutter (the man who enslaved his family). Boy Willie visits his sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) and his uncle Doaker (Samuel L Jackson) to tell them his plans to sell the watermelons alongside their family’s piano.
However, their piano isn’t any ordinary piano. With family portraits etched into the wood by their grandfather, the piano is entwined with the family’s history with slavery. It is the piano his family stole back from their captors. It is the piano their father died to possess. Berniece and Boy Willie come to loggerheads immediately, as Berniece point-blank refuses to let go of the one thing connecting them to their ancestor’s legacy.
The film is profoundly moving and deeply arresting from the jump. Embodying the soul of Wilson’s stage work, Washington’s filmmaking is rich, using humour, music, and horror aesthetics to illustrate the dilemma of what to do with and where to put trauma. We watch one sibling yearn to move into the future while the other refuses to let go of the past, behaving with equal determination and too much blind stubbornness to hear the other out. Washington doesn’t pick sides, he throws the narrative wide, allowing each character agency to explore their complicated relationship with the family piano and ghosts haunting it.
Deadwyler, unforgivingly ignored by The Academy for her urgent performance as Marmie Till-Bradley in Chinonye Chukwu‘s Till, is an all-encompassing and show-stopping force. Her performance is incredibly nuanced; she is the voice of opposition, a grieving single mother, and a soft-hearted guardian of family history. She struggles to find her way forward but yearns for the future as passionately as her stubborn, money-focused brother. John David matches her intensity, creating a dogged determination in character wanting to free himself of family trauma by buying his own land and becoming his own master.
John David, Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher, and Michael Potts (as the comical relief, Winning Boy) returned to their characters following Washington’s successful Broadway adaptation of the play. Where the film is often confined to the family house and features long stagey discussions, Washington consistently finds cinematic rhythms that propel the story away from the stage’s limitations. Virgil Williams’s excellent screenwriting choices make the story sore beyond the page: a shared hesitantly passionate moment between Bearnice and Lymon will leave you breathless. Washington is a bold and empathic director, managing to find a delicate balance between the emotional peaks of the film and his paranormal explorations. When the film enters the spectral realm, Washington keeps his story grounded by expanding upon the realism of the African American experience.
The standout scene happens when the men, gathered around a table in conversation, begin to sing a prison song. The film briefly becomes a musical, powerfully embodying the intricate rhythms at the heart of August Wilson’s Shakespearean work. The Piano Lesson is a complex yet confident debut feature from Malcolm Washington, offering a healing space to collectively contend with the past. It will be impossible to ignore this awards season and puts forward a dynamic case for The Academy to consider an ensemble cast category.
★★★★
Played as part of the 2024 BFI London Film Festival / In UK cinemas November 8th, on Netflix November 22nd / Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, Erika Badu, Corey Hawkins, Skylar Aleece Smith / Dir: Malcolm Washington / Netflix / 12A
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