Director: Malcolm Washington
Writers: Virgil Williams, Malcolm Washington, August Wilson
Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler
Synopsis: Follows the lives of the Charles family as they deal with themes of family legacy and more, in deciding what to do with an heirloom, the family piano.
August Wilson’s second Pulitzer Prize-winning play (after Fences) becomes the latest work from the late playwright to receive the movie treatment, again from Denzel Washington as producer. This time, it is a more family affair as it is his youngest son, Malcolm Washington, adapting (with co-writer Virgil Williams) and directing The Piano Lesson as his debut feature and directing his brother, John David Washington. Their younger sister, Katia, is also a producer on the film. Although it is set in Pittsburgh during the 1930s, it is very much based in the South and it has entered the house where its ghosts begin to haunt everyone, all surrounding the family history carved into a piano.
The opening scene, set on July 4, 1911, in Mississippi sets the tone to what is to come after. The Charles family flees the farm to move up to Pittsburgh before a small group of Klansmen burn down the house, thinking they have killed everyone inside and destroyed everything. Cut to 1936 and Boy Willie (John David) with his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) enter the home of his sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) with a plan to sell the piano, their most valuable asset, to buy land for his own farm back in Mississippi. Once a piano player, Berniece hasn’t played since the death of their mother and lets it sit in the living room. She refuses to sell it or move it, noting the carvings that depict their ancestors going back to when they were slaves.
Uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson, who played Boy Willie in the play’s first production at the Yale Repertory Theatre) plays mediator between the conflicting siblings with his mellow tone and gives the full story of the piano, its origins, and the events after July 4, 1911. A White man named Sutter, whose family were the slave owners of the Charles’ family descendants, led the charge to take back the piano that was built for his family and killed Boy Willie and Berniece’s father. However, he mysteriously fell to his death sometime later. It is Sutter’s ghost that lurks in the house and makes his presence known at times during the film.
The strength of the film comes in its acting; Deadwyler is by far the MVP of the film. John David does his best to duplicate his father and glimpses are very much there with Michael Potts as Wining Boy Charles sharing stories with Doaker to give light into a heavily dramatic tale. A preacher (Corey Hawkins) is also around looking to court the single Berniece and, even though she’s in for only a few minutes, the flashback to Lucille Charles (Erykah Badu) as the slave being sold to the Sutters in the beginning is very a firm representation, even in silence, of the family’s – and the piano’s – origins.
Of all of Wilson’s plays, The Piano Lesson is probably one of the more difficult ones to adapt because of its supernatural tone, but does work well as a movie. It didn’t need to play like it did on stage with the extra exposition in certain scenes and the climax which carries on a bit long, but Malcolm Washington and crew (and family) succeed in giving Wilson’s story a solid screen adaptation about family coming full circle around one singular object and the importance of knowing your ancestry and keeping it all costs, regardless of what comes with it.
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