The Piano Lesson
NETFLIX
When Boy Willie Charles (John David Washington) and Lymon Jackson (Ray Fisher) enter Doaker Charles’ (Samuel L. Jackson) home in Malcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson, an immediate sense of dread is felt. There’s a longing presence that seems imbued in the house walls, or more specifically, a family piano standing in the living room, with faces of their ancestors carved on the cover. Washington doesn’t directly show the piano until it becomes the primary subject of the movie, but the mystery surrounding it is rapidly set up through its staggering opening sequence, where fireworks are the only source of lighting as we observe the piano being taken away.
Not long after Boy Willie chats with Doaker, his sister, Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler), sees the ghost of James Sutter (Jay Peterson) in front of her. There are no jumpscares or any supernaturally tense moments in the film. Washington represents this petrifying scene naturally, with Sutter staring at Berniece silently, repeating, “Boy Willie.” He was the previous owner of the central piano, which was stolen by Boy Willie’s father, Boy Charles (Stephan James), in the movie’s opening scene, before his house was burned down in retaliation. As a result, Sutter’s spirit remains within the piano and is reawakened each time someone plays a note or dares to tamper with it.
Boy Willie wants to convince Berniece to sell the piano so he can buy Sutter’s land, whose ancestors all inhabited it as slaves. He consistently taunts her sister and doesn’t believe her when supernatural occurrences fleetingly occur inside Doaker’s house because his desire to sell the piano and move on is far too strong. He thinks this will allow his family to move on and reclaim their history, while Berniece is tormented by the desire of wanting to hold on to Charles’ legacy and ensure their family never forgets the trauma they had to endure or take the leap for a better future.
This is the bulk of The Piano Lesson’s 123-minute runtime and is the third adaptation of an August Wilson work shepherded by Denzel Washington after his Oscar-nominated Fences and George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Now, Denzel is letting his son, Malcolm, make his feature directorial debut by bringing to life one of Wilson’s most complex plays to the screen and setting his own distinct voice as an artist away from the shadow of his father and his brother, John David. And for the first time since Denzel has vowed to preserve Wilson’s legacy on the screen, The Piano Lesson is undoubtedly the most cinematically thrilling adaptation of any August Wilson play to date.
Slowly pulling us into its story through stark, intricate compositions led by director of photography Mike Gioulakis (the man who gave M. Night Shyamalan his directorial juice back), Washington makes the smart decision of transcending the confines of theatricality with an assured visual language, whether by cutting to a flashback that visually showcases what one of its characters are saying, or playing with form when Berniece begins to have her spirituality thwarted by apparitions of Sutter. Rack focuses also exacerbate the drama or punctuate a line delivery brought upon by its protagonists, who debate on wanting to keep the piano or sell it.
But Washington never imbues his film horror movie tropes (or aesthetic flourishes) that could’ve sank the drama at the center of its debate. Any otherworldly moment occurring in the movie is depicted with the intensity of a thousand fires as if it could happen in the real world. It’s the insistence in wanting to hold on to an agonizing past that has fueled this spirit and made him live on so he could remain within the walls of Doaker’s abode. However, it’s the intellectual, almost theological exchange on the nature of the piano that makes The Piano Lesson such a riveting picture to watch.
It’s anchored by three incredible performances from John David, Jackson, and Deadwyler, who deliver some of the best respective works of their career. John David has far too long been criticized to live in the shadow of his father, but rightfully so, when Denzel is one of the best actors working today. But he’s consistently delivered his own style of acting in recent films such as Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s Beckett. While those roles showcased his physical talents, The Piano Lesson sees him at his most vulnerable, where the confines of an August Wilson play allows him to showcase pure emotional range. His take on Boy Willie is complex and multi-faceted, which makes his cold exchanges with Berniece all the more shocking.
Meanwhile, Jackson is tasked to deliver the film’s biggest expository monologue, which could’ve faltered were it not for Gioulakis knowing what he’s doing to visually accompany Doaker in explaining to Boy Willie and Lymon the piano’s origins. Perhaps he’s not as emotionally attuned to the play as John David and Deadwyler, but Doaker is a character of great importance to the rivalry that will eventually occur between brother and sister. Jackson represents these often heavy sequences with great eloquence, automatically rendering his more talkative sequences easily digestible for the viewer.
But it’s Deadwyler who gives The Piano Lesson its raison d’être, first representing her internal pain subtly as she begins to experience visions that become reality. She then takes action to ensure she can move on from her traumatizing past without ever forgetting what her parents (and grandparents) sacrificed. Many will laud her monologues and exchanges with Boy Willie as the central reason why her performance should get an Oscar nomination, but it’s her minute shifts in facial expressions that convey far more anguish and emotional range and quietly devastate up until its final scene, where Berniece realizes what she must do to attain peace, inside the house and within herself.
The choice may seem simple in isolation, but it’s far more complicated when Boy Willie and Lymon attempt to destabilize the nature of things instead of letting Berniece choose her path the way she wants to. But once the layers within her performance begin to unpeel in its spiritually enlightening conclusion, Deadwyler has finally given Berniece the agency and freedom she deserves from the moment audiences meet her to the scene where she finally teaches her daughter, Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith), to play the piano, without restraint or fear that something darker is lurking amongst the walls of her house.
Berniece is the center of attention in The Piano Lesson, not the piano itself. But the object acts as a metaphor for what the Charles family has endured for decades, and it’s why she is keeping it so close to herself. And as talky as the movie can get (as any Wilson play that has a tendency to overexplain and exhaust the audience with repeated dialogues), its quieter moments reveal the protagonists’ inner feelings in a far more profound light than the heated exchanges audiences will become witnesses to when Washington dials up the tension near its concluding section.
There are a few scenes that, sadly, distract us from its main storyline, notably involving Erykah Badu’s Lucille, who, while her singing prowess cannot be denied, adds nothing to the proceedings. There’s also a half-baked romantic affair between Berniece and Lymon that sadly goes nowhere and seems to be solely added to the film because it was in the play. But when one adapts a literary (or theatrical) work to the screen, some sacrifices must be made to retain the story's core, which Washington and co-screenwriter Virgil Williams have difficulty doing.
But they don’t detract enough from what Washington accomplishes in his theologically active pictur. It may not be a perfect adaptation of August Wilson’s work, but its cinematic literacy and towering performances can’t be overstated. Plus, Danielle Deadwyler continues to prove why she’s one of the greatest actresses working today. It’s criminal how she had virtually no flowers for delivering the best female performance of 2022 in Chinonye Chukwu’s Till. Hopefully, this time, she’ll go all the way and give Jacques Audiard’s unwatchable Emilia Pérez a run for its money…