As fireworks turn the ground red, white, and blue during the Fourth of July, 1911, it becomes immediately obvious that Malcolm Washington (Benny Got Shot; The Dispute), the younger son of Denzel Washington (Malcolm X; Training Day), was the right choice to direct an adaption of August Wilson’s 1987 play The Piano Lesson. While the white townsfolk are out watching the fireworks, a young black boy watches his father and his uncles steal a piano, engraved with the faces of a Black family, from a plantation manor. Red, his father loads the cart. Blue, the boy looks on. White, the cart drives away. This is a film about America and about the economic ghosts of slavery. When the world races ahead 25 years, the young boy bathed in red, white, and blue is now a man on the move, played by the older son of Denzel, John David Washington (Tenet; BlacKkKlansman). This is also a film about siblings trying to live up to and coming to terms with their complicated parents. It’s out now on Netflix and in select theaters.
L-R: John David Washington as Boy Willie, Samuel L. Jackson as Doaker Charles, Michael Potts as Wining Boy, and Ray Fisher as Lymon in THE PIANO LESSON. Photo Credit: David Lee/Netflix. © 2024 Netflix, Inc..
“If you don’t keep playing on that piano…”
John Washington as Boy Willie is joined by an all-star cast in this chamber piece that has burst out of its seams onto a larger canvas. The acclaimed Danielle Deadwyler (Till; I Saw the TV Glow) plays Boy Willie’s widowed sister Berniece, who raises her daughter Maretha (newcomer Skylar Aleece Smith) in the home of her uncle Doaker, played by Samual L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction; Jurassic Park). Deadwyler and John are hilarious and moving as strained, bickering siblings who genuinely do not like each other, while Jackson is the best he’s been in years. He’s turned in a subtle, understated supporting performance, the kind you’d be forgiven for forgetting he can give. This is not Samuel L. Jackson, movie star, this is Samuel L. Jackson, actor. Boy Willie has come to Pittsburg with a truck full of watermelons to sell, and he brought a friend by the name of Lymon, played by Ray Fisher (Zack Snyder’s Justice League; True Detective) in the best performance of his career so far. Fisher flips levers on his acting instrument that he never has before as he plays a poorly educated farm hand on the run from the police down south. He’s naive, a little slow, and incredibly charming as he towers over the family in their Pittsburg home. Rounding out the cast are two men at the door, Michael Potts (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Hackers) as Wining Boy, the other uncle, and a preacher-suitor played by Corey Hawkins (The Tragedy of McBeth; In the Heights), who never fails to bring a smile to my face when he shows up in a film un-telegraphed. They’re my favorite ensemble of the year.
L-R: Danielle Deadwyler as Berniece, John David Washington as Boy Willie, Ray Fisher as Lymon, and Samuel L. Jackson as Doaker Charles in THE PIANO LESSON. Photo Credit: David Lee/Netflix. © 2024 Netflix, Inc..
As perfect as the cast is, the film is not. It attempts a naturalistic style as an escape vector from its theatrical origins, and this mostly works. Malcolm Washington is clearly a talented director, but there are some technical shortcomings. I had the chance to catch this film in Washington, D.C., during its limited Oscar-qualifying theatrical release, and even with a proper sound system, the dialogue mix is expecting you to use subtitles and leans on that like a crutch. It is just not up to an acceptable standard on that front. The film is blocked masterfully and is graded fairly well, but, even projected, you can feel the Netflix technical requirements flattening the image beyond reason. John Washington has incredible chemistry with his on-screen niece Skylar Aleece Smith, but they are short-changed on moments together. This is a film with great direction held back by the structure of adaption. As powerful as some moments are, like an impromptu spiritual song, it could only have been more powerful to experience with the live surprise and interplay of a theatre crowd. There’s a real difference between being surprised by something on screen and being surprised by someone’s actions in the same room as you. Adaptions of theatrical plays are important. They renew interest in forgotten plays, they bring new ideas into our cultural and artistic lexicon, and they provide sturdy frameworks for new artists to cut their teeth on. So even though the film does not soar to the heights of play-turned-film like A Few Good Men (1992), 12 Angry Men (1957), Brief Encounter (1945) or John’s own father’s Fences (2016), it still remains a great first outing.
L-R: Ray Fisher, Writer/Director Malcolm Washington, and John David Washington on the set of THE PIANO LESSON. Photo Credit: Katia Washington/Netflix. © 2024 Netflix, Inc..
It may be unfair to constantly bring up the director’s father, but I fear that it is inescapable in this case. Denzel is currently out on the campaign trail promoting Gladiator II, and his red-carpet advice to actors is “You can’t learn to be an actor online. You got to get on the stage. Find a little theater. Anything.” The choice to adapt a play, especially this play, with his brother is a statement of intent by Malcolm whether he likes it or not. The most surprising device of the film is discovered just a few minutes into it as talks of ghosts enter the piece. The descendent of the man who enslaved Boy Willie and Berniece’s grandparents, Sutter, has recently died by falling down a well. His brother is now trying to sell his land. Once Boy Willie gets to Pittsburg, the house seems to be haunted by Sutter’s ghost. Boy Willie has manic outbursts of a kind John hasn’t performed before. Usually a reserved actor, he performs in such a way that you cannot help but feel like you are seeing him imitate his famous father, and that the ghost of his Training Day performance is who’s convincing Bearnice to let him sell the infamous stolen, haunting piano so he can buy more land that was once owned by their grandparent’s slaver.
L-R: John David Washington as Boy Willie and Skylar Smith as Maretha in THE PIANO LESSON. Photo Credit: Netflix. © 2024 Netflix, Inc..
On the surface, this is a film about the ghost of slavery, which haunted generations of this Black family through antebellum enslavement, then Jim Crow, then segregation, and the inherited white wealth and advantages of the white families around them that they could not compete with. But like people of all walks of life, they are also haunted on another level, by the decisions of their grandparents, their parents, and their younger selves. The universal depth of this family drama strengthens the piece while allowing a new way into the movie for those too prejudiced or wounded to consider watching a film about being descended from slaves. The experience of oppression and hardship is more universal than a life lived without, and the choices our forefathers made were always reactions to it. In short, don’t skip the film just because you feel it has nothing to say about it you, because it has everything to say about all of us, even if the play probably said it better. Two stellar images in this film can only exist in a silver screen adaption, and that makes the whole endeavor well worth it. In the end, The Piano Lesson may have swung by for a quick visit, but hopefully, Malcom Washington is here to stay.
In select theaters November 8th, 2024.
Available on Netflix November 22nd, 2024.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews, streaming
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