TELLURIDE- The third of three celebrated August Wilson plays to make it to the big screen over the past decade, “The Piano Lesson” is one that many would expect might be the most difficult to adapt. Luckily, Denzel Washington, who appeared in, directed, or produced “Fences” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” could turn to members of his own family to assist in this endeavor. And Malcolm Washington, Denzel’s youngest son, has his own secret weapons to assist him in his feature directorial debut. The first is a scintillatingly stellar performance from Danielle Deadwyler. The second is Washington’s impressive artistic vision which proves that a love of cinema truly does run in the family.
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A world premiere at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival, Wilson’s tome, adapted by Washington and Virgil Williams, centers around a unique piano currently under the watch of Bernice (Deadwyler), a single mother who lives in a Pittsburgh home she shares with her Uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson reprising his Tony Award-nominated performance). Her relative peace is disturbed early one morning by the arrival of her brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) and his slightly naive friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) from Mississippi. She’ll soon discover that Boy Willie’s intentions do not align with her own.
As in Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, it’s 1936, and Boy Willie has ventured north on a mission with hopes as high as those who have just suffered through the worst of the Great Depression. Sutter, whose descendants owned the land their families were slaves on, has been pushed down a well to his death. One of many slave owners or descendants of slave owners to mysteriously fall victim to that well at the hands of the “Ghost of the Yellow Dog.” The land Sutter owned is now for sale to the public. Boy Willie has a truckload of watermelons to profit from and intends to sell the family heirloom to acquire the land.
The piano has a long and tragic history tied to the Charles family. Carved with the images of their enslaved relatives, Bernice and Boy Willie’s father, known as Willie Boy (Malik J., Ali), stole the piano with his brothers in an act of reparative justice decades prior (a prologue at the beginning of the movie). This cost him his life, and Bernice has watched over the blood-stained heirloom for her entire adult life. She has no intention of letting her brother sell it to bring that haunted land back into their family. And yes, there are spirits at play. The arrival of Willie Boy and Lymon also brings Sutter’s ghost into the Charles family home, horrifying both Bernice and her young daughter Maretha (Skylar Smith).
Over the next few days, tensions simmer as Boy Willie makes it clear he isn’t leaving without selling the piano while Bernice is increasingly desperate for him to leave. Adding their voices to the chorus are the siblings’ other uncle, the talented Wining Boy Charles (Michael Potts), and Avery Brown (Corey Hawkins), a preacher who has eyes on marrying Bernice. Her attention, however, is elsewhere as she finds herself unexpectedly drawn to the alluringly quiet and kind Lymon (a nice change of pace for Fisher).
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Out of the three films, Washington has impressively fashioned a way to free the material as much as possible from its theatrical origins. Both he and Williams seemingly create every possible option to pull the drama out of the Charles family living room, but those inherent moments in Wilson’s original tome frustratingly confine these ambitions. And yet, few filmmakers could surpass what Washington has pulled off without completely ripping up the source material. Should he and Williams have considered more drastic changes? When the narrative begins to bog down again and again because of those repetitive living room scenes it certainly makes it a topic worthy of debate. Thankfully the cinematic elements are assisted by sprawling flashbacks, the nightlife of 1930’s Pittsburgh, ghosts, and Deadwyler’s fiery presence.
It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of Deadwyler’s contributions to Washington’s finished film without descending into hyperbole. If John David Washington’s Boy Willie is chewing up every scene he can (more on that in a minute), then Deadwyler ensures that Bernice matches that bluster at every turn. And at the movie’s climactic moment, a narrative reach even for Wilson on the stage, the movie either soars or sinks on her shoulders. She soars.
If Deadwyler is a stand out then John David Washington is unexpectedly something of a distraction. As a character, Boy Willie is inherently exuberant and, at times, combative, but John David Washington plays him at such a constant level of intensity (he’s often at a 12 of 10) that his performance becomes more irritating than you would assume Wilson ever intended. Considering that he portrayed the character on stage in the same 2022 Broadway revival as Jackson and the talent the oldest Washington sibling has demonstrated previously, this interpretation is something of a head-scratcher.
At its core, “The Piano Lesson” is about a family attempting to come to terms with the long repercussions of slavery. Like almost all of Wilson’s work, it is a quintessentially American story peppered with characters that should resonate and spark conversation for decades to come. And, like many of Wilson’s literary contributions, translating it into the medium of cinema was no easy task. That Washington’s adaptation is the most successful so far, and in the context of his first film, no less, should be duly celebrated. [B-]
“The Piano Lesson” opens in limited release on Nov. 8. It will be available on Netflix beginning Nov. 22.
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