Ghosts are everywhere in The Piano Lesson, and no matter what shape they take, they persistently haunt the protagonists of this excellent adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1990 play. Produced by Denzel Washington and directed by one of his sons (Malcom Washington) and starring another (John David Washington), this star-studded Netflix feature is an agonized drama about the burden of yesteryear and the conflicting ways to embrace and transcend it—one that’s rich in character, conflict, detail, desire, and history.
In 1936 Pittsburgh, Boy Willie Charles (Washington) arrives at the home of his uncle Doaker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson) in a truck—driven by his buddy and right-hand-man Lymon (Ray Fisher)—carrying a bed full of watermelons. Doaker is surprised to see Boy Willie and so too is Boy Willie’s sister Berniece Charles (Danielle Deadwyler), who lives with her daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith) in Doaker’s two-floor house.
Berniece’s shock, however, is of an unhappy sort, since she has little interest in reconnecting with her sibling. The underlying reason for their estrangement isn’t immediately clear, but those troubles are secondary to their current friction over the family’s piano, which sits in Doaker’s living room and which Boy Willie has come to collect.
The musical instrument in question is an heirloom with a tortured past. Decades earlier, the slave-owning Mr. Sutter procured the piano for his wife in exchange for two of Boy Willie and Berniece’s ancestors. Yet when his spouse decided that she missed her slaves, Sutter had the Black clan’s patriarch carve their faces into its façade and sides.
On July 4, 1911, Boy Willie’s father, along with Doaker and his friend Wining Boy (Michael Potts), stole the piano from Sutter, and following the death of her mom, Berniece has had it all to herself. To the single mother, the piano is a link to her heritage, and thus when Willie Boy announces that he wants to sell it in order to facilitate the purchase of the land once owned by the now-dead Sutter—who fell down a well, purportedly at the hands of the “Ghosts of the Yellow Dog”—a battle is born.
A brash, fast-talking go-getter with a habit of steamrolling his way through conversations (and, when possible, sweeping women off their feet), Boy Willie doesn’t understand his sister’s obsession with holding onto the piano, especially given that it could net them a pretty penny which—along with his savings and the proceeds of his and Lymon’s watermelon sales—would allow him to fortify his present and, just as crucially, build a future for himself and his descendants.
Having been taught by his dad that dirt is ephemeral but land is forever, Boy Willie views the piano as an asset that could be a stepping stone to stability and prosperity. Consequently, he considers it a pointless waste to leave it sitting in Doaker’s residence, where it’s used only by Maretha, who’s taught by Boy Willie to play a rudimentary Boogie Woogie that epitomizes his exuberant, swinging spirit.
The Piano Lesson positions its central item as a key to unlocking a better tomorrow and a weight upon these figures’ shoulders, such that even Wining Boy makes clear that his own piano-playing days brought him nothing but heartache. Co-written by Virgil Williams, Malcolm Washington’s behind-the-camera debut—which is headlined by four performers (Washington, Jackson, Fisher, and Potts) from the play’s 2022 Broadway revival—is a powder keg waiting to explode. At the same time, however, it’s something of a familial horror film in which the living are menaced by the dead, and the ultimate solution to Boy Willie and Berniece’s clash is a figurative (and quasi-literal) exorcism aimed at purging the regrets, resentments, suffering, and demons that have plagued them and their forebearers.
Whether it’s the fate of Boy Willie and Berniece’s father, who paid with his life for stealing the piano, or the untimely demise of Berniece’s husband (and Maretha’s father) Crawley, who died while working with Boy Willie, The Piano Lesson suggests that there’s peril in both holding onto the instrument and trying to make an entrepreneurial go of things as a Black man in post-Depression America.
Hewing closely to his source material, Washington stages his tale with impressive dynamism, highlighted by two distinct (if thematically interlinked) scenes in which the action is encased in pulsating light and darkness. Despite everything being largely confined to Doaker’s abode, the film is rarely stagey, and Alexandre Desplat’s mournful score is attuned to these individuals’ pain and longing.
Until its rousing finale, during which Washington crosscuts between the real and the illusory with cathartic intensity, The Piano Lesson prioritizes performances over style, and considering its illustrious cast, that decision serves it well.
Washington is a ball of energy as Boy Willie, his face alight with ambition and anger at Berniece’s objections to his designs. His charm colored by his potential untrustworthiness (a notion suggested by his sister’s accusation that he killed Sutter), Washington’s character is a hard-headed young man convinced that the path he’s chosen honors his father. He’s contrasted, in terms of temperament and outlook, by Deadwyler’s Berniece, whose grief and sorrow tell her that selling the piano is akin to severing ties with the past and betraying those whose blood, sweat, and tears led to its acquisition. On the heels of Till, the actress reconfirms her charisma and her range; veering from morose and fearsome to vulnerable and desperate, it’s a performance of impressive power.
The Piano Lesson’s supporting players don’t strike a discordant note, be it the weary and forlorn Jackson, the naïve and romantic Fisher, the bombastic and depressed Potts, or the earnest and honest Corey Hawkins as preacher Avery Brown, who has eyes for Berniece. Washington’s ensemble boasts a comfortably prickly rapport, and the script’s raft of anecdotes and asides lend the film a lived-in depth.
Respecting the warring perspectives at the heart of his story, the writer/director crafts his proceedings as a lament, a scream, and a purge—one in which the yearning to cling to a cherished (and heartbreaking) inheritance is intertwined with, and complicated by, the desire to create a new legacy for one’s self, progeny, and family.
