Washingtons everywhere!
It makes sense that this adaptation of the August Wilson play would be a family affair, as it’s a story of family legacy. With Denzel Washington and daughter Katia as producers, The Piano Lesson marks the feature directorial debut of Denzel’s son Malcolm and includes other son John David in a lead role. Meanwhile, Denzel’s wife Pauletta and daughter Olivia have brief moments playing the same woman at different ages. There is nepotism at work here, undoubtedly, but for the most part these connections serve what’s on the screen—a story with a palpable familiarity among its characters, one that breeds both love and contempt.
The piano of the title has belonged to the Charles family for generations, though it was previously owned by the white clan who enslaved the Charles forebearers. The story of how it got from that Southern plantation to the living room of Berniece Charles (Danielle Deadwyler) in 1936 Pittsburgh gradually unfolds over the course of the movie, even as the main narrative involves Berniece resisting the demands by her brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) that she sell it.
As a symbolic image, the piano is a stroke of August Wilsonian genius: a rich object throbbing with music and memories, like a beautiful curse. Malcolm Washington’s strongest decision as a director, working with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, is to mount the camera on the piano itself during moments when it is being moved—sometimes by people, sometimes by other forces. The Piano Lesson, you see, is a horror story in its own way—actually, in the way that Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jonathan Demme’s screen adaptation were also ghost stories, explorations of how to live with a haunted past. At times The Piano Lesson is also almost a musical, including a climatic moment of rhythmic exorcism.
Malcolm Washington’s juggling of these various modes is a bit uneven, as you might expect from a first-time director. (The climax is particularly awkwardly paced.) It’s the performances that ultimately carry the film. John David Washington is in his most comfortable mode—lithe, a little dangerous—as the rambunctious, rascally Boy Willie, while Samuel L. Jackson nicely underplays his part as the siblings’ uncle Doaker, a weary observer in his old age. The best performance comes from Deadwyler as Berniece, a no-nonsense woman who gradually opens up to reveal layers of aching tenderness, then deep spiritual strength—of the sort that can hold even the most scarred of families together.
(10/17/24)
