TIFF24: The Piano Lesson

The Piano Lesson is the feature debut of Malcolm Washington, the son of Denzel Washington. It adapts August Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning play and proves to be a lesson in theatrical adaptation. It has great acting, largely a result of the majority of its cast having worked on the 2022 Broadway revival of the play. The film adaptation by Washington and Virgil Williams also has the benefit of working from great source material and it retains most of the text intact. But the film also falls into the trap that many stage adaptations do: it tries too hard to be cinematic.

Eager to prove that his adaptation of Wilson’s play, which largely takes place in a single house in Pittsburgh, isn’t just a “filmed play,” Washington pulls out all the stylistic stops to inject energy into the film’s visual approach. For instance, his camera rushes around tables. We get extreme close-ups and moody lighting. There are fast cuts and interludes in exterior locations to give a greater sense of scale. As the film moves towards its dramatic climax, Washington, aided by cinematographer Mike Gioulakis (who shot It Follows as well as the M. Night Shyamalan films Split and Glass) goes full horror-movie mode. There are flickering lights, ghastly visions of ghosts, and a screeching, screaming audio design. I applaud his attempts to avoid making the movie stuffy, but it becomes a little too much. The result is a movie that, like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Fences before it, is mainly successful at translating August Wilson to the big screen, but unlike those films, is trying a little too hard. Sometimes, the simpler approach is best, as with 2016’s Fences, directed by Washington’s father, Denzel Washington (the elder Washington acts as producer here). Turns out that a “theatrical” approach to a cinematic adaptation of a play isn’t such a bad thing.

Not that The Piano Lesson is a bad movie. It’s worth watching. The cast is strong and includes Malcolm’s brother, John David Washington, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, Corey Hawkins, and Danielle Deadwyler. And of course, being adapted from an August Wilson play doesn’t hurt. Washington’s adaptation might be a bit too cinematically anxious, but it’s built on a firm foundation.

The story concerns an heirloom piano that lies in the living room of Doaker Charles’ (Jackson) modest Pittsburgh home in 1936. The piano belonged to Sutter, the Southerner who owned the Charles family as slaves. Back in the day, Doaker’s brother stole the piano from Sutter, but was lynched in the aftermath, while Doaker moved it up north to Pittsburgh. Years later, his nephew, Willie Boy (John David Washington) and Willie’s friend, Lymon (Fisher), show up and want to sell the piano so Willie Boy can buy the land the family used to live on down south. But Willie’s sister, the recently widowed Bernice (Danielle Deadwyler), doesn’t want to sell it. The piano, with intricate carvings made by their grandparents, is a link to the family past, and furthermore, it might be haunted by the ghost of Sutter. But Willie Boy doesn’t care about the past. He wants money for the present. And so the family members clash.

The cast relishes performing Wilson’s dialogue and draw you into the tale of a family torn apart by disagreements over how to reckon with the past. It’s fun to be holed up in the living room of Doaker’s home while Willie Boy goes to work trying to convince Bernice to sell the piano, or to watch Doaker’s brother, Wining Boy (Michael Potts), sell his flashy suit to simple Lymon. The advantage of a play with such a restrained setting is that we grow intimate with the characters and watch them in a place where they have nowhere to hide; it’s almost like we’re in the room with them, which admittedly adds energy and pace at moments. It’s also interesting to watch the story grow into more overt horror as it plays out; there’s even a failed exorcism of sorts to cap things off.

Too bad the filmmaking isn’t as sturdy as the play’s script. The Piano Lesson is frenetic in a way that I wasn’t expecting for an August Wilson work. For some, the attempts at a more visceral approach to a theatrical adaptation will surely be welcome, but I found much of the approach the work of a first-time director trying to bring something new to material that doesn’t need to be fussed with. The result is a movie that is worthwhile for its acting and story, but also makes you wish you had caught the theatrical production in 2022. By trying to be a movie so hard, it makes you wish it were more of a play, which, ironically, seems to be the opposite of its intended effect.

6 out of 10

The Piano Lesson (2024, USA)

Directed by Malcolm Washington; written by Malcolm Washington and Virgil Williams, based on the play by August Wilson; starring John David Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, Erykah Badu, Skylar Aleece Smith, Danielle Deadwyler, Corey Hawkins.

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