The Piano Lesson

Denzel Washington continues his commitment to producing film adaptations of all of August Wilson's plays from the Century Cycle, which started with the solid Denzel-directed Fences in 2016 and the more uneven Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe in 2020. The film of The Piano Lesson, the fourth installment of the theatrical series, is a family affair starring Denzel's oldest son, John David Washington, and directed by his youngest son, Malcolm Washington—daughter Olivia and wife Pauletta are also featured playing the character Mama Ola at different ages.

After a pre-credit sequence set in 1911 Mississippi, in which a Fourth of July celebration turns into a mob-led manhunt after three young Black men break into the home of a powerful land baron named Sutter and steel the former slave-owning family's prized piano, we jump head to year 1936. Boy Willie Charles (John David Washington) and his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) arrive at the Pittsburgh home of Willie's uncle, Doaker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson). Doaker lives with Willie's widower sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler), her young daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith), and that piano, which is intricately carved with African faces. Willie plans to take the and sell it to raise the remaining funds he needs to buy the farmland of the hateful James Sutter, who has recently died as a result of being pushed down a well. Though she never plays it, Berniece has no intention of parting with the piano, which she views as a sacred memorial representing their family history of struggle and survival. Much of the play and film consists of arguments between the various family members and others who come and go in the home (including Sutter's ghost), illuminating the significance of this piano in these people's lives.

As with the overproduced Ma Rainey, this busily directed adaptation seems insecure about the theatricality. The number of camera angles and the editorial pace employed to cover the action, which is mostly set in Docker's living room, smack of a first-time director. If you told me there were 50 times as many cuts in this film as in Fences, I'd think you were undercounting. The Piano Lesson can be described as the most cinematic of Willson's plays because of its surrealistic elements and overt symbolism. But by leaning into these qualities, Washington and co-screenwriter Virgil Williams (who also wrote Dee Rees' Mudbound, another film that strained to be both cinematic and faithful to its source material) distract from the performances, which are where the actual special effects of all Wilson's plays reside.

Not that the performances aren't strong in this film. Deadwyler (Till, I Saw the TV Glow, Carry-On) gives her usual solid and emotional turn, though her "with" billing in the credits is very strange, considering she is the female lead of this movie. Fisher (Justice League, Rebel Moon, and the third season of HBO's True Detective) is a revelation as Lymon—this film should do great things for his career. Jackson is, as always, great, and John David Washington is, as always, good, though I constantly find it hard not to compare him unfavorably to his superstar father, one of the greatest and most naturalistic screen actors ever.

Production designer David J. Bomba (The Great Debaters, Walk the Line, Mudbound) does a wonderful job creating Doaker's home in a style that feels authentically August Wilson, and Art Director Chardae Adams makes this set feel like a lived-in home. Cinematographer Michael Gioulakis, known for much less reality-based fair like John Dies at the End, It Follows, Split, Under the Silver Lake, Us, and Sasquatch Sunset, gives the picture a warm and inviting quality that offsets the tensions in the household. I just wish Editor Leslie Jones allowed any of Gioulakis's shots to play out for more than a second or two.