The Piano Lesson (2024)
How does Netflix make a good movie? Put the entire Washington family at the helm, for starters. The Piano Lesson, which is based on August Wilson’s 1956 one-act of the same name, it’s a satisfying and personal experience of family haunted by ghosts of the past, present, and future, both literally and figuratively. The action starts in 1911 but the bulk of the story takes place in July of 1936.
When Boy Willie hauls a truckload of watermelons to his sister Berniece Charles’s house in Pittsburg and expresses his desire to sell her heiloom piano so he can buy land and set himself up fair, it doesn’t go over well. The piano is pretty precious because it not only has sentimental value, but it carries the family’s heritage, as her dad carved the faces of their family members all over it. Uncle Doaker has reassured him Berniece won’t budge.
Berniece is adamant that the piano won’t be sold, but she’s also adamant that she won’t play it herself. She hasn’t played it since her mother died. She does, however, want her daughter, Marathea to play it. This is a pretty emotionally-charged decision, as Berniece is haunted by death, not only that of her mother, but of her husband and father, both of whom died violent deaths.
She also sees the ghost of Mr. Sutter, whose family owned her family as slaves, and who originally owned her piano. It’s his land Boy Willie wants to buy. The longer Boy Willie and his buddy, Lymon hang around, the more the family skeletons start rattling around in the proverbial closet, and no one is safe. Things stray into horror territory before the light breaks through.
Four of the cast members recreated their roles from the recent Broadway revival, and in a nice show of authenticity to its source material, Piano Lesson’s dialogue is taken pretty much verbatim from August Wilson’s original play, except that screenwriters did the usual thing of taking the play outside. We see the land Boy Willie wants to buy, as well as Boy Willie and Lymon selling their watermelons and later going to a jazz club with Boy Willie’s uncle Wining Boy.
These interludes are brief, though, because it’s all about this family dealing with their various ghosts, and the movie does this so effectively, whether through song or story, such as one stirring interlude when Boy Willie, Doaker, Wining Boy, and Lymon sing a prison song called “Berta, Berta.” The feeling is bittersweet, as the song brings up reminders of resilience through hardship.
The temptation with a story like this is to stick it firmly in the territory of the black American experience, which it is, but there’s much more to it than that. When asked what viewers should expect to get out of the film, producer Denzel said, “What they bring into it.”
I can’t begin to say how bang on this is. Going in, I knew The Piano Lesson was about a black American family, and I got caught up in it, but I also found myself relating to Berniece’s attachment to her piano and thinking of my own family’s experiences during the nineteen-thirties. I’ve played piano for many years, although not nearly as much as I’d like, and the piano my parents bought when we moved into the Auburn, California house has sat in the same spot for over thirty years. Even though I don’t get to play it very often, I wouldn’t sell that piano for anything beacause it feels like selling an appendage. There are a lot of memories tied up with that piano.
There are a lot of memories tied up with my family as well, just as in every family. My relatives mostly came from Ireland, but also England and Germany. All four of my grandparents moved to California in the late thirties and early forties from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas, with my Okie grandpa riding the rails out here right after he and Grandma got married in 1937.
Like black Americans, the Irish and Okies have also been looked upon as expendable and given the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs. During the nineteen-thirties the Okies were often segregated and kept out of jobs because many Americans considered them scum. My mom’s first home was a shack next to a farmer’s field in Imperial Valley.
The Piano Lesson is a reminder that history always goes with us, no matter how violent or ugly or beautiful it might be. The key is to find the balance between past and future and come to terms with our mistakes or the mistakes of others. The film isn’t just a black story, but a human story, and it’s fitting that so many members of the Washington family were able to make it together.
The Piano Lesson is currently streaming on Netflix. Rated PG-13.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Ray Fisher, Corey Hawkins, Michael Potts, Skylar Aleece Smith, Stephan James, Erykah Badu, Malik J Ali, Charity Jordan, Isaiah Gunn, Matrell Smith, Jerrika Hinton, Gail Bean, Eilan Joseph, Pauletta Washington, Olivia Washington.
Directed by Malcolm Washington.
Written by Virgil Williams, Malcolm Washington, and August Wilson (play).