Denzel Washington’s foremost late career passion has been to bring to the screen the work of August Wilson, arguably the most important African-American playwright of the twentieth century, whose work Washington has been official custodian of for eight years. He started this quest with directing and starring in Fences, adapted directly from the Broadway revival he headlined in 2010, bringing over much of that production’s cast, including Viola Davis for what became her Oscar-winning performance. He then produced Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (directed by George C. Wolfe), again with Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman in his last and greatest performance. And now as he nears the end of his career, he has succeeded in making this enterprise a family business.
Produced once more by Denzel, The Piano Lesson is directed in his debut by his son Malcolm Washington. His other more established son John David stars as the male lead, again in a reprisal from a performance on stage, alongside most of the cast (Malcolm’s twin Olivia also has a cameo appearance and their sister Katia serves as a line producer). And all of them are just as dedicated as the family patriarch to translating and preserving this artistic legacy, in a fashion that could well be an August Wilson play itself. And that passion is a big part of what makes The Piano Lesson yet another engaging work.
The Piano Lesson is the story of the lingering phantom of slavery on one family in 1930s Pittsburgh -literally (perhaps). John David Washington plays Boy Willie Charles, returned from the South with the goal of selling the family heirloom, a piano their enslaved ancestor carved the likenesses of his family into after they were sold for it. Boy Willie's father died stealing the piano from the former slave-owning family and now that the last of them has died, Boy Willie intends to sell back the piano to buy the very land his ancestors were once enslaved on. In this endeavour he faces the fierce opposition of his sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler), who has kept the piano but never played it in fearful reverence for the family history. In the midst of this conflict, the family appears to be haunted by the ghost of their ancestor's slave-owner.
As with many an August Wilson play the story is largely confined to a single setting, and it is a matter of staging or cinematography to keep the action and characters of the piece dynamic. And Malcolm Washington does do that, but he also expands the story's scope, moving a few digression scenes to other places in the vicinity of the Charles home and utilizing flashback to illustrate the memories and the story of the family history. He spotlights too, especially in the last act, beats of ambiguous psychological horror -the appearance of the slaver Sutter to Berniece or the image of the piano in a field on fire. The horror connotations are very intentional, given that, literally or not, it is a deep horror that these characters, especially Boy Willie and Berniece, are reckoning with: less slavery itself than the generational ramifications of slavery.
It doesn’t take much to see that the ghost of Sutter is a metaphor for the history of slavery continuing to haunt a family a few generations removed, and that Boy Willie and Berniece represent alternate ways of processing it. Boy Willie in selling the piano wants to put that past behind them and move forward, seeing the piano as a symbol of their family’s strife and lack of mobility. Though to achieve that mobility for himself, he in some ways is acquiescing to the white man’s world and the white conception of the American Dream -in his case coming to own the land his family suffered on. Berniece also sees the piano as a symbol of the family strife, but believes it should be honoured as a memento of that past, a reminder of both the legacy of slavery and the sacrifices of her parents. But because of the negative connotations, she refuses to play it, lets it cast a shadow though doesn’t engage with the history. The piano is also a symbol of the love their great-grandfather had for his family in its etchings -it can be both a touchstone of pain and comfort. Both siblings need to understand that in order to move on, as much as is possible, from the spectre of their complex heritage.
This text and the themes are exquisitely profound, and especially in the hands of such tremendous actors. Deadwyler is a powerhouse once again -every iota of her open and suppressed pain alike immaculately raw. And Washington gives his best movie performance thus far, the first that also really shines with his father’s spirit, as the pressure to make more of his life than what his parents were able to rings strongly in every frame. Samuel L. Jackson (who both played this role on stage and originated Boy Willie at the Yale Rep Theatre in 1987) is also the best he has been in years as Doaker, the siblings’ uncle and family storyteller. Michael Potts plays Wining Boy, the other brother of Doaker and the late father, and Ray Fisher is Boy Willie’s friend and business partner Lymon, who is from the south and seeks to permanently migrate north. Rounding out the main cast is Corey Hawkins as the preacher (and eventual exorcist) Avery, in love with Berniece and urging her to move past the deaths of her parents and husband, whose fate she also blames on Boy Willie.
The movie captures vividly the lingering threads of enslaved culture in a sequence where the men drink while singing an old work song together, passed down through the decades. There is a tremulous pathos to it, but a sense of strong heritage as well, as Washington's camera and the actors' intensity frame it as latter-day oral tradition -they may well be singing around the campfire, once again keeping their ancestors' struggle alive; Boy Willie of course, seems mildly uncomfortable through it.
Some of the action in the last stretch of the movie feels a touch exorbitant, though Washington maintains a very intimate tone in conveying it -especially around the climactic confrontation with the spirit of Sutter, and therefore the titular piano lesson as it must be learned by both Boy Willie and Berniece. And even as something of a typical conclusion is brought about, the story is clear on the conviction that the spectre never fully fades, but that reckoning requires an even-handed approach of remembrance and progression. The piano is played again by movie's end, and such a small thing in the gravity of this film's conversation weighs so much. August Wilson died nearly twenty years ago. He is now a part of that ancestral plane so evoked in this film; but in the fervent stewardship of the Washington family, his immortality is assured.
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