December 6, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Malcolm Washington
Culture Representation: Taking place in Mississippi and in Pittsburgh (mostly in 1936, with some flashbacks to 1911 and the 1800s), the dramatic film “The Piano Lesson” (based on August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name) features a predominantly African American cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A brother and a sister have a family feud because the brother wants to sell the family’s antique piano, but the sister does not want to sell the piano, and her house appears to be haunted because of the piano.
Culture Audience: “The Piano Lesson” will appeal primarily to fans of August Wilson, the movie’s headliners, and dramas about family tensions and generational legacies.
The 2024 version of “The Piano Lesson” gives a well-acted and dynamic cinematic retelling of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. This solidly made drama effectively conveys the story’s themes of how family legacies can haunt or inspire people. It’s the type of movie that enriches the stage version of the play with very good artistic choices in cinematography and production design. “The Piano Lesson” had its world premiere at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival and its Canadian premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
“The Piano Lesson” is the feature-film directorial debut of Malcolm Washington, the youngest son of Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington. Malcolm Washington and Virgil Williams co-wrote the adapted screenplay for “The Piano Lesson,” which is based on August Wilson’s 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. Denzel Washington is one of the movie’s producers. John David Washington (Denzel’s eldest child) is the main star of the movie. Katia Washington (Denzel’s second-eldest child) is one of the movie’s executive producers. In a movie about a family, the production of “The Piano Lesson” was obviously a family affair too.
This isn’t the first movie version of “The Piano Lesson.” There was a 1995 TV-movie of “The Piano Lesson” (starring Charles S. Dutton and Alfre Woodard) that was part of CBS’s Hallmark Hall of Fame and was nominated for nine Primetime Emmy Awards. Netflix’s 2024 version of “The Piano Lesson” movie clearly has a larger budget that went into making the world in the story feel more expansive with several locations.
The 2024 version of “The Piano Lesson” begins on July 4, 1911, in an unnamed city in Mississippi. It’s during a time in U.S. history when slavery was outlawed but Jim Crow racial segregation laws still existed. (The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 made these segregation laws illegal in the United States.) The effects of racism against black people in America are seen and heard throughout the movie.
In this opening scene of “The Piano Lesson,” a group of white people in the community are gathered to watch fireworks. Meanwhile, a 31-year-old man named Boy Charles (played by Stephan James) has decided that he’s going to take a family heirloom that he thinks is rightfully his: a piano, which has images of many of his ancestors that are carved on the piano. The piano is in the possession of the wealthy Sutter family, a white clan who enslaved Boy Charles’ ancestors. Boy Charles works for the Sutter family as a farmhand and handyman.
The members of the Sutter family are not at home because they are attending a Fourth of July celebration. Boy Charles has brought his son Boy Willie (played by Isaiah Gunn), who’s about 10 years old, to be the lookout for this reclaiming of the piano. Boy Charles has two accomplices—his brother Doaker Charles and their friend Wining Boy (played by Tony Fox)—who are both with Boy Willie in the truck that transports the piano away.
Boy Charles decides to stay behind near the house. It turns out to be a fatal mistake because he dies that night. The details of Boy Charles’ death are revealed later in the movie. However, it’s easy to predict what happened to Boy Charles as soon as horse-riding men with torches race through a field to look for Boy Charles, who is an obvious suspect for this theft.
“The Piano Lesson” then fast-forwards 25 years later to 1936. Boy Willie (played by John David Washington) is still living in Mississippi and is a farm worker. Boy Willie’s mother has been deceased for an unnamed number of years. He notices that the Sutter family has put up for sale the farm land where Boy Willie’s ancestors used to work. Boy Willie has decided that he wants to buy this farm. The Sutter family’s patriarch James Sutter (played by Jay Peterson) has recently died by falling down a well.
Boy Willie thinks the only way he can get the money to buy this farm land is to sell the family’s antique piano. The piano is currently thousands of miles away in the Pittsburgh home of his sister Berniece (played by Danielle Deadwyler), who has been estranged from Boy Willie for a number of years. Berniece, who is a single mother, lives in the house with her 11-year-old daughter Maretha (played by Skylar Aleece Smith) and Doaker (played by Samuel L. Jackson), who tries to keep the peace when Boy Willie and Berniece quarrel. (Jackson played the role of Doaker in the 2022 Broadway revival of “The Piano Lesson.”)
Boy Willie travels to Pittsburgh with his close friend Lymon Jackson (played by Ray Fisher) so that they can sell watermelons and hopefully take back the piano. Boy Willie (who is talkative and cocky) and Lymon (who is friendly and a bit slow-witted) arrive at Berniece’s home at around 5 a.m. without telling any of the people in house in advance that they would be visiting. Not surprisingly, Berniece isn’t happy about this unannounced arrival. (Fisher played the role of Lymon in the Broadway revival of “The Piano Lesson.”)
At first, Boy Willie is optimistic and overconfident that he can convince Berniece to sell the piano when he tells her what he is going to do with the money from selling the piano. However, Boy Willie soon finds out that Berniece is just as stubborn and strong-willed as he is because she refuses to sell the piano. Berniece was very attached to her mother, who treasured the piano, which is why Berniece believes that selling the piano would disrespect her mother the family’s legacy. Wining Boy (played by Michael Potts) has some survivor’s guilt that he and Doaker got away with taking the piano, while Boy Charles lost his life over it.
At one point in the movie, Doaker tells the piano’s origin story of how it became connected to the Charles family: James Sutter’s grandfather Robert Sutter (played by David Atkinson, in flashbacks), nicknamed Old Man Sutter, was the “slave master” of the Sutter family who got the piano by trading some of his enslaved people for the piano. Those enslaved people were ancestors of Boy Willie, Berniece, and Doaker. Boy Charles’ grandfather Willie Boy (played by Malik J. Ali) was a carpenter who was hired to carve the images of these family members in the piano because Robert’s wife Ophelia missed seeing the enslaved people who left because of the trade.
Adding to the family tensions, superstitious Berniece thinks that Boy Willie has brought some bad omens with him when she hears that Boy Willie is a person of interest in the death of a Mississippi man named Crawley (played by Matrell Smith), who also died from falling down a well, just like James Sutter. Were these deaths accidents or murders? It’s a mystery that doesn’t get necessarily solved by the end of the story. Soon after Boy Willie and Lymon arrive at the house, Berniece is convinced that the ghost of Old Man Sutter is haunting the house because of the piano. She claims to have seen this ghost.
“The Piano Lesson” has a subplot about Berniece being courted by an ambitious preacher named Avery (played by Corey Hawkins), who tells her that he loves her but he also admits he’s more likely to get his own church if he’s a married man. Avery barely interacts with Maretha, which is an indication that Avery probably doesn’t love Berniece as much as he says he does because he doesn’t seem too interested in being a caring parental figure to her child. Avery appeals to Berniece’s religiousness, but she’s not entirely convinced it would be right for her to marry Avery. Meanwhile, Lymon shows a romantic interest n Berniece too.
“The Piano Lesson” might frustrate some viewers who are expecting more ghostly action in the story, which tends to get repetitive in showing arguments between Boy Willie and Berniece. Erykah Badu has a memorable cameo as a singer named Lucille, who performs at a nightclub/bar where the men in the story like to carouse. However, the nightclub scenes could have been taken out of the movie and would not have any effect on the story’s outcome.
What makes this version of “The Piano Lesson” noteworthy are the performances from the talented ensemble cast, although the character of Maretha could have been developed better. John David Washington and Deadwyler have sheer magnetism in their scenes as feuding siblings, who both have convincing motivations for what they want to do with the piano. Jackson and Fisher also have notable scenes where their characters have various effects on the tumultuous relationship between Berniece and Boy Willie. The movie’s screenplay is a little jumbled in telling the story in a non-chronological timeline, but it shouldn’t be too confusing if viewers are paying full attention.
“The Piano Lesson” is not about learning how to play this musical instrument. It’s about a life lesson of learning how much of the past can or cannot affect the future. “The Piano Lesson” excels when showing that “family legacy” can mean different things within a family. For Berniece, her definition about famly legacy is about honoring the past. For Boy Willie, his definition of family legacy is about securing a better future. What “The Piano Lesson” wants to teach (and do so very well) is to not take loved ones for granted in the present.
Netflix released “The Piano Lesson” in select U.S. cinemas on November 8, 2024. The movie premiered on Netflix on November 22, 2024.
