Malcolm Washington’s “The Piano Lesson” is a Revamping of August Wilson’s piano lesson, and the feature film marks Malcolm’s directorial debut. Washington collaborates with a well-known trio which includes John David Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and Danielle Deadwyler, and this drama encapsulates the Black experience in America in terms of trauma, wealth, and history.
The Charles family holds sacred a family treasure and that is a piano embedded with the faces of their ancestors. This piano was originally owned by their slave master named James Sutter also known as Jay Peterson and as a family treasure, it has been stolen from them only once in the hope of being passed down from generation to generation. Years passed and during 1936 Boy Willie Washington along with Lymon Ray were trying to sell the piano so that they could have enough money to buy land of their own. They traveled from Mississippi to Pennsylvania during the Great Depression with the hopes of buying and selling the piano.
Berniece Deadwyler on the other hand is the possessive and direct owner of the piano and says she would never sell it to young girls again even during the rich history of the world. Now the two siblings have conflicting arguments over the sale of the piano pulling down walls of their unresponsive relative Doaker, so these events transpire during the movie ‘The Piano Lesson’. The ending of the movie is slightly long during which Boy Willi and Berniece shed light on how African American history should be tackled and this fits very well with the core goal of the movie, that was conflict resolution.
In this movie Washington rocks the show with a demeanor full of spunk and zeal, It feels adrenaline-provoking just to see him. He has surely managed to berate relying on Berniece’s side of the story. His bombastic anecdotes accompanied by over-the-top movements are certainly charismatic… for an aspiring politician, but confrontation with Berniece is combined with frustration. Their characters couldn’t be more different from one another, and Deadwyler’s portrayal of the character in anger was also fascinating, but with less restraint. When compared to her brother, Deadwyler is much more stoic and captured, where her emotionless face takes up much more than her physical appearance. Most everything about her form suggests both the anger and the justice that accompanies Berniece.
The household tension is palpable during Berniece’s plea to keep the piano from Willie in contrast to her plea against him joining them, and Washington manages to unclothe this magic thread seamlessly.
Berniece only seems to be bothered about Boy Willie dismissing her as from the middle Sutter’s ghost appears to her in the doorways and sometimes when the upstairs area of the house is flooded. This ghostly apparition urges further chaos in the house, as she seems to only notice it. Washington alongside his supporting cast, however, skilfully redecorates the main area of the house which shifts the angles of lasting with a violent history from violent silence to drunken hollers with nostalgia. The piano, on the other hand, is firmly fixed by the border of the house and that ghost adds a bit of drama to the obstinate piece.
Washington does not come across as a patronizing storyteller as he opts to explain this allegory. Berniece and Boy Willie are characters who demonstrate a form of indignation and suppression in their use of history. While she symbolizes a person who attempts to bear the burden of history and prevent her daughter from knowing about the pain of their ancestors, Boy Willie intends to go at it in almost pure contempt, and in doing so he never acknowledges the whole of the past for what it truly is. Washington’s film is rendered out of compassion for each one of its sides (but also allows for absolute negation), portraying how the encounter of one with Black history pertains to different bodies. By becoming this way, “The Piano Lesson” accepts that seeking to resolve the problem and self in engagement should be the first stage in the problem-solving process. Great movies are coming also.
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