Producers: Denzel Washington and Todd Black Director: Malcolm Washington Screenplay: Virgil Williams and Malcolm Washington Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Ray Fisher, Danielle Deadwyler, Corey Hawkins, Michael Potts, Erykah Badu, Skylar Aleece Smith, Jerrika Hinton. Gail Bean, Melanie Jeffcoat, Stephan James, Malik J. Ali, Jay Peterson and Matrell Smith Distributor: Netflix
Grade: B
The third installment in Denzel Washington’s project to film all ten of August Wilson’s Century Plays about the black experience in twentieth-century America (following 2016’s “Fences” and 2020’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” both superb) is of his 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner “The Piano Lesson.” While actually the fifth of the ten in terms of writing, it’s the fourth in terms of its chronological setting, 1930s Pittsburg, and specifically the house of Doaker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson), where his widowed niece Berniece Charles (Danielle Deadwyler) and her daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith) also live.
In the living room sits the titular piano, the instrument that once belonged to the Sutters, the Mississippi family to whom the Charles family were slaves. It bears elaborate depictions of the Charles family, carved on to it by a Charles ancestor at the insistence of the Sutter who bought it to please his wife, who missed the slaves whose sale financed the purchase. Berniece’s father had stolen the piano and was murdered by the Sutters in retaliation for the theft, and for her it is a priceless family heirloom that she refuses to part with, even when asked by her suitor Avery Brown (Corey Hawkins), who’d hoped to use the proceeds from its sale to finance his church.
Now Berniece’s brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) arrives from Mississippi with his pal Lymon (Ray Fisher), bringing a load of watermelons they intend to sell. But his real purpose is to take the piano and sell it in order to purchase what’s left of the Sutter estate, leaving behind his sharecropper status and becoming a landowner.
The struggle between him and Berniece over the future of the piano is reminiscent of the one between Lena Younger and her son Walter Lee about how to use the insurance money they’ve gotten from the death policy of Lena’s husband in another classic tale of black life in America, Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 drama “A Raisin in the Sun.” In each case, the debate involves reverence for the past on the one hand and what kind of future a legacy should be used to fashion on the other. But while the long, heavy shadow of slavery is integral to both, it’s more explicit here. There’s an additional personal element to the brother-sister animosity in that Berniece blames Boy Willie for causing the death of her husband Crawley.
Onstage, of course, the action of the piece is confined to a single setting, the living room of the Charles house, and the past is recounted by the characters. Director Malcolm Washington and his co-writer Virgil Williams have, in the customary fashion, tried to “open it up” for the screen, with gauzy flashbacks visualizing the history that Wilson presented in pungent dialogue.
In this case, unfortunately, that blunts the drama rather than intensifying it. A prologue, for instance, shows Boy Charles (Stephan James), Berniece and Willie Boy’s father, removing the piano as James Sutter (Jay Peterson) is busy watching Fourth of July fireworks back in 1911, and being killed—an event only later described by Doaker in the play, in one of Wilson’s most powerful monologues. Showing the action up front reduces the later words to repetition; similarly, the flashback actually showing the first Boy Willie (Malik J. Ali) actually carving the figures on the piano as Doaker recalls him doing so similarly detracts from the strength of the language. In such instances, and others, simply focusing on Wilson’s words would have been the better choice.
Another dubious decision mars the final scene, an exorcism in which Avery attempts to expel the ghost of Sutter, who has invaded the house, and Boy Willie battles the apparition. It’s a fraught sequence, but handled with theatrical economy onstage. Malcolm Washington, cinematographer Michael Gioulakis and editor Leslie Jones turn it into something much more bloated, with flashes of lightning in a dark sky and a bruising scuffle between Boy Willie and the specter that becomes much too literal, especially given the extreme close-ups in it.
The use of such close-ups throughout, in fact, is detrimental, though one can appreciate the desire to use camera movement to lessen the feel of staginess. The close-ups, however, are especially troublesome in the case of John David Washington, who played Boy Willie in the latest Broadway revival and hasn’t sufficiently tempered the over-the-top approach that works on the boards in the transfer to the screen. Jackson, who appeared with him in New York as Doaker (and was the original Boy Willie back in 1987), is more subdued and therefore much more effective, as is Deadwyler, who isn’t reluctant to let loose in Berniece’s angry outbursts, but keeps the emotion within bounds. Fine turns from Hawkins, Fisher and Michael Potts, as Doaker’s brother Wining Boy, add to the strong ensemble; the business between Fisher and Potts about Lymon’s purchase of city duds is an especially engaging digression, and all three have moments of dialogue that allow them to shine. David J. Bomba’s production design and Francine Jamison-Tanchuck’s costumes are first-rate, as is Alexandre Desplat’s somber score, though there are intrusive needle drops.
Despite quibbles, this is a very good version of Wilson’s masterful play, well worth seeing. It does not, however, entirely displace the excellent 1995 telefilm, in which Charles S. Dutton made a compelling Boy Willie (which he’d also played on Broadway) and Alfre Woodard a fine Berniece.