Tina Kakadelis
Playwright August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays that are collectively known as The Pittsburgh Cycle. Wilson was born in the Hill District, a predominantly Black neighborhood that was the hub for Black culture in the 1950s. It is this neighborhood that was home to the famous Crawford Grill, jazz clubs, and the Freedom House Ambulance Service, which was the first emergency medical service to be staffed entirely by paramedics. The Freedom House provided blueprints for how ambulances and first responders work today. The Hill District was a vibrant community, one that’s on full display in the latest adaptation of an August Wilson play, The Piano Lesson, a film that makes the case for the line between a ghost story and a family drama to be blurred beyond distinction.
At the center of The Piano Lesson is a piano. It’s a family heirloom that resides in the home of Doaker and Berniece Charles (Academy Award Samuel L. Jackson and Till breakout Danielle Deadwyler) and in their home in Pittsburgh. Before it ended up in that living room, it was stolen from a farm in Mississippi. The piano has carvings that were made by an enslaved ancestor of the Charles family, and that’s why Berniece sees it as a prized possession. Boy Willie (The Creator star John David Washington), Berniece’s brother, sees it as a useless artifact that is a reminder of slavery. He, along with his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher of Justice League), has traveled to Pittsburgh to sell the piano against Berniece’s wishes. The Piano Lesson primarily plays out within the Charles house as the family debates what should happen to this piece of their collective history.
Wilson’s work is deeply tied to Pittsburgh, a city known for its steel industry, bridges, and ketchup. More recently, the city has been making a name for itself as a destination for filmmakers to make their movies. Christopher Nolan transformed this modest city into Gotham for The Dark Knight Rises, where Tom Hardy’s Bane famously blew up Heinz Field (now Acrisure Stadium). Cooper Raiff’s sophomore effort, Cha Cha Real Smooth, also called Pittsburgh home for a few months of production. The recent adaptations of Wilson’s plays, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Fences, were shot in the very neighborhoods Wilson wrote about. However, the Malcolm Washington-directed The Piano Lesson marks the first adaptation that did not shoot in Pittsburgh. It’s a disappointing decision, given how much of Wilson’s work is based on growing up in the Hill District neighborhood, also where The Piano Lesson takes place. The filmmaking infrastructure already exists in this city, and local industry professionals are struggling in the post-strike environment. The Piano Lesson could have been an essential jolt of life for this community that could also pay homage to the man behind the story. It’s difficult to describe the decision to shoot elsewhere as anything other than disappointing.
The clear standout of The Piano Lesson is Danielle Deadwyler. Since the film’s premiere at Telluride earlier this year, it has been Deadwyler’s name that is repeated as a potential awards contender, and it’s chatter that’s rightfully earned. The challenge of adapting plays to the film medium is that plays are written so that even people in the very last row of a theater can understand what’s happening. There isn’t room for a lot of nuance or subtlety because the back row can’t always discern the small movements of an actor’s face. The dialogue must make up for the distance between the audience and the stage, but that’s not a problem in film. It takes a special type of actor not to let themselves get caught up in the largeness of the source material and adapt their performance for film. It’s something Deadwyler does effortlessly and heart-wrenchingly, but something that others in the cast (primarily John David Washington) struggle with. When Deadwyler and Washington share the screen, it creates an awkward imbalance, as though they’re acting in separate films, only one of which is successful for the medium they’re working in.
The beginning of this review likened The Piano Lesson to a ghost story, which may come as a bit of a surprise to those who have seen the recent adaptations of Wilson’s work. He’s a human-centric playwright, but one could argue that ghost stories are inherently stories about people. We’re all haunted by our past. Not just the actions of ourselves, but by the generational trauma that exists in our families. The impact and effect of slavery did not die when the last generation of people who were enslaved passed away. Ripples and tidal waves run through the people who come after. The same way we pass down items like a piano, we pass down our traumas, our sadness, and our joys. The Piano Lesson leans into the way we’re haunted by our ancestors, but also how we are strengthened by them. While not an outright horror film, The Piano Lesson exists in an interesting middle ground of interpersonal story and haunted house flick.
The Piano Lesson is Malcolm Washington’s directorial debut, and the opening scene does a magnificent job of gripping the audience from the get-go. The film begins with the theft of the piano on the Fourth of July. The audience’s ability to see the action mimics that of the characters – the only light we have is the occasional firework that goes off to illuminate the farmhouse. From there, Washington creates a ghost story that goes against the confines of that genre, and it’s both immensely helped and unfortunately hindered by the cast’s performances. The Piano Lesson speaks to a shared, collective history that haunts life in America and how we can try to heal.
