A scene from ‘The Piano Lesson’ Photo Credit: Netflix

In piano LessonThe piano isn’t just a musical instrument in the home of Doerker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson). For his niece, Bernice (Danielle Deadwyler), it’s a family heirloom, her heritage, and her past. Bernice’s brother, Boy Willie (John David Washington) thinks differently. Fresh out of jail, Willie arrives at Docker’s house in Pittsburgh with his friend Lyman (Ray Fisher) to sell a truckload of watermelons. A sharecropper, Willy wants to own land and make something out of his living. He sees the piano as a way to be able to buy land.

Whenever Docker’s older brother, Winning Boy (Michael Potts), is sad, he visits Docker and reminisces about his glory days as a piano player. For Winning Boy, the piano is a burden that he has to carry, wondering “Am I or am I the piano player.”

Docker tells the story of the piano, and why Bernice will never agree to sell it. The family’s slave owner Sutter (Jay Peterson) purchases the piano as an anniversary gift for his wife, Miss Ophelia (Melanie Jephcott), in exchange for “one and a half slaves.” He broke up a family by selling the mother and nine-year-old son for a piano. Ophelia was happy with the piano and played it all day, but she missed her slaves, she became ill and went to her bed.

Sutter got the exchanged slaves’ husband – a talented wood carver – to carve his likeness on the piano. Apart from the likenesses of his wife and son, Ghulam also engraved his entire family history on the piano. Boy Willie’s father steals the piano and is murdered when he escapes from the Yellow Dog train. In retaliation, a series of unexplained drownings occurred, attributed to the ghosts of the Yellow Dog. Charles’s house is haunted by the ghost of the latest drowning and any attempt to move the piano results in ominous disturbances.

A scene from ‘The Piano Lesson’ Photo Credit: Netflix

Faithfully following the tune of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning play, piano Lesson Uses the closed confines of Charles’s home to tell a story across space and time. Set in 1936, the set’s design and period details are on the nose.

The characters can be seen as archetypes – there is the narrator in Docker, future-set boy Willie, Bernice, for whom being a bridge between past and present becomes too much, her daughter Maretha (Skyler Elise Smith), who represents The future, preacher Avery (Corey Hawkins), who charms Bernice and advises her to move on, the wining boy, the fool, and Lyman, the shy stranger who is ultimately able to persuade Bernice from grief. Outside.

The acting is tremendous and brilliant. Jackson is practically unrecognizable as the neutral Docker while Washington gives a brutal turn to Boy Willie. Both reprized their roles from the 2022 stage production, along with Fisher and Potts. Malcolm Washington, son of Denzel Washington (who co-produced the film with Todd Black) and brother of John David Washington, makes his feature film debut with this extra film of muscles and nerves that explores the relationship between tells a richly layered story. Ghosts, someone’s past and someone’s legacy.

Piano Lessons is currently streaming on Netflix