‘The Piano Lesson’: Toronto Review

Dir. Malcolm Washington. US. 2024. 125mins

In Malcolm Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s seminal play The Piano Lesson, three Black brothers confiscate a piano from a white Southern residence throughout a July 4th fireworks present in 1911. By the intermittent flash of fireworks, we view the seizure of the instrument from a point-of-view shot mounted on its lid. The piano can be transported north, towards freedom, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In its wake, a child by the title of Boy Willie Charles will lose his father (Stephan James) — one of many brothers who lifted the piano — to Southern retribution. In flip, that child can be weighed down by the ghosts of his previous, the cries of his kin and the uncertainty of his future.

Sings the track of a folks with unusual reverence 

Washington’s directorial debut will not be the primary time his household has cinematically visited Wilson’s work. His father Denzel Washington starred in and directed Fences, and later produced Ma Rainey’s Black Backside – he additionally serves as a producer right here, alongside Todd Black. The director completes the household affair by casting his brother, John David Washington, because the temperamental grownup Boy Willie Charles; a component he beforehand performed on Broadway. Their mixed efforts make sure that The Piano Lesson, which had its world premiere at Telluride earlier than taking part in as a Toronto Particular Presentation, is fantastically rendered and composed of powerhouse performances. It’s positive to search out deep resonance with Black audiences and awards voters; it’s set for restricted theatrical launch on November 8 earlier than a worldwide Netflix launch later that month.

That success can be partly as a result of Washington’s agency dealing with of Wilson’s surreal materials. Quick ahead to 1936, and Boy Willie is now a grown man (Washington) leaving the South for Pittsburgh. He’s accompanied by Lyman (a young Ray Fisher) and a flatbed truck stuffed with watermelons. A white land proprietor named Sutter, who hailed from the clan that when enslaved Boy Willie’s household, lately died from falling right into a properly (some consider a spirit known as the Yellow Canine pushed him) — and now his land is on the market. Boy Willie plans to buy it by promoting the watermelons and the piano presently residing in the home of his uncle, Doaker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson). Whereas the amiable Doaker doesn’t wholly care what occurs to the instrument, Boy Willie’s sister Bernice (Danielle Deadwyler) refuses to half with it. 

This movie doesn’t draw back from the play’s apparent Southern Gothic parts. Typically the frenzy of Alexandre Desplat’s squeaking, swirling rating accompanies Bernice or her daughter’s sightings of Sutter’s bloated ghost. Boy Willie’s refusal to consider within the existence of any apparition places him in direct battle with a resolute Bernice. As Boy Willie, Washington delivers a lot of the theatricality of a stage efficiency. He lowers his voice to a guttural growl that sounds beat-for-beat like his father, and depends on broad gestures that recall a carnival barker greater than a number one man. But all of it one way or the other works, as a result of Willie Boy is such an annoying nation bumpkin that the crassness matches the character.

Different performances favour nuance. After a breakout efficiency in Until, Deadwyler returns with an equally charming flip as Bernice — a lady nonetheless deep in mourning for her husband Crawley (Matrell Smith), who was murdered over stolen firewood. Bernice refuses to reciprocate the love of an area preacher named Avery (an affecting Corey Hawkins) and finds temporary glimpses of seduction with the quiet Lyman. Deadwyler’s electrical energy powers each her sensual sighs and the defiant speeches she makes in opposition to Boy Willie’s makes an attempt to promote the piano to a white man, reconfiguring this character away from its stagey confines.

Deadwyler is the guts and soul of a movie whose each inch is deeply felt. The chipped paint and worn partitions make Bernice’s residence lived in; the overwhelming burst of celestial lighting fills the body with heat; the survivor’s guilt carried north by many African People in the course of the Nice Migration takes maintain. Typically the Southern Gothic derived bumps within the night time aren’t wholly interwoven, and the narrative can lose its propulsiveness as a result of ample characters and storylines. But The Piano Lesson will not be solely a powerful debut by Malcolm Washington, but additionally sings the track of a folks with unusual reverence.