The Piano Lesson movie review (2024) | Little White Lies

The Piano Les­son review – high-qual­i­ty but low-impact work

08 Nov 2024 / Released: 08 Nov 2024

A woman wearing a turban-style head covering, facing away from the camera with a serious expression.
A woman wearing a turban-style head covering, facing away from the camera with a serious expression.
3

Anticipation.

There is awards buzz, but that is no indicator of quality.

3

Enjoyment.

This is high-quality but low-impact work.

3

In Retrospect.

Much like a box of quality street, enough good stuff to sustain itself.

Mal­colm Wash­ing­ton makes his fea­ture direc­to­r­i­al debut with an ambi­tious adap­ta­tion of one of August Wilson’s most well-known plays.

It’s no mean feat to adapt an acclaimed play for the screen. Stay too true to the source mate­r­i­al, and it becomes claus­tro­pho­bic and uncin­e­mat­ic. Veer too far away, and you lose the original’s mag­ic. In many respects, Mal­colm Washington’s adap­ta­tion of August Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-win­ning play lands in the mid­dle. Its stage roots are evi­dent, but he has a han­dle on the film­mak­ing craft expands beyond what can be done in a the­atri­cal space.

It’s a hand­some work, one that fea­tures a cast that is a ver­i­ta­ble who’s who of peo­ple who should have won Oscars by now. In 1936 the fast-talk­ing Boy Willie (John David Wash­ing­ton) and his naïve pal Lymon (Ray Fish­er) make their way from Mis­sis­sip­pi to Pitts­burgh with a truck­ful of water­mel­ons, hop­ing that the pro­ceeds accrued from sell­ing the ripe fruit and an ornate piano in the pos­ses­sion of his sis­ter Berniece (Danielle Dead­wyler) will be enough to pur­chase a plot of land. Their uncle Doak­er (Samuel L Jack­son) remains the prag­ma­tist in this sit­u­a­tion and attempts to hold the peace between his at-odds fam­i­ly mem­bers, but Berniece stands firm, recruit­ing her rev­erend love inter­est Avery (Corey Hawkins) to purge the piano of its ghost­ly hold upon gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of her family.

The piano itself is one of the film’s most bewitch­ing details, carved with their family’s his­to­ry and seem­ing to scream out with the pain of their enslaved ances­tors. But tonal­ly, the film is not able to play from as wide a range of keys, mov­ing from twinkly romance to goth­ic hor­ror to right­eous fury. The seams are exposed, and with a pletho­ra of flash­backs also in the mix, each shift feels like the film is adopt­ing a new instru­ment rather than born of a sin­gle orchestra.

The inti­mate way that Mal­colm Wash­ing­ton frames each of his actors’ faces as they speak and manoeu­vres light from fields at dusk to mahogany-lined rooms at dawn is exquis­ite, yet the film nev­er entire­ly jus­ti­fies its own exis­tence. It lands as more of a show­case of assem­bling the many tal­ents on board rather than an adap­ta­tion shin­ing a new light on an already trea­sured work.

Clos­ing the chasm between art con­ceived for the stage and screen is a noble endeav­our, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a world where tick­ets to see Wilson’s work live are, at best, extor­tion­ate­ly expen­sive and, at worst, entire­ly inac­ces­si­ble. It’s a tru­ly warm­ing thing to see Net­flix invest in bring­ing com­plex films for grown-ups based on African-Amer­i­can clas­sics to the mass­es and to see Jack­son doing sub­tle, well-direct­ed work with­out his MCU-man­dat­ed eye patch. But much like what the film’s themes speak to, this debut alludes to a brighter future, and serves best as the foun­da­tion upon which Mal­colm Washington’s great­ness will be built upon rather than a mon­u­ment to it.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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