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

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.

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