The Piano Lesson begins with flashes of red, white, and blue — fireworks illuminating the smiling faces of white folks at a Fourth of July celebration in Mississippi, 1911.
While the white people are out celebrating, Boy Charles, a Black man, steals a piano from the house of the Sutter family. Though I don’t know if you can really call it “stealing”; the piano has the faces of members of the Charles family on it, intricately hand-carved by an ancestor during the brutal years of their enslavement.
When the Sutter family realizes what’s missing, they come for Boy Charles. The glow of the fireworks start to look like the red, white, and blues of a cop car. By the end of the opening scene, Boy Charles gets the piano but loses his life.
Most of Malcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson, based on the Pulitzer-winning play of the same name, takes place 30 years after the piano heist. The conflict on the surface of this film is a disagreement between siblings, the children of Boy Charles: Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler), a widowed single mother, and Boy Willie (John David Washington), a sharecropper. They have differing views about what should be done with the piano.
Boy Willie intends to sell it to purchase Sutter’s land — the very land where their forefathers were enslaved. Berniece, however, is determined to keep the piano.
Lurking beneath the surface of the conflict is the lingering generational trauma of enslavement, death, and grief. In many ways, The Piano Lesson is a film about what we pass on from one generation to the next: family heirlooms, deeply embedded wounds, and — as is the case for the Charles family — deeply embedded spirituality.
Toward the end of the film, Berniece asks Avery (Corey Hawkins), a preacher and her romantic interest, to bless her home. She’s seen the ghost of Sutter (the slaveholding patriarch), and wants him out of her house.
She also calls for the aid and presence of her ancestors. “I want you to help me,” she chants through sobs, pounding on the piano keys.
In Hebrews 12:1, we see echoes of this: the great cloud of witnesses. This verse calls us to remember that we are not alone. We are accompanied by the sorrows as well as the joys of our ancestors. The cloud of witnesses gives us a greater sense of purpose; the work ahead is as much theirs as it is ours. We must understand that it is impossible to do the work of the future without knowing the histories that made us who we are.
The Piano Lesson brought to mind a different scripture passage for Rev. Robert “Ty” Jones, who spoke on a panel at a Washington, D.C., screening of the film. “The promise of Genesis 12 indicates that our stories are not our own,” said the assistant to the pastor for young adults at Alfred Street Baptist Church. In Genesis, the Abrahamic covenant not only captures the individual journey of Abraham, but also the generational story that unfolds through his lineage. God tells Abraham that he will make a “great nation” out of him and that “all peoples on earth will be blessed” through him.
“At every level of the film, you saw the connection of one story to another story,” Jones said.
For instance, in a powerful musical scene (one without a piano at all), what starts out as kitchen-table banter between Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson), Boy Willie, Wining Boy (Michael Potts), and Lymon (Ray Fisher), turns into a stunning acapella performance of “Berta, Berta,” a song that Wilson wrote specifically for the play. In the freedom of their own home, the intergenerational group of men break into the prison song, pounding the table and stomping their feet. The rendition begins lightheartedly but, in the end, bares a raw display of grief.
The Piano Lesson is immensely tactile. From shoes stomping in unison to hands sifting through soil to perfume placed behind ears, it’s a cinematic experience that evokes a strong sensory response for viewers.
Sometimes tapping into our family histories of song, spirituality, trauma, and survival can feel a lot like sensory overload. But with strength grounded in faith, we can begin to heal and create a better future for those to come.
The Piano Lesson premiered on Netflix on Nov. 22.
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