Review: ‘The Piano Lesson’ is a mixed bag

If all intentions were good, this screen version of “The Piano Lesson” would earn high marks. But wishing doesn’t make it so. And this muddled adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, now in theaters ahead of its November 22 Netflix debut, is a mixed bag.

It is the third film adapted from Wilson’s 10-play series, collectively called “The Pittsburgh Cycle,” about the systemic and historical exploitation of black Americans throughout each decade of the 20th century.

The playwright died in 2005, but his work will live on, especially if Denzel Washington has anything to say about it. After starring in and directing 2016’s “Fences” and shepherding 2020’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” to the screen, the Oscar-winning star is producing “The Piano Lesson” as a primary motivator in what might be called a Washington family mission statement.

“The biggest part of what’s left of my career,” said Washington — who turns 70 in December — “is making sure August is taken care of.”

It’s a commendable undertaking with some built-in traps. No Wilson film adaptation to date has been able to break completely free of its stage roots. “Fences” did best, earning four Academy Award nominations, including best picture, best adapted screenplay for Wilson and best actor for Washington, with his co-star Viola Davis taking home the award for best supporting actress.

“The Piano Lesson,” starring Denzel Washington’s son John David Washington and directed by younger son Malcolm Washington from a script he co-wrote with Virgil Williams (“Mudbound”), is definitely a family affair. Denzel Washington’s daughter Katia Washington is a co-producer, and the film is dedicated to their mother Pauletta Washington, who did not raise any nepo babies. Talent is evident everywhere.

The director opens with something rarely seen on stage – an explosion of fireworks from the Fourth of July, circa 1911. As the white Sutter family gathers at their Mississippi plantation to watch the show, three black men in the house are in the awkward process of stealing a piano.

Not just any piano. This is decorated with designs carved by an enslaved ancestor. A quick cut jumps us to 1936 Pittsburgh, where the piano sits in the home of Doaker Charles (the great Samuel L. Jackson), who shares it with his niece Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) and her daughter, Maretha (Skylar Smith).

What follows is the blunt intrusion of Doaker’s nephew, Boy Willie (John David Washington), with his shy friend Lymon (Ray Fisher, terrific), who is about to sell the piano to buy a piece of the old Sutter place as an act of recovery.

Berniece is not having it, seeing the piano as an heirloom of terror that must never be forgotten. No spoilers other than to say that Deadwyler is magnificent as she uses the camera to capture every nuance of emotion in Berniece. While the male actors, apart from Fisher, rely on surface pyrotechnics, the luminous Deadwyler gives Berniece a vibrant inner life. Oscar snubbed her as the grieving mother in 2023’s “Till.” Please Academy: Don’t make that mistake again.

It’s the attempt to free the film from its theatrical confines that sends it sideways, pitting Wilson’s poetic dialogue at odds with the director’s attempts to spice things up with unnecessary action and flashbacks that dilute the impact of Jackson (who won a Tony- nomination for 2022). Broadway revival) in favor of an all-too-literal manifestation of a slave owner’s ghost.

The horror element works far better as implication, a sudden glint in Berniece’s eyes speaks volumes about black trauma and loss. Don’t get me wrong, the film has moments of searing ambivalence, like when the men sing a work song with an exuberance that belies their servitude. But the tonal imbalance keeps throwing the film off course.

Props to the Washington family for preserving the work of a master. But “The Piano Lesson” on screen feels caught between the conflicting impulses to respect Wilson’s enduring art and recreate his words in cinematic terms. They are not there yet. But the Washingtons won’t give up their hopes anytime soon. And that is worth celebrating.