Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming month.
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The second Pittsburgh-set film-with-an-exorcism of 2024 arrives this month with Netflix’s adaptation of Pittsburgh native August Wilson’s play “The Piano Lesson,” playing at Waterworks Cinema Friday and streaming Nov. 22 on Netflix.
Unlike Netflix’s earlier exorcism flick, “The Deliverance,” which leaned into camp that generated internet chatter around star Glenn Close’s character, “The Piano Lesson” proves more grounded and less reliant on exorcism tropes as it uses the supernatural to explore themes of legacy and cultural heritage.
Set in Pittsburgh in the 1930s but filmed outside Atlanta, “The Piano Lesson” is the latest of Wilson’s stage plays to be adapted for the screen by producer Denzel Washington, who previously shepherded filmed-in-Pittsburgh “Fences” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” (Washington has said Pittsburgh-set “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” will be the next Wilson adaptation for Netflix; no word on where or when it will film.)
Unlike Washington’s past Wilson adaptations, “The Piano Lesson” was made into a movie before — 1995’s “Hallmark Hall of Fame” version of “The Piano Lesson” starred Charles S. Dutton, Alfre Woodard and Courtney B. Vance, was scripted by Wilson and filmed in Pittsburgh.
Netflix’s “Piano Lesson” tells the same story of brewing conflict in the Charles household in Pittsburgh’s Hill District where Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) lives with her Uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson). Berniece’s brother, Boy Willie (John David Washington, Denzel’s son), shows up with his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher).
Boy Willie wants to take Berniece’s heirloom piano and sell it to acquire land in Mississippi. Berniece refuses, wanting to preserve the last vestige of her family’s legacy. Ghosts from the family’s past begin to materialize.
All the lead performers make a positive impression, particularly Deadwyler, Fisher and John David Washington. Director Malcolm Washington, Denzel’s son and John David’s brother, mostly avoids the staginess that can hamstring filmed adaptations of plays, particularly in the film’s exorcism climax.
Netflix’s version is darker in tone and visually than the TV movie that came before. Hallmark’s version, streaming for free at Tubi.com, has a colorful and bright production design despite its serious themes. The Netflix version comes across as more grounded and authentic, less Hollywood, despite its reliance on supernatural apparitions presumably achieved at least in part through special effects.
The Hallmark version did not show the ghosts the characters claim to see; Netflix’s film visualizes these apparitions, even if they are often in shadow.
In a phone interview last month, Netflix’s “Piano Lesson” director Malcolm Washington said despite Wilson scripting the previous “Piano Lesson” adaptation, which added scenes not in the play, Washington opted to forgo those additions and use the stage play’s script as a basis to build the new movie from, then adding scenes set at The Crawford Grill and Bella’s Market, which was part of the building where Wilson lived growing up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.
Washington said the story’s ancestry themes felt urgent and personal, providing an emotional and spiritual map for the project because those themes reminded him of the loss of his maternal grandfather at age 8.
“He was somebody that meant a lot to me because he meant a lot to my mom,” Washington said. “I remember I was afraid to go to the funeral, I didn’t want to see the body, and I had a really fearful relationship with death from that point forward.”
At the same time, the memory of his grandfather became a guiding force in his life. Sometime in the past five to seven years, he opened a closet in his mother’s house filled with his grandfather’s clothes.
“And it (screwed) me up. I broke down,” Washington said. “In that moment, I had this really powerful understanding that, ‘You’ve actually been here all along.’ I felt this really strong connection to him in that moment and everything I feared about death became this powerful thing: ‘I’ve been protecting you all along.’ And I found so much peace in that.”
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“I knew when I started making the film, it was that kind of arc that I wanted to build,” he continued. “This thing that was so fearful is actually the poetic, beautiful thing that’s been by your side all along.”
The more literal approach to depicting ghosts in this adaptation of Wilson’s play creates “an experience that, on the surface, audiences would be thrilled by and enjoy the experience of watching the film, but it would stick to your ribs as well,” Washington said. “The (supernatural) genre element was really to get you to that poetic ending of your ancestors beside you, empowering you, protecting you, loving you and guiding you in a way that you didn’t see before. When you break down that barrier of fear, you can see it for yourself and live your life accordingly.”
While “Fences” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” filmed in Pittsburgh, “The Piano Lesson” decamped for Canton, Ga., an hour by car north of Atlanta, likely because the Pennsylvania Film Tax Credit for that fiscal year was all spoken for at the time “Piano Lesson” went into production.
“When I started doing research on this, obviously it started in Pittsburgh and I spent so much time out there at the August Wilson house and at Carnegie Mellon and University of Pitt, just doing homework,” Washington said, noting the decision on where to film was not his to make. “Once the decision was made that we weren’t going to be able to shoot in Pittsburgh, it became really important to us to represent it in a way that was not only historically accurate but would honor the people that live there.”
Washington and the film’s production designer visited the Hill District and found a series of row houses that he said were about to be demolished at the end of Orbin Street.
“All the sets that you saw (in the film), we built all that stuff, and we based it 100% on things that we found in the Hill,” Washington said, adding that he was “fueled and fed” by the community he found in the Hill. “It’s such a wonderful community, and I’m grateful that they gave me access to it.”