Netflix has released the trailer for August Wilson’s 1990 play, The Piano Lesson, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The trailer, and the movie itself, has a lot going on, in the best way. It stars Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, The Avengers), John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman, Tenet), Ray Fisher (Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Rebel Moon), Danielle Deadwyler (Till, The Harder They Fall), Erykah Badu (The Doc), and others. It also marks Malcolm Washington’s directorial debut.
It starts off with John David Washington’s character asking a child “You feel that? That’s your family,” while tracing the elaborate etchings of a piano. The rest of the trailer shows the piano being made, and glimpses of a Black American family living in the ’30s. Chanting starts, we see ominous men with torches, shattering glass, and we’re hit with the refrain:”You feel that? That’s your family.” Everything all together sets a tantalizingly eerie tone, and the trailer does an excellent job of being enticing while giving next to nothing away, plot-wise.
What we do know about the plot, though, is that Boy Willie, Berniece Charles’ brother, comes back into her life with passion for the future. Problem is, he wants to sell the ornately carved piano family heirloom that sits in Berniece’s parlor gathering dust. He wants it to pay for the Mississippi land their family worked as enslaved people, but Berniece wants to keep it as a testament to their family legacy.
We’re excited to see how this translates to film.
It will be available for streaming on Netflix starting November 22. To learn more about the production, visit Netflix.