The Piano Lesson

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Summary: the piano lesson
Review: this movie was fairly boring. it didnt keep my interest very well.it was about a haunted piano. it had a very complicated and dumb plot.

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Summary: Piano Lesson
Review: This movie was interesting and amusing. It was about a woman, who's husband died and he haunts her piano. It was pyscological thriller. It contained the girl's brother and a friend, her daughter and a priest. The brother (Boy Willy) was there trying to sell the piano to make a profit and get some land. His sister (Berenice), however, didn't want to sell it even though he said he'd give her half the profit. The ghost (Sutter, her husband) wouldn't let him sell it either. The only way to get rid of the ghost is an exercism. Boy Willy doesn't believe in this ghost until the very end, just wait and see.

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Summary: A piano represents yesterday and tomorrow
Review: This story of heritage and culture verses ownership of land shows in detail a particular era for Black people. A family is divided as to the best purpose for an historically, beautifully carved piano. This nearly 2 hr. video contains some excellent portrayal of the time and location. It also shows the hearts of a brother and sister. The sister wants to hang onto this token of her heritage, the brother wants to acquire land with proceeds from the sale of the piano. An expert in Black culture would be able to tell if the scenes and expressions were entirely accurate. I would like to have seen some expansion on the story line as well.

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Summary: hey
Review: This was a confusing movie. I didn't understand barely any of it. Some of it was alright, but i wouldn't want to see it again. it was also kind of boring.

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Summary: Excellent!
Review: Very creative film with a subtle supernatural twist. All actors turn in great performances. The men singing around the kitchen table is a scene not to be missed.

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Summary: "As long as Sutters had that piano, they had us as slaves."
Review: Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, August Wilson's lively domestic drama focuses on a black family in the 1930s and their piano, which dominates the living room of Doaker Charles and his niece Berniece in Pittsburgh. The piano is adorned with the faces of their slave ancestors, carved by a distant relation who was owned by the Sutter family in Mississippi before Emancipation. Berniece's brother Boy Willie, recently released from a prison farm, has come to Pittsburgh from Mississippi with his friend Lymon, determined to sell this ancient piano in which he claims half-ownership.

Charles Dutton, as Boy Willie, Berniece's brother, endows his role with a humor and good-naturedness not obvious from a reading of the play, and his passion to use the money from the sale of the piano to buy a hundred acres of Sutter farmland, which his slave ancestors once worked, is palpable. Courtney B., as Boy Willie's friend Lymon, is credulous and innocent as he explores the city, responding to its differences from the life on the farm, and bringing Berniece (Alfre Woodard) out of the grief she has borne since the shooting death of her husband three years before. Woodard herself is a fierce Berniece, protective of her young daughter and determined to preserve the piano and its heritage.

Directed by Lloyd Richards for the Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1995, the screenplay was adapted by August Wilson from his own play. A bit shorter than the original, with offensive expletives omitted for television, the script remains close to the original. When Sutter's ghost makes several appearances, the superstitions and folklore which have been part of the family's culture become both real and violent, and when Willie Boy, Lymon, Wining Boy (his gambler uncle, played by Lou Meyers), and uncle Doaker (Carl Gordon) sing, on several occasions, the viewer is reminded of the role of spirituals in black culture, their unifying spirit, and the dignity they inspired.

The appearances of Sutter's ghost and Boy Willie's battle with him create a sense of melodrama in this otherwise thoughtful battle between the reverence for the past (as seen in Berniece) and the hopes for the future (as seen in Boy Willie). As a record of the era in which many blacks left the farms for the opportunities of the city, however, the play is unparalleled in its insights. Mary Whipple