Hello, I am Malcolm Washington, co-writer and director of The Piano Lesson. So this scene right here is the climax of the film. So all spoilers forward. Within the movie, Bernice, performed by Daniel Deadweiler, has a sophisticated relationship with the piano and has been afraid to play it as a result of, she says, she would not need to get up the spirits the piano evokes. Her brother, the boy Willie, who tries to promote the piano all through the movie, has a battle to the dying with a ghost upstairs whereas he has to face some non secular reckoning happening inside himself. So at this level, Danielle’s Berniece decides she must face this factor and put her fingers up and play the piano for the primary time. It was a sequence that we spent a number of time speaking about when capturing it after which within the reducing course of. All our matters come collectively right here. The thought of shadow and lightweight, of fact and secrets and techniques and confronting the deepest components of ourselves with the intention to transfer by them. And transcend. Name them, Bernice, name them. I like what Daniel is doing right here. She simply goes some place else, actually. And I feel for those who speak to her now about this collection, she will not even keep in mind taking it. This right here. We wished to inform a narrative about black non secular observe in America. So, in our non secular observe there are these two totally different traditions, the black southern Christian custom and roots in West African non secular observe. And we have interaction with each right here to acknowledge the iconography of some West African non secular practices in Bernice’s white costume. The thought you can name upon your ancestors and that there’s a limitless connection between the dwelling and the lifeless. So right here she summons the spirits of her ancestors, chanting their names. “I would like you to assist me, I would like you to assist me, I would like you to assist me, Mama Bernice, I would like you to assist me.” Declaring their id and discovering energy in it. As this scene unfolds, you may see the reducing rhythm choose up, the lighting choose up, as she summons these spirits in an try and banish this ghost. Avery is there and represents our Christian non secular observe. And he opens the portal to all of this. At this level within the sound you’ll start to listen to the rumble of the home, the drums of Africa come, adopted by choral voices representing our ancestors and the sweetness they carry with them. There have been ghosts throughout this film and it was scary at instances. However right here we see that it’s highly effective in magnificence. I all the time like this image right here as a result of it is form of like a household portrait. I used to be wanting, there is a Japanese photographer named Masahisa Fukase and he did this collection of household portraits that basically impressed the frames right here of the household. And after they are available in, she’s lastly in a position to exorcise that ghost and clear the trauma of that household previous, as all of them lay fingers on her and the flame ignites. Peace has been restored. The household is linked to one another and to the ancestors earlier than them. And there’s magnificence there.
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