The Piano Lesson (2024)

Director: Malcolm Washington

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Ray Fisher, Danielle Deadwyler

Have I Seen It Before: No. This was the first film I saw for the Santa Fe International Film Festival this year. A full-week pass to a film festival is a strange thing. You look at a list, see a quick description of a film (or a series of films, if it’s an exhibition of short subjects), see if tickets are still available (they often aren’t, I missed a few things over the week to this struggle), see if it conflicts with anything else that you’re wanting to see or support, and then see if you’re interested in the film.

Did I Like It: A stage play adapted to film is always a tricky thing. Something like Dracula (1931)--which has far more to do with the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston than it did Stoker’s novel—came so early in the era of the talking picture that the camera just sort of sits there while the play is performed in front of it. The big musicals of the turn of the centuries knew they had to embrace the trappings of the big screen and delivered their spectacle. I can’t help but watch this film and feel as if the act of adaptation was not fully fulfilled. Pointedly cinematic scenes are added that I can’t imagine existed in the original August Wilson play—mainly depicting the creation and heist of the titular piano—but these feel somewhat tacked on.

The cast is terrific, but the majority of them are transplants from a recent Broadway revival of the play.

The themes are well constructed, and I’ve been thinking about them for most of the week since screening it. Are the ghosts real, or is the metaphor of being haunted by your past more potent? The film manages to not conclusively answer the question, while at the same time not feeling as if the story is cheating in the ambiguity.

And yet, would I have been better off watching a staging of the play? I wonder.

Tenet (2020)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia

Have I Seen it Before: What a singularly loaded question. Someone might look back on this review in the years to come and wonder why it was such a chore. The only real theatrical-exclusive major release in the year of the bloody bug, it seemed foolish to go to the theater to experience it on the biggest screen possible. I might have even got it together to go to the Drive-in (kids, ask your parents), but by the time I decided I was over my mixed feelings regarding Interstellar (2014) to try and make the trip, even the Drive-ins had taken to screening movies I didn’t much care for, and could easily take in at home.

So now I watch the movie on my TV at home. It is not the way that Nolan would have intended it, but it is the best way available.

For the record, in case anyone was wondering, I would still like to go to the theater again at least once before I die.

Did I Like It: I suppose it is fitting that, even after viewing the film in its entirety, it’s possible I’m going to eventually have one of two different reactions to the film. On repeat viewings, I may finally be able to follow what at this point is a demonstrably convoluted plot, sort of like my reaction over the years to the first Mission: Impossible (1996). It’s also entirely possible that the film will never come together for me, and I will look up from my final screening of the film and see myself watching it for the first time in reverse.

At least, I think that’s how it works.

And even if the film never fully comes together for me, it’s hard to deny that the normal Nolan trappings have their charm. He works on film, which is unusual enough. He also brings to the screen exotic sights that are nonetheless real. If the man has ever used a green screen, he’s made damn sure to not let the rest of us know.

There is one element of the film I’ve become certain bug me now, and will continue to bug me for all time. I’ve grown pretty disenchanted with switching back and forth on aspect ratios in film. Time was, Nolan would film certain, more epic scenes in IMAX, and by the time it reaches my TV, we just had to cope with the changes in ratio. Here, it feels like he’s switching back and forth from shot to shot. Chris. Buddy. If you want to shoot your movie in IMAX, just shoot the whole thing that way. I have faith that you can overcome the limitations of the technology to shoot a movie through with one kind of format. 

And finally, a plea: Will somebody (Brocollis, one would imagine, or perhaps whichever fly-by-night studio which both owns the rights and will soon go bankrupt) please just let Nolan make a Bond movie? He’s been asking ever-so-politely for years now. If you can take a chance on Sam Mendes twice, I think Nolan’s due.