Denzel Washington produces a powerful adaptation of a great American play, directed by one son (Malcolm) and starring another son (John David).

In August Wilson’s play “The Piano Lesson” — revived on Broadway in 2022, lovingly adapted for the screen by Malcolm Washington with much the same cast — Berniece hasn’t played the piano since her mother died. It sits in her living room, reminding her of all her parents, and their parents before them, endured so that future generations could be free. In literary terms, the piano is a powerful and not-so-subtle symbol, the thing that represents her family’s achievement and sacrifice. Carved into the polished wooden surface of the precious heirloom are the faces of her ancestors.

Berniece has a brother named Boy Willie, who bursts into her house early in the play with a plan. Boy Willie thinks he can make enough money by selling that piano (plus a truckload of watermelons he’s parked outside) to buy a piece of land where his family once worked as slaves. He thinks the piano is as much his as it is Berniece’s, and that it’s what their parents would have wanted. But the past is present in “The Piano Lesson,” which is set in 1936, but it’s haunted by history. Above them lurks the ghost of the white man whose family “owned” the piano, and from whom their father stole the all-important piano back.

Starring Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington as the two siblings, "The Piano Lesson" poses a daunting dilemma: One sibling wants to move forward; the other refuses to let go of what came before. Though much of the cast is the same as the one that appeared on Broadway, the film is unmistakably Deadwyler's show. With "The Piano Lesson," Wilson wrote one of the best female performances of his career, and in Deadwyler we get a leading lady who smolders even when she's quiet, finding layers even the writer couldn't have anticipated — which helps, since there's a stage-set sound to much of the dialogue.