The Piano Lesson | 2024 | PG-13 | – 3.5.4

Why is “The Piano Lesson” rated PG-13? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “strong language, violent content, some suggestive references and smoking.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes several scenes of kissing and suggestive flirting, several discussions of men trying to “find women,” several scenes that show a man with a mutilated and bloody face, scenes of a man being attacked and choked, many discussions of murder, death and ghosts, discussions of slavery and family separation, about 18 uses of derogatory terms and about 52 religious exclamations during songs and prayers. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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A man (John David Washington) visits his sister (Danielle Deadwyler) and uncle (Samuel L. Jackson), hoping to convince them to sell a piano that’s a family heirloom in order to make enough money to buy a piece of land. During the visit they must reconcile with the tragic history of the piano and their family. Also with Ray Fisher, Corey Hawkins and Michael Potts. Directed by Malcolm Washington. [Running Time: 2:05]

The Piano Lesson SEX/NUDITY 3

 – A man pulls a woman into a stairwell and kisses her neck; he tells her they don’t need a bed, and his grandfather “used to take women on the backs of horses.” A man gives a woman a bottle of perfume; he puts some on her neck, leans closer and kisses her neck, then kisses her on the lips and they kiss several times. A man holds a woman while they are in an open body of water; he is shirtless (his bare shoulders, chest and abdomen are visible), and she is clothed as he strokes her abdomen and face and leans to kiss her (we do not see them kiss).
► During a slow dance, men and women dance embracing and some men caress women suggestively while a singer sings suggestive lyrics about feeling a woman’s leg and wanting to “go higher.” A woman laughs, running through a nightclub, and a man runs after her, also laughing; the woman wears a red dress and the man tells her red is his favorite color as another man watches them seeming jealous, ignoring the woman sitting with him. A man puts his arm around a woman at a nightclub and says, “Hello beautiful, let’s dance”; she laughs and goes with him as the man’s friend watches, disappointed.
► A man’s friend repeatedly says they should “go find some women.” A man tells another man that all his friend thinks about is women and the other man says the friend’s father was the same. The other man says he also knew the friend’s mother and “two strokes back, I would have been his daddy.” A man and woman discuss people who go to nightclubs. A man says people are lonely and just want someone to spend the night with. A man takes a woman’s hand and tries to convince her to marry him but she declines saying she isn’t ready to get married again (she is a widow). A man reflects on being a professional piano player, saying you can’t “get enough women,” until one day you wake up and “you hate the women.” A woman says she has “plenty of woman” left in her and a man asks, “When’s the last time you looked at it?” A man offers to sell another man a nice suit, saying, “Women will fall out of their windows to see you in that suit”; he tells him to wear it down the street and “Get you a woman.” A man tells a woman wearing a nightgown that he likes when women wear fancy nightclothes and that it “makes their skin look pretty.” A man visits a friend that tells him that he’s heard they have “some nice-looking women” in Kansas City (where the first man is from); the visiting man says the women there are “something else.”
► A woman fills a bathtub on a private patio and takes a bath; when she disrobes, we see her bare shoulder. Men and women dance together in a nightclub; a woman ruffles and lifts her skirt as she dances (we see her bare legs and the tops of garters).

The Piano Lesson VIOLENCE/GORE 5

 – During a ritual purporting to cleanse a house of a ghost, a man is thrown backwards into a wall by an unseen force and falls down several stairs (he groans in pain); he climbs back up the stairs, shouting the name of a man who recently died, holds his head as if in pain, runs into walls, and falls, as if something is attacking him. A man is grabbed from behind and an arm wraps around his throat pulling him into a dark room as he struggles and tries to shout; he falls to the ground and we hear glass break, see shards near him, he is dragged by the ankle into a room and he struggles (we do not see the person or force dragging him).
► A man is thrown into a wall, then lifted up and choked by another man with a mutilated and bloody face (we understand him to be a ghost); the man fights the attacker hitting the arm that holds him. The ghost of a dead man who is attacking a living man suddenly bursts into flames and disappears; the man he was attacking falls to the ground. A woman in a dream walks through a flooded hallway to find a candle; she lights it and turns to see a man with an injured face, mutilated and bloody.
► Several men ride toward a small house carrying flaming torches; they ride and shout at a man inside the house to come out, and set the house on fire and they brandish guns as they wait (a man flees the angry mob and flaming building). A man says that he and his friend laughed when they heard about the recent death of a man, not believing that a “340-pound man” just happened to fall down a well and as he describes it, we see a man falling down a well.
► A woman smacks a man in the chest and screams at him, blaming him for the death of her husband; they scream at each other as a young girl listens. A woman sees puddles and wet footprints on the floor and sees the shadow of a man in a doorway; she screams and runs down the stairs, saying she saw a ghost. A figure passes behind a young girl; she looks over her shoulder, screams, and becomes scared to sleep on the top floor of her house. While a woman argues with her brother about selling a piano, he starts to move it, and she gets a gun, putting it in her pocket.
► People describe seeing the ghost of a man in their house. A man says he saw a ghost sitting at their piano. People discuss the death of a man who fell down a well, and rumors that he and other people had been murdered by ghosts. A man asks another man how many people alleged ghosts have killed; the man answers, “Nine or ten, eleven or twelve.” A man tells a story about a man who fell in a well years earlier, who was involved in burning several people to death; the man says rumors began that the ghosts of the murdered men pushed him down the well. A man tells a story about a relative who stole a piano and that the owners of the piano hunted him down and set fire to the train boxcar where he hid; the man telling the story says everyone in the boxcar died (we see the boxcar beginning to burn), and one man listening to the story is visibly upset. People discuss a woman’s husband who was shot and killed; the woman blames her brother several times for her husband’s death and says if it weren’t for her brother, her husband would still be alive and later says he killed him “… just as sure as if you pulled the trigger.” Two men talk about a time when they were ambushed for keeping some of the wood they were hauling; they say that they got away, but the sheriff caught them and shot one of them in the stomach, then arrested him and fined him for stealing wood; they say that another man with them was killed and later, one man says if the dead man was still alive, he’d “whoop his [anatomical term deleted]” for getting himself and the other man shot at and one man says the man who was killed caused the trouble because he started the shooting. We hear loud banging on a man’s front door and the man arms himself before answering; when he answers the door he tells the visitor, “I almost shot your [anatomical term deleted].” A woman accuses her brother of pushing a man down a well and he denies it. A man discusses when slavery was legal and his family was owned by a man that agreed to trade several enslaved people for a piano; we see scenes of enslaved people being “looked over” and a man grabs an enslaved woman’s wrist, tells her she’s coming with him and to “bring her boy” as she screams and resists. A man tells a girl that he’ll teach her how to kill a chicken and the child says that she has already seen her mother do that; the man describes killing a chicken and how you must wring its neck as he mimes struggling with a chicken, trying to make the girl laugh. A man talks about another man who everyone in a neighborhood fears; he says, “They don’t know I whupped that [derogatory term deleted] head in one time.” A man who used to be a piano player says he doesn’t know who he is now, himself or the piano player, and sometimes he wants to “shoot the piano player,” because he is the cause of all his troubles. A woman says that her mother polished a piano until she bled, then “rubbed the blood in with the other blood on it.” Music accompanies a song with lyrics about violence and police shootings, referring to more lives being taken and protesting the killings in the streets.
► During a ritual to cast a ghost out of a house, the house creaks and lights flicker, a lightbulb on the ceiling explodes and a young girl shrieks, calling for her mother and she covers her ears; furniture shakes and items fall from shelves, clattering and breaking. A man tries to press on a truck’s brakes but they don’t work and a passenger jumps out of the truck; no crash or injury occurs. We see a fireworks display and hear the booming explosions in several scenes.

The Piano Lesson LANGUAGE 4

 – 1 not fully enunciated scatological term, 2 anatomical terms, 6 mild obscenities, about 18 derogatory terms for African-American people, name-calling (fool, foolish), 52 religious exclamations mostly during songs and prayers (e.g. Lord, God, Father).. | profanity glossary |

The Piano Lesson SUBSTANCE USE

 – Men drink whiskey together at home and we see the bottle and full glasses as they take sips, a man reflects on being a piano player and that you can’t “Get enough whiskey” until one day you grow to hate it, people drink in several scenes at a nightclub, a woman who appears drunk holds a glass up to a man and says, “It’s empty” and he goes to get her another drink, and a man comes home and stumbles and yells seeming drunk.

The Piano Lesson DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Racism, slavery, money, independence, death and grief, family strife, parenthood, marriage.

The Piano Lesson MESSAGE

 – We must face our ghosts head-on, rather than run from them, even if it is painful.