An inherited piano takes on immense meaning for a family in Pittsburgh in 1936 in “The Piano Lesson” by August Wilson. Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington’s footsteps by helping bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of 10 plays, to the screen.

Malcolm Washington didn’t start from scratch in his successful film debut. He recruited much of the cast of the recent Broadway revival featuring Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully played by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it’s second nature, one imagines it would be hard to go wrong. Jackson’s own history with the play dates back to its original performance in 1987, when he was Boy Willie.

It’s not the easiest thing to make a work look cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with “Mudbound” screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson’s text and shows us the past and origins of the intricately engraved piano that is central to all the fuss. It even begins with a great action-packed piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family’s home. Another develops Doaker’s monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher’s Lymon, and to the audience, the tortuous history of the affair. While it might have been nice to keep the camera focused on Jackson, such a great and pivotal presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes the storytelling shine as well.

Wilson purists will surely have opinions on these artistic choices; But they let the film breathe a bit, offering a respite from the living room with the looming piano. And most of the film stays there, in 1936. Boy Willie and Lymon arrive early one morning, uninvited, to Berniece and her Uncle Doaker’s house in Pittsburgh. It’s a family reunion with an agenda: They’ve driven a truck full of watermelons north to Mississippi, and Willie, Berniece’s younger brother, wants to sell the watermelons and then the piano. The dusty old instrument represents for him an opportunity to leave the past behind and start a future. With the money he wants to buy the land that his enslaved ancestors worked. Berniece has other ideas about the piano: keep it. It is a connection to the past, not an anchor. Plus, it could be haunted.