Piano lesson VIOLENCE/GORE 5

– During a ritual that should cleanse the house of spirits, a man is thrown into the wall by an invisible force and falls down the stairs (groaning in pain); he climbs back up the stairs, shouting the name of the man who recently died, holds his head as if in pain, runs into the walls and falls, as if something is attacking him. The man is grabbed from behind and an arm wraps around his throat pulling him into the dark room as he struggles and tries to scream; he falls to the ground and we hear glass breaking, we see shards nearby, he is dragged by his ankle into the room and struggles (we don’t see the person or force pulling him).
► A man is thrown into a wall, then picked up and strangled by another man with a disfigured and bloody face (we understand him to be a ghost); the man fights off the attacker by punching the hand that is holding him. The spirit of a dead man attacking a living man suddenly flares up and disappears; the man he was attacking falls to the ground. A woman walks through a flooded hallway in her dream to find a candle; he turns it on and turns to see a man with an injured face, disfigured and bloody.
► Several men ride toward the small house carrying lighted torches; they ride and yell at the man inside the house to get out, then set the house on fire and brandish their weapons as they wait (the man runs away from the angry mob and the burning building). The man says that he and his friend laughed when they heard about the recent death of a man, in disbelief that a “340 pound man” had just fallen into a well and as he describes it, we see the man falling down the well. good.
► A woman punches a man in the chest and screams at him, blaming him for her husband’s death; they scream at each other as the young girl listens. The woman sees puddles and wet footprints on the floor and sees the shadow of a man at the door; she screams and runs down the stairs saying she saw a ghost. A figure passes behind the young girl; she looks over her shoulder, screams and becomes scared to sleep on the top floor of her house. While the woman is arguing with her brother about selling the piano, he starts moving it, and she takes the gun and puts 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 into a well, and rumors that he and other people were killed by ghosts. A man asks another man how many people the supposed ghosts have killed; the man answered, “Nine or ten, eleven or twelve.” A man tells a story about a man who fell into a well years ago, who participated in burning several people to death; the man says that rumors started that he was pushed into the well by the spirits of the murdered. 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 wagon in which he hid; the man telling the story says that everyone in the wagon has died (we see the wagon start to burn), and one man listening to the story is visibly upset. People discuss the woman’s husband who was killed and killed; a woman blames her brother several times for her husband’s death and says that if she hadn’t had her brother, her husband would still be alive, and later says that he killed him “…sure as if you pulled the trigger.” The two men talk about the time they ambushed because they kept some of the wood they were hauling; they say they escaped, but the sheriff caught them and shot one of them in the stomach, and then arrested and fined him for stealing wood; they say that another man was killed with them, and later, one man says that if the dead man was still alive, he would have “slammed (anatomical term deleted)” because he shot himself and another man, and one man says that the man who was killed he caused trouble because he started the shooting. We hear a loud banging on the man’s front door and the man arms himself before answering; when he opens the door, he says to the visitor, “I almost shot you (anatomical term deleted).” The woman accuses her brother of pushing the man into the well, which he denies. A man discusses when slavery was legal and his family was owned by a man who agreed to trade several enslaved people for a piano; we see scenes of enslaved people being “watched” and a man grabs an enslaved woman by the wrist, tells her to come with him and to “bring her boy” as she screams and resists. The man tells the girl that he will teach her how to kill a chicken, and the child says that she has seen her mother do it before; a man describes killing a chicken and how you have to wring its neck as he mimes fighting a chicken, trying to make the girl laugh. A man talks about another man whom everyone in the neighborhood is afraid of; he says, “They don’t know I hit that (expletive deleted) head once.” A man who used to be a pianist says that he doesn’t know who he is now, neither himself nor the pianist, and sometimes he wants to “shoot the pianist” because he is the cause of all his troubles. One woman says her mother polished a piano until it bled, then “rubbed blood with other blood on it.” The music accompanies the song with lyrics about police violence and shootings, referring to multiple lives taken and protesting killings in the streets.
► During the exorcism ritual, the house creaks and the lights flicker, the light bulb on the ceiling explodes and the young girl screams, calls out to her mother and she covers her ears; furniture shakes and objects fall from shelves, rattle and break. A man tries to apply the truck’s brakes, but they don’t work and the passenger jumps out of the truck; no crashes or injuries. We see fireworks and hear the echo of explosions in several scenes.