Life Lessons (2023)

In 1911, a lanky young man nicknamed Boy Charles takes a hand-carved piano from the Sutter estate in Mississippi. The instrument's case bears faces of African ancestors carved into the wood, and Charles tells his family that the piano carries their history. He loads the piano onto a wagon and rushes his relatives ahead, then slips away to catch a freight train. Charles climbs into a boxcar with the piano and hides as the train moves through the night. The Sutters pursue him; at a siding they open the boxcar, trap him inside and set the car ablaze. The boxcar becomes an immolated coffin. Boy Charles dies in the fire as the piano and his family's past endure.

Twenty-five years later, in 1936, his son Boy Willie arrives in Pittsburgh. He rides into the working-class neighborhood with Lymon, a younger man who calls himself his friend and business partner, in the back of a truck loaded with watermelons. Boy Willie's objective is practical and immediate: he wants to sell the family piano so he can buy the Sutter acreage in Mississippi. The Sutter family has placed that farmland on the market and, after the murder of James Sutter by being pushed down a well, the Sutters have offered part of the land as a form of compensation for Boy Charles's death. Boy Willie repeatedly tells anyone who will listen that owning land is what his father wanted and that selling the piano will let him purchase the property and "be a man" the way his father taught him.

Boy Willie takes the piano to the house where his sister Berniece lives with her eight-year-old daughter Maretha and their uncle Doaker. Berniece lives in a modest Pittsburgh rowhouse with Doaker, who keeps the household running and often speaks in dry, pragmatic remarks. Berniece is involved with the local preacher, Avery, and keeps a guarded, stoic distance from her brother. She refuses to sell the piano. Berniece says the instrument is sacred -- a memorial to what their family endured -- and she will not part with it. She resents painful memories of their mother forcing her to practice on the instrument as a child. Berniece's refusal is not merely a pragmatic refusal; she equates the piano with the family's dead and with a dignity she intends to preserve.

Tensions in the house spike quickly. Boy Willie presses his sister. He brings the argument into the kitchen, into Doaker's hearing, into Maretha's view. He insists that selling the piano will allow him to buy the Sutter land and change their fate; he speaks of his father's words about owning a piece of earth. Berniece holds firm, accusing Boy Willie of wanting to profit by turning their ancestor's legacy into cash. She also still blames Boy Willie for events that destroyed the fragile boundary between them: he and Lymon were involved in stealing wood in Mississippi, an incident that led to the death of Berniece's husband, Crawley. Berniece never stopped grieving Crawley, and neither she nor Maretha wants the piano moved or sold.

Uncle Wining Boy arrives for a visit and fills the house with talk. He sings and jokes, lingering on memories of his own glories and lamenting how little fame or fortune he has. He wanders through rooms, teases Maretha, plays the piano briefly and lunges toward old stories about better days. Wining Boy's presence eases the household's atmosphere temporarily but also underscores the family's frayed ambitions.

The household's fragile order is soon destabilized by something none of them can fully explain. A presence begins to make itself known: a coldness in rooms, the sound of boots on the porch that belong to no one alive, and the faint impression of a man's breath in corners. Berniece and Maretha experience the most direct disturbances. At night Maretha wakes frightened by footsteps and a heavy, anxious feeling presses on Berniece's chest. Berniece, already distrustful of Boy Willie's motives, says she feels the presence because he has returned to offer the piano to strangers. She also tells Doaker and others that she suspects Boy Willie of killing James Sutter -- she believes he pushed Sutter down the well in Mississippi. Boy Willie denies any such act and gets angry at the insinuation. He insists he did not murder James Sutter and continues to press for the sale.

Lymon, who arrived with Boy Willie and who agitates the neighborhood with his self-conscious optimism, begins to show a different interest. He courts Berniece with clumsy compliments and small attentions. Lymon offers to help in the house and sits with Maretha. He flirts with Berniece, expressing a desire to stay and start a new life. Berniece listens but keeps her distance; she is not ready to open herself.

The presence in the house becomes more violent and unmistakable. Objects slide from tables, the piano lid slams down by itself, and a malevolent temperature drops whenever the family gathers around the instrument. Suddenly the ghost manifests with greater force. It leaps into physical confrontation: during one episode the presence lashes out at Boy Willie, throwing him to the floor and leaving him shaken. The family watches as Boy Willie is shoved and battered by an unseen force; the assault leaves his skin marked by the shock and his pride wounded. The aggressor is not human but the voice and figure of the Sutter patriarch, a man who occupied the land and owned the people who would become Boy Willie's family. The apparition speaks in a voice that is cruel and possessive.

Avery, the preacher with whom Berniece courts a steady relationship, takes spiritual leadership in response. He organizes prayers in the parlor and moves to perform an exorcism as if the disturbance is a religious crisis. Avery stands with his Bible and commands the spirit to leave. He calls on God and intones scripture aloud in booming petitions that he hopes will banish the invader. Members of the household join him in prayer. Despite Avery's authority and his fervent rituals, the spirit resists. It refuses to be ordered out by scripture alone and continues to harry Berniece and Maretha. At one point the ghost targets Avery's spiritual confidence directly by unsettling the room while he prays; the preacher staggers and cannot force the presence into submission.

As the episodes escalate, Berniece's anger and fear sharpen into an action she has refused to take for a long time. She sits at the piano and, for the first time in years, places her hands on the keys. At first she plays simple chords and a melody that trembles with memory. The music roots itself in the house's air. Berniece begins to play songs she learned as a child and then, with growing conviction, she calls out to those carved faces on the piano's wood -- the ancestors whose visages themselves seem to be watching. She summons their names and recalls the history that is etched into the instrument. Her fingers do not hesitate; she plays with a force that makes the room vibrate.

The spirit answers. The atmosphere thickens, and the presence slams against the house in a convulsion. It directs its full malice at Boy Willie, who tries to intervene and stop Berniece, believing she is putting herself at risk. When the ghost lunges for Boy Willie again, Berniece plays harder, invoking the names of the dead aloud. Her music becomes an incantation: the melody grows into a sustained, loud statement that fills every corner. The ancestors' faces on the piano seem to come alive as the carved jaws set and the wood glows under Berniece's hands.

The spirit recoils. It writhes and makes a last attempt to seize Boy Willie, but Berniece's playing cuts through the room, and the apparition loses shape as if submerged in sound. After a long, shuddering moment, the presence leaves. The house relaxes; the temperature warms and the pressure on Maretha's chest fades. Boy Willie collapses back into a chair and sits breathing hard. People around him feel the tension drain from their muscles.

After the exorcism, which Berniece accomplishes by calling the ancestors through the piano, the family's relationships change in small but concrete ways. Boy Willie, confronted with the reality of Berniece's grief and the evidence of the spirit's aggression, stops pushing for an immediate sale. He tells Berniece that she did what he could not and that she should continue to teach Maretha. He sees his sister's playing as something strong and necessary rather than an obstacle. Berniece accepts the piano's continued residence in the house. She begins, in fact, to instruct Maretha at the keys, teaching the little girl the songs that Berniece herself played to drive the spirit away. Maretha listens and repeats, and the act of instruction creates quiet afternoons of focus and domestic calm.

Lymon stays in the neighborhood and continues to flirt with the idea of staying; he spends time with Berniece and Maretha and helps Doaker with chores. Wining Boy keeps singing and reminiscing. Avery continues his pastoral duties, but his failed exorcism leaves a gap between his spiritual authority and Berniece's more private, ancestral method of remedying the trouble. Doaker continues to maintain the house with practical work and measured comments that pull the family back to daily rhythms.

Boy Willie does not completely abandon his dream of land, but he alters his tactics. He travels back to Mississippi to try to purchase the Sutter land directly. He meets with brokers and checks the sale listings; he learns that the Sutter acreage has gone on public sale and that others bid. He returns to Pittsburgh after failing to secure the purchase. On his last visit to the old estate he kneels and cups the soil in his hands, just as his father Boy Charles had taught him to feel the land -- to know the grain of the dirt and to feel whether it belonged to him. He presses the soil to his face and then lets it flow through his fingers while he stands at the fence line. There is a moment of private grief: he touches the earth as if to carry a piece of it back to his family.

Back in Pittsburgh, Boy Willie steps away from his plan to sell the piano. He leaves the instrument in Berniece's care. Berniece moves toward a new routine where the piano becomes part of Maretha's upbringing: lessons, practice, and the involvement of family members in simple domestic life. Wining Boy wanders away into the neighborhood after another song and a handful of jokes. Lymon lingers, more quiet now, more respectful of Berniece's boundaries. Avery remains close but no longer presumes to command the spiritual order in the house. Doaker continues to sweep the floors and keep the ledger of small household needs.

The final image of the house is one of restrained endurance. Berniece sits at the piano and shows Maretha how to place her small fingers on the keys. Boy Willie stands at the doorway and watches his daughter -- his niece -- learn a tune that once expelled a ghost. He nods to Berniece in a new way, and she nods back. He leaves the house and walks once more toward the Mississippi road in thought, but he does not carry the piano. The last scene closes with Boy Willie standing on the sale land once owned by the Sutters, holding the soil in his palms and then letting it fall; he follows the example his father gave him and walks away, leaving the family piano in Pittsburgh where Berniece keeps the lineage safe and teaches the next generation to play.

Liam confesses to J.M. Sinclair that he has slept with Hélène, sparking a violent fight where J.M. tries to drown Liam in the pond, but Liam escapes. J.M., abandoned by Hélène who watches coldly and walks away, drowns himself in despair. Hélène then coerces Liam into silence with threats, revealing her orchestration of the events, and Liam flees as she plans to claim it was an accident.

The climactic confrontation unfolds at night by the pond on the Sinclair estate, the same murky waters where the family's older son Felix drowned years earlier. Liam, fueled by resentment after J.M. has critiqued his unpublished novel harshly and dismissed his talent, approaches J.M. alone under the dim moonlight filtering through the trees. Liam reveals his affair with Hélène, confessing that he has slept with J.M.'s wife, his voice steady but laced with defiance as he stands on the pond's edge. J.M., the narcissistic author dressed in his usual crisp shirt now untucked in the evening chill, reacts with explosive rage, his face contorting in fury as he lunges at Liam, grabbing him by the collar and shoving him toward the water. The two men grapple fiercely on the slippery bank, grunts and splashes echoing in the quiet night, their bodies tumbling into the shallow edge of the pond. J.M., stronger in his anger, forces Liam's head underwater, holding him down with both hands as bubbles rise and Liam struggles violently, his arms flailing against the cold, dark water. Liam manages to break free, gasping for air, scrambling back onto the bank, soaked and coughing, his clothes clinging heavily to his skin.

Hélène, alerted by the commotion, emerges from the house in her flowing night robe, her footsteps soft on the grass as she approaches the pond's edge. She stands there silently, her face illuminated faintly by the moonlight, observing her husband in the water with an expression of cold detachment, her eyes unblinking. J.M., now waist-deep in the pond and exhausted from the fight, looks up at her desperately, reaching out a hand as water laps at his chest, his voice hoarse as he pleads wordlessly for help. Hélène turns away without a word or gesture of aid, walking back toward the house with measured steps, leaving him behind. Abandoned and broken, J.M. sinks lower into the water, his movements slowing as despair overtakes him; he stops struggling, his head slipping beneath the surface, and he drowns alone in the pond, his body floating motionless by morning.

The next morning, Liam, still shaken and drying off in the dim light of the estate, confronts Hélène in the opulent living room, the air thick with tension. She approaches him calmly, her demeanor composed as she informs him matter-of-factly of J.M.'s death, explaining that she will tell first responders it was an accidental drowning if he leaves immediately and honors the nondisclosure agreement he signed at the start of his employment. Liam, horrified by the realization of what has transpired, demands credit for writing the new ending to J.M.'s stalled novel, believing his ideas contributed to it during their sessions. Hélène's eyes narrow as she threatens to accuse him of murdering the famous writer, her voice low and precise, laying bare that she engineered the entire situation--hiring him, fostering the affair, and manipulating events--to trigger her husband's suicide and free herself from his domineering shadow. Liam, pale and cornered, sees no escape; he nods in agreement, grabs his few belongings, and flees the estate in his car as dawn breaks, driving away down the long gravel driveway lined with ancient trees.

Bertie Sinclair, the teenage son Liam tutored, remains asleep in his room during these events, unaware of the night's tragedy until later; he survives the story's end, continuing his life at the estate under Hélène's influence, his Oxford ambitions intact but shadowed by the family's deepening secrets. The butler Ellis, ever silent and observant, witnesses fragments from the house windows but takes no action, retreating into his enigmatic role as the family dissolves. Hélène emerges as the unchallenged orchestrator, securing her future by claiming J.M.'s literary legacy and control over the household. J.M. Sinclair meets his end by drowning in the pond, his death ruled accidental by Hélène's account. Liam Somers escapes physically unharmed but psychologically scarred, silenced by the NDA and threats, abandoning his dreams of authorship to vanish into obscurity.

No, the 2023 movie Life Lessons does not have a post-credits scene.

Detailed plot summaries and ending explanations for Life Lessons describe its conclusion as circling back to Liam's opening interview, where he presents his debut novel inspired by the events, with Bertie smiling from the audience and a nod to J.M. Sinclair's adage, "Great writers steal," marking the final moment before the credits roll without any additional content afterward. Comprehensive 2023 post-credits compilations also make no mention of Life Lessons or any stinger, confirming its absence. The narrative closes definitively on Liam's reluctant agreement with Helene to remain uncredited for the book's ending, emphasizing themes of theft and inspiration in writing.

In Life Lessons (2023), Ellis the butler is a near-silent and enigmatic figure who observes everything in the Sinclair household without speaking, witnessing the family's tensions including Liam's tutoring sessions with Bertie, J.M.'s domineering behavior, Hélène's cold demeanor, and the climactic pond confrontation, yet he remains uninvolved and says nothing throughout the story. His presence adds an layer of quiet omniscience, heightening the sense of isolation and unspoken secrets in the countryside villa, as Liam notes the butler's watchful eyes during family dinners and private moments, evoking a chilling undercurrent of inevitability to the family's unraveling. Emotionally, Ellis embodies the household's repressed grief over Felix's suicide, standing as a mute sentinel by the pond where the tragedy occurred, his silence mirroring the taboo surrounding the death.

In Life Lessons (2023), Liam, the Oxford graduate tutor, initially struggles but establishes a good rapport with the sullen teenage Bertie Sinclair through patient lessons on critical thinking, becoming his confidant over a formative summer in the countryside manor. Chronologically, after moving into Felix's former room, Liam bonds with Bertie during tutoring sessions, helping him prepare for Oxford despite Bertie's resistance and insults at family dinners, even borrowing Felix's old clothes in a poignant scene that underscores Bertie's shadow under his late brother's legacy. Internally, Liam's motivations mix genuine mentorship with opportunistic observation for his novel, feeling a renewed passion as he navigates Bertie's emotional guardedness rooted in family trauma. Visually, scenes show Liam placing Post-It notes on his mirror with insights about Bertie, capturing his pale, attitude-poor demeanor amid the palatial estate's oppressive luxury.

In Life Lessons (2023), Felix Sinclair's recent suicide by drowning in the family pond profoundly impacts the plot, rendering the topic taboo and deeply affecting J.M., Hélène, and Bertie, blocking J.M.'s writing and fueling household tensions. The story opens with Liam learning of the tragedy, housed in Felix's grief-weighted room overlooking his parents' bedroom, where he spies intimate moments echoing the family's fractured dynamics. J.M. rages in a public interview when questioned about it, revealing his narcissistic denial, while Bertie lives in his brother's shadow as an aspiring writer himself, likely driven to despair by J.M.'s ceaseless criticisms. Emotionally, the pond becomes a site of recurring doom, with Liam and J.M. later falling into it during their fight, symbolizing the inescapable pull of past trauma; Hélène's cold gaze there underscores her detachment. Liam's dawning realization ties Felix's death to J.M.'s destructive personality, mirroring his own perilous path.

In Life Lessons (2023), Liam begins an affair with Hélène Sinclair, J.M.'s French artist wife, after initial coldness thaws, becoming her lover amid the summer's escalating family drama in their countryside villa. Chronologically, following Liam's rapport-building with Bertie and aid to J.M.'s printer, intimacy ignites, with a key scene where Liam spies from his window as J.M. performs cunnilingus on Hélène, heightening his desire and leading to their tryst. Physically detailed, their encounters contrast the manor's opulent isolation, with Hélène's distant allure giving way to passion that renews Liam's abandoned novel. Internally, Hélène's motivations reveal manipulation, engineering events toward J.M.'s demise, while Liam's mix ambition and infatuation, confessing the affair to provoke J.M., leading to the pond fight. Post-climax, her threat to frame Liam for murder forces his silence, exposing her cold calculation.

In Life Lessons (2023), Liam's unpublished novel becomes central to his explosive confrontation with J.M. Sinclair when J.M. reads it, sparking a comparing-notes session that goes poorly and uncovers Liam's plagiarized use of J.M.'s stalled manuscript ending. Building chronologically, Liam finishes his novel inspired by family observations, sharing it after becoming J.M.'s editor-like figure, but J.M.'s domineering critique wounds Liam's pride, leading him to reveal sleeping with Hélène and his scheme involving multiple manuscript copies. The fight erupts in rage, with J.M. attempting to drown Liam in the pond--echoing Felix's suicide site--before drowning himself after Hélène's indifferent gaze. Emotionally, Liam's motives shift from admiration to vengeful ambition, horrified yet coerced by Hélène's cover-up threat demanding he forgo writing credit. Visually tense, the scene captures physical struggle in the murky pond waters under the butler's distant watch, with Liam's recall of text on-demand exposing the plot's elaborate mechanics.

No, the 2023 movie Life Lessons is not family friendly, as it carries an R rating due to language and some sexual content, making it unsuitable for children or sensitive viewers.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting aspects include: - An implied sex scene with partial nudity. - Two implied oral sex scenes. - Frequent strong language, including 14 F-words. - Multiple intense arguments and scenes of verbal belittling or emotional tension. - Discussions referencing a suicide.