Weekend Watch: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Blues, Boseman and Davis.
Image Credit: Netflix
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis spar between blues tracks.
As much as it ends in tragedy, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is wreathed in it, through no fault of the movie itself. It just so happens to mark the final film performance of Chadwick Boseman. The actor died in August at the age of 43 after a long, exhausting struggle with cancer. Yet even if he hadn’t, this would still be a blistering, powerhouse punch of a performance that will surely be in consideration for awards.
Ma Rainey’s, though, doesn’t just work because of Boseman. Anchored also by Viola Davis, it boasts a strong ensemble that includes Coleman Domingo, Glynn Turman, Michael Potts and Taylor Paige. It’s 1927, and tensions are on the rise in a Chicago recording studio as the thermostat climbs during one sweltering afternoon. It’s here that trailblazing “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey (Davis) is here to make a new record. During that time, she’ll clash with her manager and the studio’s owner, while her bandmates will debate with and jab at each other.
Adapted from August Wilson’s play by writer Ruben Santiago–Hudson and director George C. Wolfe, this has the feel of a filmed play even more than, say, Hamilton, which was shot on stage. Brief diversions outside the studio early on and later in the film aside, we’re largely crammed in with the cast in a couple of claustrophobic rooms, particularly the stuffy chamber offered to the band for rehearsal. Soon, tempers are fraying, traumatic memories and stories are shared and the pressure between Ma’s old school style and the ambitious future plans of trumpeter Levee (Boseman) is rising to a fever pitch.
Davis plays Ma as a battleship in a clinging, dress, all imperious diva-tude and no-nonsense self–belief, even as she knows exactly how the men recording her music see her. “They don’t care nothin’ about me,” Ma proclaims at one point. “All they want is my voice.” She’s got where she is through talent, but as both she and her band acknowledge, these are not easy times to be Black in America. Levee, meanwhile, has plans for his own music, sick of marching to Ma’s beat, and languishing playing “jug band” music. He has charm and swagger to spare, but there’s also always the glint of desperation in his eyes. Boseman brings him to life as a cat prowling the limits of his enclosure, testing the limits of what he can get away with, including a dalliance with Ma’s girlfriend Dussie Mae (Paige).
Naturally, the music (when it’s allowed to interrupt the drama) is driven, throaty blues that, as Ma explains, is not to make you feel bad, but to help you understand the world. The characters and story here are also clearly designed to help you figure out their viewpoints, without ever descending into cliché. Sure, there are monologues, but when it’s in the capable hands of this cast, it never feels like the action goes on pause, but is pushed along by the feelings bubbling up within the likes of Levee and Domingo’s Cutler.
Wilson’s work always taps into deep truths, and Wolfe here (alongside producer Denzel Washington, who knows something about bringing the playwrights’ productions to screens after Fences) lets it breathe even as its characters sweat. It might not break far from the staging, but it seems certain to walk away with some trophies. It’ll deserve them. Davis and the others will go on, but there’s true heartbreak in knowing this is the last time we’ll see Boseman strut his stuff on film.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is on Netflix now.