Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
dir. George C. Wolfe
Rated: R
image: ©2020 Netflix
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is destined to be remembered as the final screen appearance of the immensely talented, gone-way-too-soon Chadwick Boseman. The actor, who died in August of 2020 at the age of 43, from colon cancer, is absolutely electric in the roll of Levee Green, a trumpet player in the titular character’s band. Boseman’s performance is a testament to his formidable acting abilities and a stinging reminder of what we’ve all lost.
Aside from Boseman’s performance, there are numerous other pieces of the puzzle that make Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom a superb, taut, devastating film. The formidable presence of Viola Davis, as Ma Rainey, is one. The assured direction of George C. Wolfe is another. The powerful words and ideas of playwright August Wilson is one more.
Black Bottom is the second play of Wilson’s American Century cycle that star Denzel Washington has brought to the screen, after 2016’s Fences. Washington starred in and directed Fences, and he initially made a deal with HBO to produce the rest of the ten-play cycle, which examines the Black experience in every decade of the 20th century. The deal then moved to Netflix, the distributor of Black Bottom.
Set in 1927, the story focuses on the real-life blues recording artist, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. Dubbed “The Mother of the Blues” by her fans and studio marketers, Rainey recorded over 100 songs during her career. Wilson’s play is a fictionalized account of her recording session for one of her biggest hits, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which is linked to the Black Bottom dance craze of the roaring twenties. As her white manager and producer wait for Ma to arrive at the studio on a hot Chicago afternoon, her band rehearses in between having conversations about the past, present, and future of their careers, personal lives, and Black people’s place in America.
George C. Wolfe’s masterful direction always makes sure to accentuate Wilson’s words and dramatic fireworks. He keeps his camera moving, which helps loosen up the stage-bound, confined-setting source material. The picture’s taut 94-minute runtime gives the tightly focused events of this one afternoon a real sense of urgency. Production Designer Mark Ricker and Costume Designer Ann Roth, along with their teams, evoke the look and feel of the 1920s with rich authenticity.
The most fascinating thing about Black Bottom is Wilson’s examination of power dynamics. Specifically, he explores how marginalized people, in this case Black people, and Black artists in particular, must make the most of whatever power they have. Ma knows that if she didn’t have something that white people wanted – namely, her talent – they would treat her as subhuman, so she gets everything she can out of them.
Hence, Ma’s late arrival to the studio, and her insistence that everything be exactly as she wants it before she’ll record any songs. Her demands to have a Coca-Cola before they start – and then comically sucking down an entire bottle of the soda inches from the microphone – illustrates the vicious power struggle that Ma has been engaged in with the white-dominated recording industry. Her take-no-shit attitude resonates as a Black woman making the most of her situation. She knows that, as she says, “all they want is my voice,” so she’ll get as much out of them as she can in return for it.
Viola Davis brings the blues queen to life with a raw energy that is hypnotic. The real Ma Rainey weighed close to 300 pounds, and the petite Davis got close to 200 pounds for the role. She said in an interview that she “didn’t want [Ma] to physically look like she was apologizing for herself.” Her Ma Rainey is authentically herself, with unruly curves, gold capped teeth, and makeup smeared from the sheen of sweat that constantly covers her. The short sequence in which Ma leaves her hotel for the studio, and all of the more respectable patrons turn to look her way as she exits, is exquisite.
The only misstep that the film makes is in the choice for Davis’s voice double during the singing sequences. The woman doing the singing, Maxayn Lewis – who began her career in music in the 1960s – is phenomenal, but she sounds so different from Davis that it completely took me out of the movie every time her voice stood in for Davis’s. The actress did sing in one brief scene, and her voice was strong enough that I wished Davis had gone for it in the bigger, more lavish numbers.
The real Ma Rainey was gay, or at least bisexual, and the film, with the help of Davis, presents that side of her unapologetically. The movie lets Ma assert her sexuality in one scene with her girlfriend, Dussie Mae. The scene doesn’t traverse into male gaze territory, but presents female desire as powerful, authentic, and natural.
Someone else has eyes for Dussie Mae, though. The brash young trumpeter Levee has grand plans for his career, and he’s just biding him time playing in Ma’s band – what he calls “this jug band shit” – until he can make his own mark on the music world. Levee is powerless, in opposition to Ma’s own power, and he resents not being taken seriously. The other members of Ma’s band laugh at his flashy new shoes and illusions of grandeur. Black Bottom’s coda, in the aftermath of Levee’s devastating, tragic action in the film’s climax, sees the white record producers taking advantage of Levee in the exact way that Ma fiercely defends herself against.
Chadwick Boseman’s bombastic, nuanced turn as Levee is one hell of a final performance. He telegraphs Levee’s seething anger and mournful sadness with his expressive face. In one soliloquy from Levee, in which Wolfe keeps the camera in a tight closeup on Boseman’s face, the musician describes the horrific story of nine white men assaulting his mother when he was a little boy. Boseman is magnetic. His words are disturbing to hear, and his face is a mask of shattering grief. It’s an emotionally pulverizing moment.
The talent behind Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, from producer Denzel Washington’s passion for bringing these stories to the screen; August Wilson’s dialog that crackles and his masterfully crafted story; George C. Wolfe’s lithe camerawork; the formidable talents of Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, and the rest of the ensemble cast, all make for a memorable film experience.
I’m frustrated and grief-stricken that Boseman is gone. Not only was he an incredible actor, but by all accounts, he was a generous, kind, and compassionate human being. This final role is a gift to all of us who admired his work. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a gift to the craft of storytelling.
Why it got 4 stars:
- Two extraordinary lead performances and a well-crafted adaptation of August Wilson’s superb drama make for a compelling and thoughtful movie. My only reservation is Viola Davis’s voice double. As I said above, Maxayn Lewis’s voice is golden, but it doesn’t fit and took me out of the movie every time she fills in for Davis.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- The opening credits sequence is inspired. We get multiple still pictures of Black people in the time of the 1920s, and in each one, a character in the picture moves just slightly, almost imperceptibly. It’s an inventive and striking way to open the film.
- Later in the movie, as one of Ma’s band members holds court on how America has always considered Black people as being “left-overs,” the film goes to several different shots of Black people in the streets of cities in America. These aren’t still images, like in the opening, but they could be. Wolfe stages them as beautiful tableaux shots; they are reminiscent of the same effect Spike Lee used in one sequence in BlacKkKlansman.
- Among the supporting cast are Taylour Paige as Ma’s girlfriend Dussie Mae and the great Glynn Turman (who I first became aware of when I was a teenager when I saw him on A Different World and was delighted to see again on The Wire) as Toledo, Ma’s piano player. Toledo is the one who gives the moving “left-overs” speech.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a Netflix release, which is how I saw it.