MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM (2020)
Critic - No. 209
Director: George C Wolfe
Written by: Ruben Santiago-Hudson (screenplay), August Wilson (original play)
Produced by: Denzel Washington, Todd Black, Dany Wolf
Casts: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, Jonny Coyne, Taylour Paige
Language: English
Genre: Drama
Music: Branford Marsalis
SYNOPSIS:
Tensions and temperatures rise at a Chicago music studio in 1927 when fiery, fearless blues singer Ma Rainey (Viola Davies) joins her band for a recording session.
REVIEW:
“White folks don’t understand about the blues...They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there. They don’t understand that that’s life’s way of talking.”, says the pioneering singer Ma Rainey, as imagined by August Wilson and remarkably performed by Viola Davies.
After a stunning song performance of the mother of blues, the story kicks off, we see African-American musicians hanging around a white-owned Chicago studio one stiflingly hot day in the 1920s, waiting for the legendary blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey to show up so they can cut an album. The lead track is expected to be her live hit, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and the drama further explores the side of the rebellious yet ambitious trumpeter in the band named Levee (Chadwick Boseman) angling for his own version to be recorded. The recording session gradually builds into a strong dramatic argument and confrontation about race, sex, and power.
Ma, who rolls into the studio late, flanked by her nephew, Sylvester (Dusan Brown), and her young girlfriend, Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige), can seem almost like a caricature of the “difficult” artist. She is stubborn that Sylvester, who stutters, records the spoken introduction to her signature song. She demands three bottles of Coca-Cola before she will sing another note, and consistently scolds her nervous white manager (Jeremy Shamos). But later in the drama, we realise that this behavior is not the result of just plain ego. We see the oppressed community’s pain in the reason when Ma conveys that this is the best way of protecting the value of her talent, using it to go above the majority.
We see the pain of the oppressed black community through various perspectives and backstories (filled with violence and humiliation) of the band members including the ambitious, edgy Levee. Ma also represents the old-school established star who works in a Southern-style that Levee thinks is behind the times. Levee is always in a hurry, eager to cash checks before they’ve been written. He is desperate to prove himself and break out of the oppressed space he is in through his talent. In one terrifically composed symbolic scene, Levee breaks down a door only to find himself at the bottom of an enclosed brick patio, with no way out, almost signifying the trapped state of a black man in the society at that time (or even now). A painful metaphor of his tragic character arc in a story sense.
Davis brings a dynamic charisma to her Ma Rainey character. One smoldering look through her smeared makeup and huge eyes sends the men around her running for their lives. Meanwhile, Boseman's final act before his tragic death brings out his best performance to date and ever be. Boseman translates Levee’s complex emotions on-screen and the lengthy monologues will move you to tears, at multiple portions in the film. The supporting actors are equally memorable and for me Paige did a great job as the scampering manager, almost creating a lighter vein to this dark tale.
The film sounds and looks like the period it wanted to recreate with a strong technical team backing it. The intricacy shown in the makeup and costume design very well shows the reason for their victory in the Oscars.
VERDICT:
‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ is a strong drama that presents a painful argument on race, sex, and power through the thundering performance of Davies and a remarkable final act of Boseman.
CELLULOID METER- 4/5:
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