How would you define the word “formidable?” Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom will show you what it looks like: its title character.
Viola Davis plays Ma Rainey, the legendary “mother of the blues,” who bulldozes her way through this adaptation of the August Wilson play. (Ruben Santiago-Hudson wrote the adapted screenplay; George C. Wolfe directed.) It’s 1927 Chicago and Ma is at the height of her fame. Entering a recording studio with heavy, sweat-smudged makeup, but still carrying herself like a queen, she wields her one true power: her voice. Until that voice is captured on record, then everyone—her all-Black band, her White manager, the White recording executive running the studio—will have to do as she says.
There is one fly in the ointment: Levee (Chadwick Boseman, in his final role), a hotshot young trumpet player looking to make his own name in the business. Disrespectful of his elder bandmates (Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman, Michael Potts), casting a flirtatious eye at Ma’s younger lover (Taylour Paige), and flippant toward Ma herself, Levee’s ambitions at first seem naive. But the bolder they become, he begins to register not only as an annoyance, but a threat.
And so what we have is a double showdown—of characters and supreme acting talents. Davis and Boseman don’t actually have many scenes together, as Ma holds court in the studio itself while Levee mostly banters with his bandmates in a rehearsal space. But even independently, they’re both, well, formidable. Ma delivers her demands in a guttural growl, as if she was a mother bear and her music was her cub. Levee, meanwhile, shows a devilish side of Boseman—playful at times, dangerous at others. These are big performances, but also delicate ones when it matters. Both actors are seasoned enough film veterans to know that when Wolfe shoves his camera into their faces, they need only employ the slightest of facial gestures to connect with us.
These are big performances, but also delicate ones when it matters.
If both Ma and Levee are ultimately sympathetic, it’s due to the layered performances and the full stories that Wilson gives the characters. Davis taps into the sorrow of a woman who ultimately uses her clout as a form of protection: “They gonna treat me how I want to be treated no matter how much it hurt ’em.” Similarly, in a monologue recalling a horrific experience in his youth, Levee reveals how much of his psychology is rooted in past pain. If both characters do a lot of barking, we understand it’s because they’ve spent much of their lives being cornered.
Wolfe, as director, is smart enough to mostly stay out of the way while Wilson’s dialogue unfurls from the mouths of the cast members. He occasionally shakes off the staginess with a camera that roams about in brief single takes. And there’s also a flourish—as Turman’s piano player improvises a piece about the “stew” of Africans who have gathered in America—when Wolfe cuts to portrait-style tableaus of African-Americans of varying skin tones.
Much like Fences, which Viola Davis starred in (opposite director Denzel Washington), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom always feels like an adaptation of an August Wilson play. But when the material is this good, that hardly matters. Thanks to its excellent ensemble cast and the musical element (Davis sings on “Those Dogs of Mine,” otherwise the vocals for Ma’s blistering blues numbers are provided by Maxayn Lewis), Ma Rainey leaps from the screen in the same way I imagine it leaps from the stage: as a testament to the complicated humanity that lies behind all artistic expression—even songs about “a dance you call the black bottom.”
