Geeks logo

Movie Review: 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' is a Netflix Oscar Contender

Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman blow the doors off of a story about a Blues Legend.

By Sean PatrickPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
2

Chadwick Boseman used every minute of his 44 years on Earth. He packed a lifetime of powerhouse performances into a life cut far too short. His final performance arrived on Netflix in November of 2020 and it was yet another example of his passionate, emphatic, undeniable talent. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a story of a blues legend and a blues wannabe and how each ended up where they were.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom stars Viola Davis as the titular, Ma Rainey, the 1920’s Queen of the Blues. Ma Rainey dominated the sales charts of the 1920’s despite not being able to play in some of the biggest venues in the country due to being a black woman. This didn’t slow down Ma Rainey in the slightest. Whether she was playing sweat lodge tents deep in the swamp or a blues club in Chicago, she packed the place and sold records off her powerhouse performances.

As our story begins, Ma Rainey is being waited on to arrive for a recording session in Chicago. As usual, she’s on Ma Rainey time, meaning her band is there and waiting and so are her record producers, a pair of interchangeable white guys capitalizing on her brilliance while being impatient to the point of boiling anger, over her attitude. Not that Ma Rainey gives one bit of care to how these men feel about her.

In the band room, Ma Rainey’s band is working through arrangements but there is a problem. The producers have agreed to a new arrangement of the hit song, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, put together by horn player, Levee Green (Chadwick Boseman). Bandleader, Cutler (Coleman Domingo) knows that Ma Rainey won’t agree to any new arrangement and while he tries to peacefully explain this Levee, the young horn player rages about everything from his new shoes, bought with money from songs he’s sold to the producers, to his own impatience with Ma Rainey.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is something of an American-ized upstairs/downstairs narrative with the rich, upper class producers and Ma Rainey upstairs and the paid help, the band, downstairs. The class differences are similar to something like Downton Abbey or another Julian Fellowes’ produced piece, Gosford Park. While Cutler calls for civility and cooperation, Levee is the young social climber looking to make waves in this unusual culture war.

Upstairs, Ma Rainey is busy repeatedly sticking it to her publicist and producer. She’s rich, fat, gay, and perfectly willing to hold up everything until she gets her way. Whether she wants to shut down the recording while someone gets her a coke or if she wants to quit when someone tells her about the planned, new arrangement of her hit song, Ma Rainey is a force of nature no one wants to get caught up in.

Viola Davis is incredible in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The looks that she lays on people in this movie could stop a man’s heart. She has a glare that could stop a rhino in its tracks. She’s mean, feisty and she knows exactly what she’s worth. It’s exciting to watch Ma Rainey take the men around her down a peg. At a time when women in society were relatively powerless, Ma Rainey lived every bit of her star power and let every man around her know it.

Viola Davis exudes pride and power as Ma Rainey. The forcefulness of Davis’s charisma comes barreling through the screen as if you might need to duck from her gaze. It’s a powerhouse performance and when she sings “Those Dogs of Mine,” you feel it in your bones. The same can be said of singer Maxayn Lewis who steps in to sing the rest of the songs, including the title tune which is delivered with attitude and sex appeal to spare.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is based on a play by August Wilson who’s Fences was also made into a film, directed by Denzel Washington. That film was hampered by Washington’s direction of it as more of a stage play than a movie. Director George C Wolfe smartly gives Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom more dimension, it feels more like a movie than a play. Wolf still allows his actors room to monologue, but those monologues are presented in a more cinematic than stagebound fashion.

And oh what monologues we have in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Weeks after seeing the movie, I feel as if I can still hear Chadwick Boseman raging against God. His Levee Green has a conversation with his fellow bandmates that leads to him having a one sided conversation with the almighty and the rage, the vitriol, the confusion and the despair of this monologue will give you chills.

Davis also has a rafter rattling monologue in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom but she delivers it not with an aching, painful, bellow, but with the cool, detached air of well earned confidence. It still blows the roof off of the movie but it’s not nearly as showy. It’s perfectly in line with the rest of Davis’s incredible performance as Ma Rainey, a woman fully realized, brimming with self confidence and take no you know what attitude.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is available now on Netflix.

movie
2

About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.