The late playwright August Wilson famously wrote a series of ten plays called his Pittsburgh Cycle, each set in a different decade showing the African American experience during the 20th century. All but one of them was set in the same neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The lone exception was Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the one set during the 1920s which is set in Chicago. I’m only really familiar with two of the ten. I’ve taught Fences many times over, enough that I actually haven’t seen the Denzel Washington film version because I just know it’s going to be a heartbreaker. The other actually is Ma Rainey’s because my college did a production of it while I was an undergrad, featuring a mix of student and local professional actors.
That said, my tinnitus has always made hearing things a bit difficult, and one of the student actors spoke his lines very fast, so much so I didn’t understand most of what he said. I do remember being very impressed by the Ma Rainey actress. Now that Netflix has a movie version of it, maybe I can really find out what Levee was saying beyond just a general impression.
Blues star Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) is in Chicago to record a record with her band, her nephew, and a young woman who seems to be Ma’s lover. Most of Ma’s band are old pros who know she’s in charge and are just glad to play with her, but young hotshot trumpet player Levee (Chadwick Boseman in his final film role) has other ambitions, ones that make him out to possibly be too big for his metaphorical britches, sure he’s the next big thing and Ma’s band is only a stepping stone on to greater fame.
As far as plots go, it’s mostly just the different members of Ma’s band and entourage clashing with each other and having some low key conflict with Ma’s white manager and the white man who owns the recording studio. Ma does come across as a bit of a diva, but as she explains in one of the few scenes where she isn’t making demands of everyone, she somewhat has to be. She’s a black woman in the 1920s, and it would appear she’s a gay woman on top of that. This was not a society that was ever going to be nice to someone like her, she knows it, and she responds in kind.
All that means is that the movie does very much resemble something more like a stage play, where Ma, Levee, and other characters can have these nice monologues explaining their views and experiences and why they are the way they are. For Ma and all of the different members of her band, it’s been a hard life, and the white people they encounter, even a fellow like Ma’s manager who seems more like a bedraggled go-between stuck between Ma and the recording studio’s owner, haven’t always played with Ma’s best interests at heart, and she certainly knows it. For the rest, much of the movie is just these characters hanging out and making music together. It does come to a tragic end for the hotheaded Levee, one that is largely (but not entirely) of his own making, and therein lies the tragedy of the play.
And it is somewhat sad to note this was, of course, Boseman’s last movie. He’s, as always, electrifying in the role, bringing Levee’s rage and sorrows to life in equal measure. Even as Davis and the others shine in their roles, it’s hard not to note Boseman, looking a bit thinner than I am used to, once again giving it his all while secretly dying. It’s something that compounds the tragedy of the narrative, knowing the actor and his character are both not going to be around in the future.
Grade: A
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