C+ | A Jazz Age diva and her band spend their afternoon in a sweltering recording studio. Directed by George C. Wolfe Starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman Review by Jon Kissel |
The second Denzel Washington-produced adaptation of an August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is narrower in scope and scale that the earlier Fences but no less tragic, on and off-screen. The film features the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, playing a character who, unlike his portrayals of Black Panther or Jackie Robinson, exists solely within the film and therefore belongs solely to him, unless a viewer’s seen Wilson’s play. Boseman’s presence likely brings more eyes to the film than would otherwise be the case, as Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is more stagey and less lively than I expected coming in. The actors struggle with a period dialogue that doesn’t make a full transition from the largeness of a stage performance to the intimacy of a movie camera, and the monologues that are expected from a theatrical work seem clumsily dropped in. Viola Davis as Ma Rainey does considerable heavy lifting to rescue a film that spends too much time away from her. Comparing this film, directed by stage veteran George C. Wolfe, to the Washington-directed Fences demonstrates the stark difference between the mediums. Ma Rainey makes Fences look retroactively better.
Wolfe begins his film with two Black men running through the woods with the sounds of barking dogs close behind. Their clothes suggest early 20th century, a nadir of American race relations amidst lynchings and massacres and resurgent supremacist groups. However, this is a fakeout of arguable cheapness, as the men are not fleeing but running to a Ma Rainey performance. She and her band are playing in a tent, suggesting a religious experience that the audience may or may not be experiencing. Ma’s on tour in the south, but the film pulls her back north to Chicago for a recording session. The film takes place almost entirely in two rooms; the recording booth where Ma defiantly resists any deviation from her wishes and the rehearsal room where her band practices and shoots the shit. Boseman plays her trumpeter Levee, though he’s got his eyes both on the door and on Ma’s lover. Glynn Turman, Coleman Domingo, and Michael Potts fill out the rest of the band, and all three older men stand in stark contrast to Levee’s ambition. They’re happy to keep their heads down and not mess up the good thing they have with Ma, while Levee is preparing to strike out on his own and make his name ring out as big, if not bigger, than Ma’s.
Given a choice between spending time in the studio or the rehearsal room that Ma never sets a foot in, I’d always choose the studio. Davis is well-known for facial excretions, usually of the tears and snot variety, but here, it’s sweat. Ma looks bad in almost every frame, overly made-up and uncomfortable, possibly due to all the weight Davis put on for the role. That she is still magnetic and pulls focus every time she’s in frame is completely due to Davis bursting through these limitations and reducing her physicality to one character trait amongst many. Davis’ Ma is a diva, but a diva with a purpose. Making these white men do what she tells them to do, when she’s a successful singer who’s making herself and them money, shouldn’t be as difficult as it is, and the way they second-guess her and drag their feet demonstrates the limits of capitalism to even out racism. There’s still some part of her manager or the studio executive that resents being subservient to her, and that resentment manifests itself in sloppiness, like they don’t have to do their best work because it’s in service to Ma and she should be happy with their B or C game. Her refusal to put up with any of it turns her diva character from a nuisance to a person who knows exactly what her worth is in this world and won’t accept anything less.
Downstairs, characters like Turman’s Toledo are the antithesis to Ma’s righteous demander. He’s happy to get what he can. His strategy for dealing with white people is through surrogates like Ma who can make the demands for him. Levee’s is to lull them into a false sense of security, and then strike when the moment’s right. Enough right moments, and he’ll get to be where Ma is. Levee describes how he came about this strategy with a harrowing backstory, where his aspirational father traded his ambitions for revenge on the gang of white men who burst into his home and raped his wife. The film doesn’t say either strategy is the right one, but laments that a strategy is necessary in the first place.
If Wolfe had more of a cinematic eye, he’d be able to turn the considerable amount of material in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom into something more visually compelling. The montage of Ma’s stuttering nephew trying and failing to get a part right is the best thing I can say for his direction, and that’s not saying much. He turns over much of the film to his cast, a reasonable choice with actors like these, but utility with a monologue is a different thing than rapport or conversational momentum, neither of which I thought this film had. An actor as suave as Boseman can’t make ‘can I introduce my red rooster to your brown hen’ sound anything other than gross. The finale, leftist 101, is well-acted but feels too abrupt, like Boseman wasn’t communicating an unpredictability that would lead to this action, or more likely, the direction wasn’t creating a tone or a sense of foreboding that made it feel credible. Future August Wilson adaptations will surely have no problem attracting A-list talent, but they’re going to need directors with more vision. C+
Given a choice between spending time in the studio or the rehearsal room that Ma never sets a foot in, I’d always choose the studio. Davis is well-known for facial excretions, usually of the tears and snot variety, but here, it’s sweat. Ma looks bad in almost every frame, overly made-up and uncomfortable, possibly due to all the weight Davis put on for the role. That she is still magnetic and pulls focus every time she’s in frame is completely due to Davis bursting through these limitations and reducing her physicality to one character trait amongst many. Davis’ Ma is a diva, but a diva with a purpose. Making these white men do what she tells them to do, when she’s a successful singer who’s making herself and them money, shouldn’t be as difficult as it is, and the way they second-guess her and drag their feet demonstrates the limits of capitalism to even out racism. There’s still some part of her manager or the studio executive that resents being subservient to her, and that resentment manifests itself in sloppiness, like they don’t have to do their best work because it’s in service to Ma and she should be happy with their B or C game. Her refusal to put up with any of it turns her diva character from a nuisance to a person who knows exactly what her worth is in this world and won’t accept anything less.
Downstairs, characters like Turman’s Toledo are the antithesis to Ma’s righteous demander. He’s happy to get what he can. His strategy for dealing with white people is through surrogates like Ma who can make the demands for him. Levee’s is to lull them into a false sense of security, and then strike when the moment’s right. Enough right moments, and he’ll get to be where Ma is. Levee describes how he came about this strategy with a harrowing backstory, where his aspirational father traded his ambitions for revenge on the gang of white men who burst into his home and raped his wife. The film doesn’t say either strategy is the right one, but laments that a strategy is necessary in the first place.
If Wolfe had more of a cinematic eye, he’d be able to turn the considerable amount of material in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom into something more visually compelling. The montage of Ma’s stuttering nephew trying and failing to get a part right is the best thing I can say for his direction, and that’s not saying much. He turns over much of the film to his cast, a reasonable choice with actors like these, but utility with a monologue is a different thing than rapport or conversational momentum, neither of which I thought this film had. An actor as suave as Boseman can’t make ‘can I introduce my red rooster to your brown hen’ sound anything other than gross. The finale, leftist 101, is well-acted but feels too abrupt, like Boseman wasn’t communicating an unpredictability that would lead to this action, or more likely, the direction wasn’t creating a tone or a sense of foreboding that made it feel credible. Future August Wilson adaptations will surely have no problem attracting A-list talent, but they’re going to need directors with more vision. C+
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