Two Black men in old-timey caps and unbleached cotton clothes run swiftly through the woods, pursued by barking dogs. This is a head fake, but not really. They’re on their way to see Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) perform in a revivalist-style tent in the woods. Ma is a full-figured, powerful woman. Her eyes swim in pools of dark eyeshadow that resemble a prizefighter’s bruises. She slowly shimmies down before raising herself up, bottom first. The men in the audience, dressed in their Sunday finest, rise and cheer in appreciation, fan their suddenly glistening foreheads with their hats, and stroke their chins as if appraising something of obvious value. I have to admit that at this point, I assumed the title of the movie was a reference to Ma Rainey’s posterior.
We cut to a shot of her performing in a concert hall in Chicago. This is a bigger show that includes thicc backup dancers gyrating around Ma, an honor guard fit for the Mother of the Blues. Levee (Chadwick Boseman in his final performance), a young, hotblooded trumpet player who believes it’s past time for him to start his own band, draws the spotlight to himself during his solo. He hangs on to the light for only a moment before an irritated Ma snatches it back.
The next time we see Ma Rainey, she’s coming down the stairway of a fancy hotel. The equally fancy patrons abruptly stop talking en masse when they see her, eyeing her disapprovingly, but Ma doesn’t care. Everyone in the hotel is Black, so it’s not her skin color drawing their hostile stares. She takes the arm of the lovely Dussie Mae and her stuttering nephew and proudly walks on, already late to the recording studio. At this point, I presume the movie title refers to the kiss-my-black-ass attitude with which Ma armors herself.
I’m wrong on both counts. Apparently, Black Bottom refers to a 1920s dance created by Black people living in a Detroit neighborhood by that name. The Black Bottom surpassed even the Charleston in popularity. Apparently, in that era, popular dances simply went by the names of where they were created before being co-opted by white dancers. I couldn’t find a recording of Black people performing this dance, so here’s a white dancer. It’s breathtakingly awful and almost a fitting punishment for the crime of cultural appropriation. White teens should be required to view this video before uploading any of the dances they’ve stolen from Black TikTokers.
Ma is a diva. She arrives late to the recording studio, threatens to leave every time she doesn’t get her way, and shuts down production until she gets a Coca-Cola. At first, I pitied anyone who had to deal with her: the musicians, her white manager (Jeremy Shamos), and even the unscrupulous record company owner (Jonny Coyne). But by the end, I agreed with the way Ma navigates the world. She understands where her leverage begins and ends and does not relinquish it until she gets everything due to her. Anyone who does anything different is a fool.
This movie is based on an August Wilson play by the same name, and it feels like a play in all the best ways. Most of the action takes place in a limited number of locations, forcing us to focus on the characters who inhabit the space, which grows smaller and more claustrophobic as the characters become more real to us. We listen as Levee and the other blues musicians (Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts) razz each other, confess foundational histories, get on the make, and come undone. The basement practice room isn’t large enough to contain the personal and shared histories these musicians push ahead of themselves like Sisyphus. The world isn’t large enough to contain Levee’s imploding ambitions and misdirected rage.
Everyone has an hour and a half to watch this movie. The only way you walk away dissatisfied is if you’re a Black Panther fan. As you watch Levee crack and crumble, you might find yourself annoyed Boseman spent so much of his limited time on his Black Panther character, a part that could have been played just as well by a lesser actor, leaving him more time to play characters like this.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and August Wilson; Directed by George C. Wolfe
2020
94 minutes
English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Netflix
You’ll like this if you like: Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962)