{"id":23537,"date":"2021-02-22T22:02:17","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T12:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23537"},"modified":"2021-02-22T22:02:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T12:02:17","slug":"ma-raineys-black-bottom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23537","title":{"rendered":"Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagfilm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"marainey-poster\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0 <\/strong>George C. Wolfe
\nWriter:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Ruben Santiago-Houston
\nCast:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Chadwick Boseman, Viola Davis, Taylour Paige, Gylnn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts<\/p>\n

This review contains significant spoilers.<\/em><\/p>\n

T<\/span>his is it.\u00a0 The final film featuring\u00a0Black Panther<\/em> star Chadwick Boseman who tragically and unexpectedly passed away last year after a lengthy private battle with colon cancer.<\/p>\n

Based on a stage production of the same name,\u00a0Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom<\/em> is based on the real life blues artist Ma Rainey.\u00a0 In 1927 Ma is invited to record her hit song Black Bottom at the Paramount recording studio in Chicago.\u00a0 Ma has a band of\u00a0seasoned veterans assembled – Toledo, Culter and Slow Drag – but there is also an upstart young, new trumpeter Levee Green (Boseman).\u00a0 Levee is boisterous, brash and confident.\u00a0 He sees the recording session as a stepping stone and an opportunity to form a relationship with the studio manager Mr Sturdyvant so he can record his own music.\u00a0 While he’s at it, he’s brought along some notes to remix Ma’s version of Black Bottom to make it more appealing for the audience listening on radio.<\/p>\n

Boseman is a force of nature as Levee.\u00a0 For a performer so indelibly linked with the stoic superhero T’Challa, it’s amazing to see his transformative talents on display here as the fast-talking, smooth moving hustler Levee.\u00a0 The old band mates are dubious about his claims that stardom awaits but Levee is so confident and self-assured, they all seem like dinosaurs by comparison.\u00a0 In particular, Levee seems to understand a different market for popular music awaits through the medium of radio that the old performers can barely comprehend.<\/p>\n

Then along comes Ma (Davis).<\/p>\n

Ma is Levee’s polar opposite.\u00a0 She has world weary eyes.\u00a0 She wears a permanent scowl and makes clear from the outset that she’s itching to find an excuse to go back to Georgia.\u00a0 Where Levee is all smiles and sugarcoats his words for the white studio managers, Ma is openly disdainful of their presence.\u00a0 She acts the part of the diva and does so knowingly.\u00a0 Her entourage includes her girlfriend Dussie Mae and her nephew Sylvester who she insists records an introduction to the track despite carrying a wicked stutter.\u00a0 After much negotiating and threats of walking out, Ma fully gets her way and when the recording is due to start, she halts everything and demands someone fetch her a coca cola.\u00a0 Ma gets what Ma wants.<\/p>\n

\"marainey-movie\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It occured to me that my expectations for how this film would unfold were sharply coloured by Boseman’s casting as Levee.\u00a0 It’s Chadwick Boseman.\u00a0\u00a0He’s the hero<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0He’s in the right<\/em>.\u00a0 He understands that radio is the future.\u00a0 He’s ambitious and has hustle.\u00a0 He steals Dussie Mae away from Ma right beneath her very nose.\u00a0 I wonder if the experience with the stage show felt different when its not Boseman playing Levee.<\/p>\n

\n

The film takes a turn midway through when Levee loses patience with the band ridiculing his sweetness and deference to the white station manger.\u00a0 Levee vividly describes his traumatic childhood to the others, revealing an ugly, dark and previously unseen facet of his character.\u00a0 He shapes to follow in his father’s footsteps and his father – although grievously wronged – was a man who sought bloody retribution against his enemies.<\/p>\n

In time, I also began to\u00a0realise that Ma was in fact the smartest person in the room.\u00a0 Levee is right in understanding how to write popular music that white folk will listen to on the radio.\u00a0 But he’s naive in thinking the station manager would ever go along with his plans or cut him a share of the profits.\u00a0 Ma doesn’t ever bother to learn what the music trends are because she rightly understands that as soon as her voice is permanently etched in a recording, the producers will have no further use for her.\u00a0 She is independently wealthy already from performing to black clubs in Georgia so she has no need for any of this.\u00a0 She’s just there to get a pay day not just for herself, but for her family.\u00a0 And she’s doing it with her dignity intact.\u00a0 She knows her worth and never doubts or undersells herself for a second.<\/p>\n

Once this penny drops, there’s a realisation that the film has a rather severe and cynical world view.\u00a0 But who can argue against what Ma is doing?\u00a0 The film’s themes about black self determination make it an interesting companion piece to another award season contender\u00a0One Night In Miami<\/em> where black pop star Sam Cooke grapples with a similar dilemma.<\/p>\n

The final act of\u00a0Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom<\/em> delivers a gut punch.\u00a0 The recording session is complete.\u00a0 Some money is made and some dreams are shattered.\u00a0 The darkness alluded to earlier in the film comes to a sad and inevitable conclusion.<\/p>\n

I found myself totally absorbed in Chadwick Boseman’s performance as Levee.\u00a0 It’s crazy to think he was gone less than a year after this was filmed.\u00a0 There is such a presence and physicality to his\u00a0acting.\u00a0 I had never seen him in anything other than\u00a0Black Panther<\/em> prior to this.\u00a0 I hadn’t fully appreciated the range he had as an actor and\u00a0its a terrible shame that the world was robbed of many more decades of his characters and storytelling.\u00a0 His final performance as Levee Green is enigmatic, full of flair, darkly disturbing at times, but nothing short of memorable.<\/p>\n

\"marainey-scene\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During a recording session, tensions rise between Ma Rainey, her ambitious horn player and the white management determined to control the uncontrollable “Mother of the Blues”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2709,2206,2956],"class_list":["post-23537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-chadwick-boseman","tag-netflix","tag-viola-davis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23537"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23575,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23537\/revisions\/23575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}