Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

In the open­ing scene of Ma Rainey’s Black Bot­tom, two Black men run through the woods in what feels like a famil­iar­ly chill­ing inci­dent giv­en the his­tor­i­cal con­text. The men fran­ti­cal­ly scram­ble their way through the for­est, breath­ing heav­i­ly, with fog rolling through the trees and dogs bark­ing in the dis­tance. They quick­ly reach a clear­ing lit up by burn­ing torch­es, evok­ing images of white hoods and fiery crosses.

But as they approach, it becomes clear that they have not been run­ning away from but rather towards some­thing. They laugh, join­ing a crowd of peo­ple eager­ly wait­ing to be let in to Ma Rainey’s show. This scene per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the uneasy tone of the film, with build­ing ten­sions it is nev­er quite clear if or when they will bub­ble over and the mood will change unexpectedly.

Adapt­ed from August Wilson’s award-win­ning play of the same name, George C Wolfe’s film is the fic­tion­alised account of a record­ing ses­sion with the real-life ​“Moth­er of the Blues” and her band in Chica­go. Large­ly tak­ing place over the course of one oppres­sive­ly hot day, it explores the com­plex­i­ties of race, reli­gion, art and the impact of the Great Migra­tion (the mass move­ment of Black Amer­i­cans from the South to the North) in 1920s America.

Strained rela­tion­ships, and the con­stant pow­er strug­gles with­in them, are cen­tral to the film. Ma (Vio­la Davis) clash­es with her white man­ag­er Irvin (Jere­my Shamos) and stu­dio head Stur­dy­vant (Jon­ny Coyne), who takes every oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­cut her. She uses her prof­itabil­i­ty as lever­age to force them to treat her with the respect she deserves, aware that they have lit­tle regard for her beyond her mon­ey-mak­ing abilities.

She is also in con­flict with her horn play­er Lev­ee (Chad­wick Bose­man), who brazen­ly flirts with her girl­friend Dussie Mae (Tay­lour Paige) and remains unwill­ing to defer to Ma’s artis­tic judge­ment. He is deter­mined to make his mark on the indus­try, with a dis­taste for tra­di­tion­al Blues music and his own ideas about how her songs should sound.

The film is not par­tic­u­lar­ly heavy on plot, hing­ing instead on char­ac­ter and con­ver­sa­tion, name­ly that between the four men in the band: Lev­ee, Cut­ler (Col­man Domin­go), Tole­do (Glynn Tur­man) and Slow Drag (Michael Potts). Though their dis­cus­sions are often seem­ing­ly triv­ial (with top­ics includ­ing what makes a fool and the beau­ty of Levee’s new brogues), they reveal much about the state of Amer­i­ca at the time.

Tole­do deliv­ers an earnest philo­soph­i­cal ser­mon on the advance­ment of Black peo­ple world­wide. Lev­ee recounts a har­row­ing tale of racial trau­ma and presents impas­sioned argu­ments against Chris­tian­i­ty – an excel­lent final per­for­mance from Bose­man who imbues every word with a siz­zling intensity.

Despite being the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter, Ma Rainey doesn’t feel like the pro­tag­o­nist, which is dis­ap­point­ing giv­en that this film pro­vides a rare look into Black Amer­i­can queer his­to­ry. As expect­ed, Davis gives an impres­sive per­for­mance, but crit­i­cism of her wear­ing a fat suit to play the role is jus­ti­fied; the choice not to give the part to some­body with a more sim­i­lar physique feels like a missed opportunity.

Even though Ma Rainey’s Black Bot­tom is set over 90 years ago, it feels unset­tling­ly time­ly in the way that all his­tor­i­cal films which deal with racism will until these issues are mean­ing­ful­ly addressed. Dis­cus­sions around the white-wash­ing and appro­pri­a­tion of Black art, racialised vio­lence, and efforts towards equal­i­ty, are being had in 2020 as they were in 1920; as much as we can now see how far we have come, it is also impor­tant to acknowl­edge how much fur­ther we have left to go.