'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' review: Chadwick Boseman's swansong is a gut-wrenching tale of trauma and ambition
Best Actor : Chadwick Boseman
There’s always some beauty in films that rely heavily on storytelling and one on one dialogues, rather than just expressions. The film has a lot of heavy talking, but it never feels boring. The most tear-jerking moments in the film are said in the film, rather than shown, and both of them are explained through words of Ma Rainey and Lavee, expressed only through eyes and a lot of anguish.
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As for Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s is a perfect swansong. You see him as a young, passionate Lavee who loves to live in style, has dreams as big as his shoe’s budget, and a darkness that’s even bigger. A man who gains and loses it all within the span of the film. There is a fight that breaks out between Cutler ( Colman Domingo) and him over god ignoring his black devotees and it breaks your heart, relating it to incidents of 2020. The relevance gets to you. The anger is real and the questions still worth pondering over.
Viola Davis’ Ma is fierce, controlling and legit, however, she knows till where she can control the narrative. She fights fair, but she has given her all to reach where she is now. In the film, she very fondly talks about blues and how it helps her get out of bed every morning, she goes on to say, “I ain’t invent the blues, the blues always been there,” and yet owns her action of making blues popular by adding, “but if they want me to call the mother of blues, I ain’t complaining”
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There’s a lot of layers that the film offers. Living as a black person in the 1920s is just one of them. The deeper layers exist in the human portrayal of these people. The fear of failure, the will to be in control and the lack-lustrous ambition to just live another day, to be a leftover.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a poem in the rhythm of the blue. The chords sit well, yet make you uncomfortable, in a sad well-intentioned way. Don’t you skip on it, this track will get you hooked.