Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Dec. 23rd, 2020 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBriefly: watched Ma Rainey's Black Bottom on Netflix, which contains as promised a searing final performance by Chadwick Boseman. Also a reliably excellent one by Viola Davis in the titular role, legenday Blues singer Ma Rainey, but Ma is somewhat like Caesar in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in that she's not actually on stage, err, screen, that much though her impact on the action is key and she's talked about a lot. But Bosemann's character, Levee, is the one with the most sceen time, and character development/reveal. I'd seen him "only" in the MCU films in in Spike Lee's Da Five Bloods, and he's breathtakingly different here, full of nervey energy, with a desperate eagerness and hunger barely hidden under the smooth talking veneer, and then again full of trauma, grief and rage to burst. You can tell this is a filmed stage play, not least from Levee's two big monologues, but the movie trusts Boseman to carry them, and justly so. And all the time, he's so full of vitality that it seems impossible all over again that this was a man who was dying of cancer at the time. Though one of the monologues is a rage, rage, against the dying of the light kind of speech which is now impossible to separate from the actor's identity.
Another tell-tale sign of the films theatrical origin: the action being confined to a studio where Ma Rainey and her band are supposed to record some of her songs - is only briedly interrupted by characters going outside, or some images early on of Ma Rainey and her entourage leaving her hotell. As I've read and seen my share of stories based on a star being late or otherwise sabotaging the production producess (a frequent issue in any muscians' biography, no matter whether they're the divas o the long suffering entourage), I was fascinated how differently it comes across in playwright Angus Wilson's take and in the context of May Rainey being a black middle aged woman in the late 1920s, very aware that the moment the white producers intent on exploiting her won't care whether she lives or dies the moment the recording is done and what power she has, she only has as long as she can still bargain with her not yet recorded voice. It's a very different kind of powerplay/negotiation/statement of self respect than if you read about, say, Keith Richards making the rest of the Stones wait nearly twelve hours till he's sobered up enough to play.
In other news, there are still free slots in January meme for topics you might want to ask me about - check it out.
Another tell-tale sign of the films theatrical origin: the action being confined to a studio where Ma Rainey and her band are supposed to record some of her songs - is only briedly interrupted by characters going outside, or some images early on of Ma Rainey and her entourage leaving her hotell. As I've read and seen my share of stories based on a star being late or otherwise sabotaging the production producess (a frequent issue in any muscians' biography, no matter whether they're the divas o the long suffering entourage), I was fascinated how differently it comes across in playwright Angus Wilson's take and in the context of May Rainey being a black middle aged woman in the late 1920s, very aware that the moment the white producers intent on exploiting her won't care whether she lives or dies the moment the recording is done and what power she has, she only has as long as she can still bargain with her not yet recorded voice. It's a very different kind of powerplay/negotiation/statement of self respect than if you read about, say, Keith Richards making the rest of the Stones wait nearly twelve hours till he's sobered up enough to play.
In other news, there are still free slots in January meme for topics you might want to ask me about - check it out.
