Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Before Oscars So White Redux (2021) I didn't care much about Ma Rainey's Black Bottom to write a review.  I wished Riz Ahmed would win the Best Actor award, although like most people who had kept tabs on this year's nominations, I knew it would go to Chadwick Boseman and was mostly reconciled to it. After all the incredible human being and actor that Boseman was, he would never again get a chance to be in the Oscar race ever again. Everyone else, including Riz Ahmed, who I hope will have a remarkable career ahead,  will have more chances.

Then the Academy went ahead and did its thing- awarded Anthony Hopkins who was blissfully sleeping in his bed and didn't even Zoom into the award ceremony, the Best Actor award. This made it imperative that I had to write about Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, to make peace with Chadwick Boseman, even though he is at a place where they are indifferent to gold-plated bronze statues of Uncle Oscar and other such earthly knickknacks.

Viola Davis put in a power house performance as Ma Rainey, the so-called Mother of the Blues. But it is Chadwick Boseman as Levee - the trumpeter who steals the show. I did not even recognize him at first in the film. Considering it was shot during the last few months of his life, physically, he was a shadow of King T'Challa he was in Black Panther.  That did not deter him from pouring his soul into Levee. 

Chadwick Boseman as Levee at the center, in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom has all telltale signs of being adapted from a play. That coupled with my absolute no-clues-about-blues persuasion didn't endear me to the content of the film much. Ma Rainey also says in the movie that it would be an empty world without the blues. Maybe for you Ma, not for me.

The silver lining for me was Boseman's Levee. Despite his irreverent, go-getter attitude, his was the only character I found myself rooting for. The script gives a handful of theatrical monologues to Levee, knowing that this might be the last time Boseman would have an opportunity to deliver such hard hitting lines. Like this one on death, which considering the circumstances add to the poignancy,

"Now death. Death got some style. Death will kick your ass and make you wish you have never been born. That's how bad death is. But you can rule over life. Life ain't nothing."

The black and white footage at the end brings home the message that black artists didn't get their due and had their intellectual property stolen from them. It is heart-rending to watch white musicians play Levee's piece sans any emotion, while we the viewers know how much the black musicians had poured their souls into their compositions and never got credit.

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