August Wilson’s 1982 play “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” – one of Wilson’s ten Pittsburgh Cycle plays – uses historical figure Ma Rainey, the famous blues singer, to explore issues of black pain, and black art. Set in Chicago in the 1920s, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is a cutting-edge account of what happens when old conflicts with the new.
‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ is the song at the center of the conflict. It’s one of the singer’s key works, but early in the story he recognizes an issue. Ma likes to sing her song the old way. But the young, talented upstart trumpeter in her band, Levee, has written a new arrangement of it for a new age of audiences. The owner of the White studio is very interesting. The rest of the band members are less enthusiastic. Ma will not like it, they warn. And she doesn’t. Ma Rainey is a member of the Old Guard. The queen of the blues, tired and exhausted by a sea of whiteness to which she sees her stardom engulfed, she is a woman who looks out at the world with bitterness. Music gives her some happiness, as does a relationship with a young girl, Dussie Mae. It’s unclear where the band’s musical loyalty is. With the exception of Levee. He wants something different. It bursts at the seams to show the world. Inevitably the old will clash with the new, even if not in the way you expect. The play, like the new adaptation directed by George C Wolfe and written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, is about that schism that is extended in the way of the title song. But who can sustain music?
The adaptation of the play as produced by Denzel Washington is part of a vital project of his work, adapting the fair circle to the big screen. August Wilson is the black American playwright with a body of work that compares to other 20th century American playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill. Though he arrived decades later, his work retains that operatic theatricality that marked the early half of the 20th century, when American drama came to define the new type of theatrical work, except that Wilson’s focus on black characters had make his work even more individual. His focus on black characters, who are dramatic heroes with tales of legendary proportions, makes him unmatched on stage. And yet, where adaptations of O’Neill, Williams and Miller have thrown screens – large and small – Wilson’s work has not achieved that accessibility. Not in print. Not in revivals. And not in the media.
Washington’s commitment to bringing the fair to the big screen is noble. Before the last decade, when its production cycle began with “Fences”, Alfre Woodard’s remarkable turn in the 1990s TV movie “The Piano Lesson” was Wilson’s most accessible adaptation. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” arrives at the right time, at a turning point for black art.
But in adapting the work to the screen, Hollywood’s “Ma Rainey” commitments seem to shake Wilson’s own complex work. And the project feels obligated on duty. It arrives all too conscious of its own significance, carrying the weight of what it means for Viola Davis – the most notable black female star of her time – to convey Ma Rainey’s harsh assertiveness. It is certain of the recent death of Chadwick Boseman, whose performance as Levee adds a note of tragedy to the character’s fate. And he’s bound by Wolfe, a stage talent whose screen directing has received less praise than his prolific stage work. It’s a lot of pressure for a play that has already been weighed down by its own pain and as a film, “Black Bottom Ma Rainey” feels like a weighed down drama rather than a movie that n develop naturally.
Limber quality requires Wilson’s adjustment if transferred to a new medium. Wilson’s work is theatrical in the way Tennessee Williams’ own grandeur is theatrical to the core. Good adaptations of Williams’ work soar because they understand how to transpose that theatricality into the screen, which works differently than the stage. But here the theatre’s veins are always showing, so Ma Rainey’s “Black Bottom” movie rarely feels free. Not in the way that Ma Rainey of Viola Davis seems to have studied it too much in her sincerity – not a sign of Wilson’s own sly handling of her on the page – but the film’s own literary victims of her pain at the expense of subtext. As a character, Ma Rainey plays to sensuality in Davis’s oeuvre which seems out of place – one might imagine her as a thrilling Berenice in an adaptation of “The Piano Lesson”, but like Ma Rainey she appears to be Too crucial to the projections and not the central complexities of the role. Ma is bitter, and angry and a bully. Davis gets that, but it’s a cadence that’s centered by his certainty of her music. And that’s something the film bristles at, and Davis’ performance flies with it.
Davis works out heavily, Ma’s bullishness but under the surly lips, the garishly effective make-up and his tired flounce, little in the performance or the direction of Wolfe seems to know why Ma even does what he does do it. Ma Rainey is central, even if her screen time is not the greatest – but here it feels like a blurry storm rather than an informed force that should be considered.
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is a heavy play. It is not the heaviest of the Wilson cycles, but it is ruthless in that its end gives us no catharsis. Everything is wound so tightly; even the hints of levity sustain themselves on the sublimations of despair. Wolfe’s direction leaves the actors carrying that weight, and it’s too much to carry. The film is always aesthetic and tonal, with a shiny gloss of brown being the worst for the kind of pulsing crescendo that drives Wilson’s play. The story hurtles towards that devastating coda – when the levee that is Levee releases for the worse – but there is no mood in the filmmaking here. What happens when the levee inside us breaks? Disorder. And in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, we spend the entire narrative waiting for that levee to break. Literally. But, on film, Wolfe’s work feels too effortless for the unobstructed chaos the story demands. The color of the disorder is compromised.
Levee is the true character of the story. The film, like the play, turns on the development of its character. His first major monologue, a moving memory, shifts the context of the play and is one of Wilson’s most memorable. The second shift is a stand-off between Ma and the band and the final time returns us to Levee, now in despair. The adjustment retains the clear structure. But the filmmaking has a peculiarity when every central turning point is framed with the same kind of boxing in camerawork. This story is about people and their bodies, the ways in which they externalize that grief and pain and anger in the shadow of whiteness. And, again, Wolfe is a close privilege. His intuition seems out of sync. For a movie about performers, the camera seems unwilling to let us see them close together. A scene of eroticism between Ma and Dussie Mae feels solid and overflowing. No joy, just solid brown dunness. Yes, the story is moving toward that final operatic tragedy but we don’t specify a time until then. The story needs to live and breathe and feel. Is it the blues?
On stage, Wilson’s work retains operatic power – it’s large, and expressive and effective. But on screen, everything feels small in “Black Bottom Ma Rainey”. I was wondering if first-timers would understand the significance of this version. A story of rape holds the same cadence with a potentially joyful memory of what the blues can do. When the music starts playing, the actors try to sell the enthusiasm but the filmmaking itself doesn’t feel like tapping keys or feeling rhythm. It’s authentic and serious but it’s not lively. Boseman injects Levee’s hurt and pain with gusto, even when the address catches him – literally, sometimes, as in a scene where his psychological prick is represented by a brick wall.
It’s an awkward feeling because blues music is duty-free. It can be chaotic. It can be unpredictable. It can be hopeless and it can even be swinging. But the blues can’t be a duty, and so many “Ma Rainey” parts seem to pulse through with his awareness of that duty. Colman Domingo, ever vigilant as the de facto bandleader Cutler, and Glynn Turman, as the tired but hopeful old hand Toledo, holds the key to the film’s engagement with the blues. They live the tiredness of their existence without publication. Wolfe insists on opening the play, spelling out Ma’s pain and her heartbreak but the moments with Domingo and Turman have a naturalism that doesn’t need to be emphasized. They are just. The real, mournful blues in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” come only in the brief moments the film allows them to exist.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is available for streaming on Netflix.