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The title may say ma Rainey's black bottom but this is really Chadwick Bozeman's movie a one-two you know what to do tensions rise between ma Rainey her ambitious horn player and the white management determined to control the uncontrollable mother of the blues during a 1927 recording session, I was only about five minutes in before I started to wonder if this Netflix original was based on a play because of the look the feel the rapid-fire dialogue and sure enough, it's based on a play written by August Wilson Viola Davis plays ma she doesn't take any crap off of anybody at first,
I found her very grating she was abrasive and pushy and she wasn't resonating with me at all and then she finally got monologue and my perception of her character completely changed
Davis is really good in this I mean she is wise and shrewd as good as Viola Davis is as ma in this Chadwick Bosemanreally gets to shine he plays levy the trumpet player in Moz band and he's on the younger side and he'srash and he's arrogant he gets a really engaging monologue and he delivers it with such power and emotion that I am sucked into the character but just like ma as time goes on my perception of his character changes but in this instance, it goes in the complete opposite direction of ma Bozeman gets the majority of the screen time in this and he chews through all of it I love how this is filmed because the setting is so much like a play but the camera is really up close to our characters at times
So we get to see tears almost forming in eyes we get to hear whispers and every single bit of it we get to just feel the palpable tension that is building and one of my joys to watch in any type of film are long continuous takes and they do several of the mins this and that's where we get to see the actor's skill really comes into play I mean think of it if this was a play there's no messing up and I love that because when they take the film version of this they still treat it like the play and they just keep going and they have these long takes where it bounces back and forth between characters and dialogue and it's so wonderful to watch now
this is a tense watch but it's not a thriller I was stressed through a lot of it because of the dialogue and the dynamics between the characters and if you listen you hear the wisdom being shared by the older characters and then you also get to see the naivety that is coming from the younger ones and then throughout you have the manipulation of the manager and the studio guy they're exploitative but they also try to make you feel like they're doing you a favor when they comply with what you're asking it's really jacked up in the way that they do that while there is some humor in this the tone is dominated by tension anger and sadness
this didn't leave me all bright and cheery but i was moved there are many scenes that show the unjust treatment of ma and her band just because they're black some of it is very overt and some of it is a little more subtle but not so much so that you have to like dig to find it i mean it's not that subtle it's still there and it should make you angry there are some scenes in this where the context is kind of lost on met here are some reactions that are made towards ma and I can make assumptions as to why I think that they're there but I don't have any concrete evidence
I get the sense that she's looked upon as strange or maybe an outcast but there isn't any dialogue to support it I just get the feeling from that scene but i don't know why she would be looked upon in that way it's almost like there was a little bit of backstory that wasn't provided and that would have clued in some of these the scenes that I'm talking about one of them takes place in a hotel and it just you see all of these reactions by the people in the hotel as MA is walking by and yeah I'm kind of lost now in addition to Bozeman, I loved the other three members of Moz band they each have moments to shine in their own way sometimes it's through like a little bit of wisdom other times it is sharing some sort of lesson and other times it's through quietness the movie is fairly short at 94 minutes and it uses the time efficiently the pace keeps the pressure on and doesn't really let up even in the quieter moments,
There's also sometimes a franticness to the action where we are just bouncing back and forth between characters and that comes into play with a lot of the dialogue and that also helps to keep that pressure that emotion that tension and stress going and I love how the camera keeps up too because as the characters are delivering their lines back and forth and you're just bouncing around its not just two people talking like this I mean you have multiple people all over the place it is
it's wonderful to watch and I loved how we are right there in the middle of it to catch every word I love the two sides of anger we see in this one is coming from ma and the other is from levy and both are justified one is dealing with them here and now and one is dealing with just issues of the past and both are affecting the present while this isn't the feel-good holiday movie you might be craving at the end of the year this is filled with amazing performances and wonderful storytelling it's supposed to leave you agitated and saddened and it does you don't want to miss it
there's sex but no nudity a lot of profanity and some violence give MA Rainey's black bottom four and half out of five vouchers have you seen this one yet I would like to know what you thought of it in the comments below if you enjoyed this review please share
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