Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

 

Ma Rainey

Playwright August Wilson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM             C                                                                               USA  (94 mi)  2020  ‘Scope  d: George C. Wolfe

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that’s a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.                                                        —August Wilson, 2004 interview, An Interview with August Wilson - Believer Magazine 

White folk don’t understand about the blues.  They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there.                                                                                                                                          —Ma Rainey (Viola Davis)

While any August Wilson play is to be celebrated, this Netflix movie is wrong-footed and overpraised, largely over-acted, going for grandiose moments, failing to capture the tone and sheer artistry of Wilson, who elevates dialogue through the understated naturalism of the performers, where their collective voices emulate the black experience in America.  Writing a play for every decade of the 20th century, this one written in 1982 is set in the 1920’s, an era of the Jim Crow South when the black-owned Chicago Defender newspaper urged blacks to migrate north where there were available jobs working on the railroads, like butlers, porters, waiters, and cooks.  Poorly edited and not particularly well-made, the director has a long history in the theater, but is a relative novice in the film industry, where the look of the film is pure artifice, like taking place on a Hollywood set, showing no interest whatsoever in capturing real life, where the entire film exists in a netherworld of make believe, where there isn’t a single likeable character in the entire film, which is a bit shocking, as nearly every August Wilson character exudes personality and appeal, which is why his stature as a playwright is so revered, as his characters seem to be speaking just to us.  Initially influenced by the blues music of Bessie Smith, offering the unfiltered language of raw poetry to describe the black experience, Wilson found commonality in sharing similar truths, using the voice of ordinary people to express profound revelations, caught up in circumstances many viewers can relate to, providing a sense of urgency to everyday life.  Except for an opening number set in a juke joint in the mysterious backwoods of the South, the film is set entirely in one sunny day in Chicago in 1927 when Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) and her band arrive at a recording studio to record a few songs, with Davis lip-synching in the role, actually sung by back-up singer Maxayn Lewis, who once performed with Ike & Tina Turner as one of the Ikettes.  Needless to say, things don’t go as planned, as the incendiary experience is given a racial undertone of discord and conflict, where it’s clear the hot-headed trumpet player Levee (Chadwick Boseman in his final performance before his untimely death from colon cancer) has his own ideas of how the band should play, making it no secret that his aspirations are beyond playing backup for Ma Rainey, that he wants to form his own band and record his own songs, immediately set straight by Colman Domingo as Cutler, the trombonist who calls the shots (with Rainey viewing him as the leader of the band), reminding the young upstart that the band plays what Ma Rainey tells them to play, pure and simple.  Anything else will surely butt heads with the “Mother of the Blues,” who runs the show, as Ma Rainey was the first entertainer to successfully bridge the divide between vaudeville, a cabaret-style developed out of minstrel shows that catered largely to white audiences, and an authentic black Southern folk expression, a symbol of racial pride, emerging from the common experience of her audience, developing a closeness and familiarity to working people, making over 100 recordings in the 1920’s, writing many of her own songs, including Bo Weevil Blues, Ma Rainey - Bo-Weavil Blues - YouTube (2:46), and Moonshine Blues, Ma Rainey - Moonshine Blues (1923) YouTube (3:05), producing music alongside Louis Armstrong and pianist Thomas A Dorsey.  Never achieving the massive acclaim of Bessie Smith, who she helped mentor, she nonetheless provides her own authenticity and unapologetic swagger to the blues, an openly queer woman who had love affairs with women, dressed in satin gowns with ostrich feathers, and a mouthful of gold teeth, expressing a black female narrative that is strong and powerful, offering an intimate glimpse into telling the story of black life.    

As the musicians sit around waiting for Ma to arrive, including Glynn Turman as Toledo, the piano player, Michael Potts as Slow Drag, the bass player, and Cutler, Levee arrives wearing a brand new pair of shoes, spouting off asserting his own independence, while the others call him a fool and try to reign him back to reality, reminding him that he’s just hired to play, not to run things.  Nonetheless, he has ambition, with a willingness to change with the times, and loves the spotlight when his improvisations take center stage, which rubs Ma the wrong way, thinking this boy is more trouble than he’s worth, already getting the idea to fire him when they get to Memphis.  Cutler has already heard Ma’s reservations, while the others sense the inevitable, yet Levee refuses to be denied, thinking “I got my time coming.”  Right off the bat viewers sense something is wrong, not only with the overcaked make-up of Ma Rainey, where greasepaint is smeared all over her face, but in the portrayal of a star as an unsympathetic figure, never appearing happy, instead she remains aloof and to herself, where in the one song she does sing it is the voice of Viola Davis flirtatiously singing into the ear of her latest fling, Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige) showed off as her arm candy, hands and arms all over her, really not giving a damn what anyone else thinks.  Yet her defiant assertiveness reflects the wearying aspects of the business, “I don’t stand for no shit,” openly crossing the lines of white middle class respectability, as she has to continually stand up to and fight with white promoters and record producers, whose instinct is to devalue and underpay blacks, reaping all the profits to themselves, stealing their royalties, which is the history of black exploitation in the music business and an ultimate betrayal of the American Dream.  Yet the tone of the film is off-putting, never capturing that August Wilson rhythm where dialogue literally sings, instead actors either speak too fast, preen for the camera, or are seemingly in love with their own profiles, each with their own relationship with a camera, instead of a collective group trying to make a living in the era just prior to the Depression.  With too much attention paid to each individual, scene by scene, the direction is all wrong, losing the focus of the play, allowing actors to single themselves out and overact, especially the two stars Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman, both mentioned as deserving Oscar winners, yet it’s only Colman Domingo as Cutler who offers an understated performance, where his vision of simplicity and clarity onscreen is well-needed, but the rest are completely out of rhythm, where the director is just not that interested in the best way to express Wilson’s material, or how to transform a play into a movie, instead turning this into generic movie-of-the-week territory, continually using stereotypes and clichéd images, where it’s actually uncomfortable to watch much of this simply due to a pathetic lack of aesthetic vision, which was first and foremost in the eyes of the playwright and in each stage presentation.  Films seem to dilute the power of the play, but there are rare exceptions, like Barry Jenkins’ Oscar winning 2016 Top Ten List #1 Moonlight, Sidney Lumet’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962), Mike Nichols’ Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), or Robert Altman’s Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) and Fool for Love (1985).  Losing the tone of the playwright’s authentic voice, this feels more like Rob Marshall’s ill-advised version of Bob Fosse’s CHICAGO (2002), which won an Academy Award for Best Picture, but shouldn’t have, as it’s a substitute and shortcut version of the real thing, using plenty of bail-out edits, showing complete disregard for Fosse’s extended choreographic artistry, which is the genuine article.   

Much of the film reveals blacks talking among themselves in a relaxed manner, yet a dominant focus of their thoughts is the inevitable weariness of living in Jim Crow times, as these men have been traumatically shaped by the continual racial debasement from white men, with Toledo pointing out the utter disdain whites have for them, “The colored man, he’s the leftovers.”  Levee indicates his mother was nearly gang-raped by a group of white men when he was only 8-years old, but stopped when one of them knifed him in his chest while trying to protect her, leaving him a bloody mess with a permanent lifelong scar.  Afterwards he rages against God, asking where was he when this was happening, as he called out his name, but there was no answer, only an emptiness, feeling abandoned and disappointed, with no hope of salvation.  But Levee views his elders like some has-been Uncle Tom Negroes, instead feeling full of himself, showing utter defiance, brimming with confidence, believing it’s a new day and era, that his future knows no bounds.  Having faith in himself, however, isn’t the same thing as whites believing in him, as he’s viewed exactly like the others, as an afterthought, as cheap labor, or hired help.  Toledo and Cutler have been down that road before, but their advice is unheeded, with Levee singularly thinking he’s somehow different from the rest, even taking a shot with Ma’s girl Dussie Mae, who’s just a sex object in the film, viewed similarly by both Ma and Levee, both willing to watch her strut her stuff, until Levee gets his comeuppance.  But even Ma Rainey knows the score, in full antagonistic display with her white manager Irvin (Jeremy Shamos) and Mel Sturdyvant (Jonny Coyne), owner of the recording studio, who’s sick and tired of dealing with Ma acting like she’s queen of the universe, where they have to feign politeness.  He nearly blows a gasket just thinking about it.  Ma reveals what it’s really all about, “You’re colored and you can make them some money, then you’re alright with them.  Otherwise, you’re just a dog in some alley,” knowing they don’t give a rat’s ass about her. “They don’t care nothing about me.  All they want is my voice,” suggesting whites will pay her some respect until they get the recording they want.  After that, you’re yesterday’s news, they don’t need you anymore, as the record will line their own pockets, selling to both a white and black audience, paying the musicians, and even the star of the show, a small pittance for their time, raking in the bucks afterwards.  As for Levee, he thinks he’s got the white man wrapped around his finger, only to discover he’ll pay $5 for a song, but won’t let him record, claiming they’re worthless, that he has no use for them, swearing he can’t sell them, but he’ll “take them off your hands.”  All hopes and aspirations are effectively killed on the spot, his dreams dashed, where he’s just a nobody like everybody else.  For one day’s work, plenty happens, where dealing with the disappointment only begins to describe the trouble, as it’s a lifetime of disappointment all wrapped up into a few brief moments that will forever change his life.  There’s a humorous scene in a recent film, Radha Blank’s The 40-Year Old Version (2020), where a white producer’s recommendation to a black artist is to whiten up the play in order to reach a greater audience, which has the effect of suffocating her authentic voice, replacing a black message with a whitened-down version, which is exactly what happens at the end of the movie, showing a white band (that doesn’t exist in the play) playing the black music that was sold for peanuts, but whitening it up, all of whom were paid, as there was plenty of money to go around, effectively punctuating how black musicians were exploited during Jim Crow times, with whites basically stealing their music, living off the proceeds, while the artists live the rest of their lives in segregated poverty.    

The only one of Wilson’s cycle of ten plays set outside of the city of Pittsburgh, with screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson adapting the playwright’s words for the film, musical compositions written by Branford Marsalis, with Denzel Washington serving as a producer, the theatrical version of the play runs two and one-half hours, with a brief intermission, nearly a full hour longer than the film version, so plenty was left on the cutting floor, nearly 40% of the play, so it’s not surprising the film lacks much of Wilson’s urgency, where the condensed version becomes something of an insult to his legacy.  Making matters worse, there’s a patronizing explanatory making-of-the-film documentary that follows immediately afterwards on Netflix, attempting to place an historical context on what was just viewed, something similar to what Steven Spielberg did with his historical films, sending out educational packets to be used in a school setting that supposedly added deeper context to what was altogether missing in the film itself.  The arrogance of this act is indescribable, as it assumes the material is worthy of a history lesson, yet it’s a fictional recreation, where the author takes poetic liberties, so the hubris to teach a history lesson afterwards assumes the makers of the film felt they touched a reality that is altogether missing in the movie, so they packed on additional material.  Can you imagine August Wilson’s response to making an additional movie, shown after the play, to discuss the merits and historical context of his work?  Wilson’s point of view, one assumes, is that it’s all in the play, where learning your history while evaluating and reflecting on the material is part of the viewing experience.  What makes Wilson’s plays so universal is that the core humanity is contained within, something relatable to different people from all walks of life and from anywhere around the globe.  It’s a sad state of affairs in Hollywood today that suggests we all need accompanying supplementary material to help us understand something that contains a movie-of-the-week reality.  The problem isn’t the historical message, or lack thereof, it’s with the film itself, as it’s a poor substitute for the real thing.     

A Reconsideration: Hearing Ma Rainey   1987 essay written by blues scholar Steven C. Tracy

2020 Top Ten List #10 Da 5 Bloods

Director Spike Lee

Milton L. Olive III, the war’s first black Medal of Honor recipient

James Anderson Jr. the first black Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor

DA 5 BLOODS          B+                  

USA  (156 mi)  2020  d: Spike Lee

Spike Lee has forever had his finger on the pulse of the nation, firing off warning shots to remind us that our history is fraught with peril, often using voices of the voiceless to provide direction, like Larry Fishburne’s college educated and socially conscious Dap in SCHOOL DAZE (1988) being reminded by a group of unemployed blacks led by Samuel L. Jackson that in the eyes of white society he’s “always going to be a nigger,” or Samuel L. Jackson’s DJ, Mister Señor Love Daddy urging us on the radio to “Wake up!” in Do the Right Thing (1989), or Denzel Washington in MALCOLM X (1992) reminding his black brethren that they’ve been “Bamboozled!  Led astray!  Run amok!”  His previous film, Blackkklansman (2018), was released shortly after the deadly riots occurring at the torch-wielding white supremacist and neo-Nazi march through the center of downtown Charlottesville, Virginia in their organized Unite the Right rally, a sign of resurfaced racism and white nationalism under President Trump, while this film comes on the heels of the George Floyd murder at the hands of the police, spawning the most explosive civil rights protests since 1968.  Shooting in ‘Scope but changing aspect ratios for newsreel footage or flashbacks, Lee sets the tone right at the opening with a superb historical montage, easily the best thing in the film, set to the 1971 music of Marvin Gaye from his socially conscious concept album What’s Going On, reminding viewers that the 60’s was a battle on two fronts, “the war at home and the war abroad.”  Newsreel footage from 1963 to 1975 reveals a steady build-up of social protest demanding change, starting with footage of Muhammad Ali, a devout Muslim, refusing to serve in the Vietnam War, claiming the Vietcong “never lynched me, they never put their dogs on me, they never robbed me of my nationality,” convicted of draft evasion, stripped of his title and suspended from boxing until the Supreme Court overturned that decision four years later, moving to the voice of Malcolm X who states eloquently, “When you take twenty million black people and make them fight all your wars and pick all your cotton and you don’t give them any real recompense, sooner or later their allegiance towards you is going to wear thin,” with Stokely Carmichael (now Kwame Ture) acknowledging, “America has declared war on black people.”  This sets the stage for a rise of Black Power within the Civil Rights movement, with foreshadowing footage of Angela Davis and Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale reminding us of the promise of freedom made to blacks serving in the Civil War and WWII, only to have that promise broken when the war supposedly ended.  As for non-violent protesters, Lee reminds us that the Ohio National Guard opened fire on white students protesting the war during the Kent State shootings of 1970, killing four and wounding 9 others, while less than two weeks later, two black students participating in an on-campus protest were shot dead by police in the Jackson State killings, where no one was held accountable afterwards, with no arrests, yet these murders stirred anger across the nation, triggering an immediate and massive outrage, including 100,000 protesters descending upon the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., leading to the student strike of 1970 when more than 4 million students on campuses around the country participated in organized walk-outs at hundreds of universities, colleges and high schools, the largest such strike in the history of the United States.  These events from half a century ago mirror the outpouring of rage filling the streets today with protests challenging the entire history of racist police violence and the long-standing nationwide policies that support it, as 99 percent of killings by police officers since 2013 have resulted in no convictions, where the struggle for racial justice has again become headline news.  

If only the rest of the film was as incisive as the opening, which may be studied in film studies classes by future generations, instead becoming a delirious retelling of John Huston’s THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948) mixed into the war film genre, colonial misadventures that are inextricably linked, with a group of former 1st Infantry Division Viet Nam soldiers returning the site of their wartime experiences to complete some unfinished business, retrieving the body of one who was lost, finally bringing him home, with a few other issues playing out as well, mixing the present with flashbacks of the past, including infamous atrocity footage, as these men, now in their senior years, relive their pasts, still haunted and affected by the war, with Lee revealing the severity of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) among black soldiers who were largely sent to the front lines.  Each curiously named after the Motown group The Temptations (Eddie Kendricks, Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, Paul Williams, and David Ruffin, while the name of their writer/producer was Norman Whitfield), the four survivors meet in the hotel lobby in Ho Chi Minh City, including Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), with Paul’s son David, Jonathan Majors from The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), surprising him at the hotel, worried that he needs someone looking after him as he hasn’t been himself.  Even more baffling, they visit a nightclub called “Apocalypse Now,” decorated with posters of the film (an actual place according to Lee), all of which feels extremely surreal.  While their stated goal is to officially retrieve the remains of a fallen comrade, their former squad leader Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), whose profile enlarges during the flashbacks, as he was a revered figure, literally the conscience of the group, becoming the moral centerpiece of the film, educating them on ideas that matter, suggesting “War is about money.  Money is about war,” with blacks exploited on both fronts, “Every time I walk out my front door, I see cops patrolling my neighborhood like it’s some kind of police state.  I can feel just how much I ain’t worth,” insisting they remain in solidarity as a group, a fighting team that always has each other’s backs, suggesting in union there is strength.  Lee takes issue with prior war films and their whitewashing of history, as they largely exclude the presence of black soldiers, specifically films like John Wayne in THE GREEN BERETS (1968), the only Viet Nam war film made “during” the war, Sylvester Stallone in his RAMBO franchise (five films from 1982 to 2019), and Chuck Norris in MISSING IN ACTION (1984), generating a prequel and a sequel, all hugely popular films, also publicly taking issue with Clint Eastwood’s recent foray into the genre, FLAGS FROM OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2006).  None of the Hollywood films feature the grueling combat experience from the perspective of the black men sent over to fight, openly mocking these films in a heated discussion about trying to “win the war” back home by literally changing the outcome, Lee is bringing to light just how “white” these movies were, telling a mythic feelgood story of victory, while omitting the fact that 32% of the combat troops fighting on the front lines were black, with Melvin acknowledging, “They put our poor blackasses on the front line, killing us off like flies,” mowed down with impunity, making the ultimate sacrifice, but receiving no recognition in Hollywood.  Lee pays tribute to Milton L. Olive III, an 18-year-old soldier who died in combat and the first black soldier awarded a Medal of Honor for his service in Vietnam, jumping on a grenade to save the lives of others in his unit (who were present during the posthumous award ceremony), and James Anderson Jr. the first black Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor, both making the identical sacrifice.  Rather humorously, Lee starts their journey down the river with the surreal, over-the-top musical reference from Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” The Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now (1979) – YouTube (4:50).  Rather interestingly, what starts out as a seemingly relaxing boat ride grows more intensely out of control the farther they get down the river, growing apoplectic in short order from a persistent food vendor. 

Once they reach the nearest site of newly discovered plane wreckage unearthed from a recent mudslide, they hike into the jungle on their own, carrying with them a lifetime of repressed memories, growing more incendiary as the film develops.  Their solidarity is continually tested and fractured from unfolding events, where Paul in particular seems to be falling apart psychologically, losing his bearings, growing more violently paranoid, where he’s unable to separate his war trauma from reality, perfectly expressed by the mere fact he’s a black man wearing a MAGA hat and supports Trump, revealing his pervasive anger and already damaged state of mind, yet he has the group’s unflagging support, but recurring flashbacks continually take him backwards in time, obsessed with losing Norman, the one he was closest to, blaming himself for his death, even after the passage of time.  The war footage, however, takes us back to an era when the Vietcong were viewed as the bad guys, which resurfaces again here, as they have violent encounters with a modern era Vietnam militia who blame them for killing their parents and uncles.  Let’s remember, from their perspective, this was the American War, as Americans came from afar to kill as many of them as possible with a steady stream of bombs, poisoning the jungle foliage with napalm and Agent Orange, causing a myriad of health problems for future generations, including birth defects, skin diseases, and cancer, not to mention the social stigma attached to the mixed race children left behind who were a constant reminder of that horrible war, clearly ostracized and dehumanized and left to fend for themselves.  Lee attempts to blend together all points of view, even bringing in a few French holdovers from a colonial era preceding the arrival of the Americans, where he attempts to achieve an artistic transcendence, but the results are mixed, as Americans are continually perceived as the heroes in an American film, once again creating negative stereotypes of Vietnamese, who always get devalued and misconstrued.  There is verbal dialogue making reference to former American atrocities, such as the My Lai Massacre where hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians, including women, children, infants, and babies, were assaulted and murdered by dozens of American soldiers, yet only one of the participants, Second Lt. William Calley, was convicted of a crime, found guilty of murdering 22 civilians, serving only three-and-a-half years, all of them under house arrest (The Ghosts of My Lai | History | Smithsonian Magazine).  It’s a cliché to say war is madness, but that clearly is an example of unmitigated madness.  As the film plays out, it veers into that psychologically deranged territory, with Delroy Lindo providing an especially off-the-edge, excruciatingly agonizing experience, basically reliving the Vietnam War through a tortuous, modern era lens, still plagued by ghosts of the past which are literally eating him alive, speaking directly to the camera at one point, still finding no relief.  An underwritten character in American history, fighting on the front lines, but earning no respect at home.  How do you reaffirm faith in a country that has pledged equality but sent firehoses and dogs on you as a reminder of just exactly where you stand?  While it’s a marked improvement upon MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA (2008), Lee’s previous war film, this spends too much time with guns blazing and literally creating new massacres, which hardly feels acceptable, as audiences may grow numb to this military overkill.  Much better is the intricate crafting of the characters, where the acting is superb, with each having a moment to shine, including the presence of Hanoi Hannah (Veronica Ngô Thanh Vân), a Vietnamese voice on the radio speaking to American troops in English during the war, informing them of the death of Martin Luther King, taunting them by questioning why they’re fighting for a country that discriminates against them at home and exploits them abroad, with the war ultimately pitting poor Vietnamese children against poor American kids who have no reason to dislike each other, or view one another as enemies, suggesting there’s nothing worse than dying for no reason, proclaiming the war immoral.  While the psychological aspect of the film is fertile territory for exploration, and Lee is to be commended as one of the few to reassess history in this way, yet the overlong imagery of soldiers meandering through the jungle bickering among themselves just doesn’t carry the same weight or generate the same enthusiasm as that scintillating opening montage, getting bogged down after a while, where the early intensity level becomes diluted and mainstreamed, yet closes with the eloquence of Martin Luther King quoting Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes - Poems ...).