Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Review – Everything Comes Out in The Blues

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom thrives on great characters and great performances.

What Happens in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom?

In 1927 Chicago a band headlined by the singer Ma Rainey takes a break from their tour to have a recording session and make an album. Tensions rise as setbacks delay the recording session and conflict emerges between Levee, an ambitious trumpet player, the rest of the band, and Ma as they spend the day trying to make the album.

Who Are The Characters in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom?

Meet Levee, the trumpet player behind Ma Rainey’s voice. Levee is a strong and willful individual. He’s ambitious and strives for near-impossible goals. Although he plays in the band that supports Ma, he already has plans of starting his own band to play his music.

Levee is a natural with music and understands what people want in terms of music. However, even with all his skill, he is arrogant and foolish, which is shown through his interactions with the others in the band.

Ma Rainey is a coloured artist who makes a living singing. She’s older and mature and understands the difficulties of being a coloured artist during her time. She serves as a foil to Levee, as although they are both musicians at heart, Ma understands the world and her situation and is naturally more cynical compared to Levee’s hope and optimism.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Review

Going into this movie I had no idea what to expect or even what the film was about, but I was quite content with the drama I received. The entire story taking place within one afternoon adds a sense of intensity to the whole scenario and creates a fast pace to the events of the whole film.

The plot of the story is quite simple but this proves to be a character-driven drama that is based upon everyone’s individual issues and ideas. The ideas talked about in the film are quite meaningful and there are still related issues today as the protagonists are all black people and during this period of time, they aren’t treated well.

The film really explores how during this time period people of colour were only valued if they could make a white man money and the rest of the coloured folk were not well looked upon. As I mentioned, this is character-driven and the two main standouts are Ma Rainey and Levee.

Levee ( as played by the late Chadwick Boseman) is an ambitious trumpet player who wants his own band and tries to please the owner of the recording studio by writing songs the way he wants so that Levee can become a star. Though Levee gets teased about his attempt to please the white man, we learn that Levee has a traumatic past when it comes to white folk and he is just trying to find his personal gain.

I felt that Chadwick Boseman did a good job with this performance as he played the smooth-talking musician with aspiring dreams while also conveying his temper and dark side in a good mix. Ma Rainey ( as played by Viola Davis) is a cynic and a realist who knows how the world works and how they view her as just a voice for singing so she does what she pleases and does not take criticism or advice from anyone else.

The viewers really get to see how she views the world and how she knows that if she doesn’t push the world around it will trample her. My only complaint about the film is that the start is quite slow as it takes a while to establish the characters and it took me a bit to adjust to the style of the film.

All in all, a pretty solid film that I would recommend to anyone looking for a character-driven drama with a dark edge.