Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe, 2020)

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Rating: Q=7, P=5 / Can't Get Enough

Scale 1=3, Scale 2=4, Scale 3=3, Scale 4=2

Biopic, Based on Play, 1920s, Race, Blues

This adaptation of August Wilson's play is powerful in so many ways. Incredibly moving performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis--wow. Boseman's last performance of his life is haunting and, as Odie Henderson writes in his review, transcendent.

This is a story about a very specific time and place--the summer of 1927 in a Chicago recording studio. It is about Ma Rainey and her band. It is about a young Black composer who wants to lead his own band. It is a tragic tale of struggle, defeat, and the painful realities that faced Black musicians of the day.

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