[7.2/10] *Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom* explores tons of divisions between folks. Old school vs. new school. Men of faith vs. non-believers. And unsurprisingly, black vs. white. But the deepest divide, or at least the most tragic, comes between artists who know where their power lies and those who don’t.

The former are led by the eponymous Ma Rainey, a booming-voiced virtuoso who acts as though she’s above this recording gig, makes umpteen demands (some of which are even reasonable), threatens to walk out on multiple occasions, and never passes up an opportunity to throw her weight around. The immediate intuition is to take her as a prima donna, one either too oblivious to the needs of others to care about anyone but herself, or someone who actually enjoys making others squirm at her behest.

But as the film wears on, and with one monologue in particular, it becomes clear that Rainey is not a diva for diva’s sake. Rather, she’s someone who knows exactly what her value is -- her ability to sing like nobody’s business -- and the second she gives that away, folks like her doting white manager Irv will no longer treat her like a star; they’ll treat her like someone beneath them because of the color of her skin. So she holds onto that power as long as possible, gets everything she’s due before giving them what they want, so that nobody takes advantage of her or robs her of that power without recompense.

On the other end of the spectrum is Levee, a young trumpet player and aspiring songwriter himself who dreams of forming his own band and recording his own music. Despite his big dreams and grand plans, he turns over his sheet music to Irv’s erstwhile partner, Mr. Sturdyvant, with the expectation that this white man will make good on his promise to let Levee record them. Of course it’s a canard. Mr. Sturdyvant pays the young fool a pittance for the fruits of his artistic layers, denies him credit or the opportunity to perform, and to add insult to injury, records the music with an all-white band.

Levee is powerless, without the clout or the savvy of Ma Rainey. But he’s angry, bitter, and so projects his rage and frustration onto poor Toledo, a harmless philosophizing piano player whose only crime is the misfortune of being there when a young man done wrong by life has just watched his dreams be stolen from him. It’s a miserable parable, about attitude coming from a place of knowing where you stand, and tragedy coming from a combination of naivete and injustice.

It also should have probably stayed a play. You don’t need to see the credit “Based on the play by August Wilson” to know that this story started its life on the stage. The film feels unbelievably stagey, with 95% of it taking place in two rooms, with long scenes and a raft of monologues and speeches in lieu of narrative progression. There’s room for all kinds of movies out there, but outside of a few cool framings -- Levee listening to Cutler’s story about Rev. Gates, him gazing up at another space where he’s trapped when finally breaking through a metal door, and a little flash and flair in the opening number -- *Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom* rarely takes advantage of the cinematic form.

That said, it’s assuredly an actor’s movie. The long back-and-forths and straightforward cinematography give the performers nowhere to hide, which means they have to bring their A-games to make the film work. With that burden, Viola Davis brings her A++++ game. She is volcanic here, imbuing Ma Rainey with a caustic firmness in so many things, but giving the viewer glimpses of the humanity and method underneath it. She commands the screen at every turn, and her performance could single-handedly justify the film.

The supporting players offer strong work as well. Colman Domingo’s Cutler bridges the gap between Ma Rainey and Levee, or tries to at least, acting as compelling foil to each of them. Glynn Turman’s Toledo and his winding stories create sympathy and sadness when he meets his unfair end, and his musical poem about society as stew and the people made to be “leftovers” is a highlight. And Jeremy Shamos’s Irv, a frantic, mediating, sycophantic manager, makes an impression in a film with a lot of personalities and good turns from the cast.

Of course, the focus and legacy of the film will undoubtedly be on Chadwick Boseman, a talented performer taken from us too soon, as Levee. And look, Boseman is a pro. He knows how to make Levee obnoxious in his motor-mouthed boasts, how to make him feel dangerous when his dander is up, and how to make him feel like a wounded gazelle when relaying his horrid backstory. But he is doing *a lot* of acting in this, in a way that often feels more performative than real.

Some of that’s understandable. This is a big movie with high volume emotions and lines of dialogue that are much more wirterly than they are natural. Boseman leans into the artifice of the presentation, with long, loping speeches (from everyone, not just Levee) that deliver backstory and exposition in a way few real conversations actually do. That approach can work in the imaginative world of the stage, but with the greater intimacy of film and a seemingly endless array of close-ups, it can sometimes feel too big for the space.

You know what isn’t though? The music. Maxayn Lewis fills in as Ma Rainey’s singing voice, and good heavens, if you can avoid tapping your toes and bobbing along to the rhythms and melodies on offer here, you are made of stronger stuff than I. The characters treat their music as an almost mystical force, as something inherently worth all of this fuss, and *Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom* is one of the rare films that delivers renditions of art that lives up to that billing.

In the film, Ma Rainey herself talks about the power of the blues. She’ll claim the title of its mother when it’s convenient to do so, but she acknowledges it as something that’s always been there, that she’s harnessed from the time she was a little girl. Ma Rainey understands its power, a power that people who don’t know its source can take from you with their fancy dials and slanted systems if you let them. The film that bears her name is not the most cinematic realization of its source material, but it still works as a fable of what is given to the people who truly understand its power, and what is taken from the people who tragically only think they do.