Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

DIRECTOR: George C. Wolfe

STARRING: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman

IN “MA RAINEY’S Black Bottom,” introductions matter. Whether or not audiences know the real Ma Rainey’s reputation as “mother of the blues,” August Wilson ensures that this musical pioneer is a larger-than-life character even before she steps foot onstage. And because Netflix’s socko feature adaptation marks the final role of “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman, whose death in August caught the film world by surprise, exits assume a stirring poignancy as well.

But let’s begin at the beginning.

The year is 1927, and Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) has been booked to record a few of her best-known songs, including the title number — all hits on the minstrel show circuit — at a studio on the South Side of Chicago. Two white men, her manager Irvin (Jeremy Shamos) and album producer Sturdyvant (Jonny Coyne), fret about whether she will show up on time, or at all, which is enough for viewers to conclude that Ma Rainey’s some kind of prima donna. Her hand-picked “Georgia Band,” including hot-shot horn player Levee (Boseman), arrives well before Ma, rehearsing downstairs while they wait for the boss lady to make her big entrance. And so she does.

Surrounded by angry white faces, Ma Rainey is shouting at a police officer. Her driver got to the studio late, causing an accident in the process, and now the authorities are threatening to take her down to the station.

Davis looks virtually unrecognizable as Ma Rainey, with her smeared panda-eye makeup, tired-flapper wig and downturned I-dare-you expression. The actor has transformed her silhouette, her stance and her attitude into something defiant. Ma Rainey is not a woman to be pushed around.

Nearly every second of Davis’ performance is about power, about who has the upper hand over whom and what it means for a person — much less a people — to be in a subordinate position. Ruben Santiago-hudson’s dutiful adaptation spells out some of that subtext, but audiences’ sensitivity will vary according to their life experience.

White characters are relatively rare in Wilson’s work, and here, Irvin, Sturdyvant and that cop represent a system that exploits Black culture. Over the course of a single sweltering day in a recording studio, we witness triumph and defeat, buoyed by the blues — an art form informed by oppression, and now one of connection.

“They don’t care nothin’ about me. All they want is my voice,” Ma Rainey says, and suddenly, what seemed like diva behavior before now takes on new perspective. Ma Rainey recognizes just how little respect an openly bisexual, unapologetically Black woman like herself is typically afforded in 1920s Chicago, and she’s leveraging what she has — her talent — to set the terms.

But Ma Rainey’s not the only one with talent. Levee has written a few songs of his own, following Sturdyvant’s cues to “jazz it up” to suit his white customers. Ma Rainey understands that as soon as Sturdyvant has his record, he can drop the civility and cut her out of the picture. She fights to be true to her roots, to give voice to her people, whereas Levee sees no problem in assimilation.

Wilson writes characters who reveal themselves in layers, and though the movie gives Levee a cinematic introduction of his own, each scene adds complexity. Boseman strides into the film, lean and restless, unsettled. Levee is hungry, horny; he has much to prove. It’s there in the way

“Nearly every second of Viola Davis’ performance is about power, about who has the upper hand over whom.”

he flirts with every pretty young thing — including “Ma’s girl,” Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige) — and it’s there in the way he blows a week’s wages on a pair of new shoes.

Levee prowls the dank room where the band rehearses, preoccupied by a heavy, rusted door on the back wall that becomes a clear symbol for his ambitions: Is it a shortcut or a dead end? The history of modern American music is paved with the appropriation and outright theft of Black culture. That tradition continues today, tracing back at least as far as the moment that Wilson, inspired by the blues, has imagined here.

The playwright conceived Levee as a tragic figure, and real life doubled down. Mighty as Davis’ performance may be, this is Boseman’s movie, especially when Levee starts to implode — a star collapsing, leaving it all on the screen. How fortunate that Boseman’s legacy should include this film, an homage to Black art that’s tough enough to confront the costs of making it.