Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) is George C. Wolfe's music drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. One sweltering afternoon in a Chicago recording studio, summer of 1927, the clock ticks down to a session that nobody seems ready for.

Viola Davis is Ma Rainey, a blues singer who runs the room and refuses to cut a single take until someone fetches her an ice-cold Coca-Cola. While she keeps the white producers waiting, her band sweats it out in a cramped rehearsal space below. Among them is Levee (Chadwick Boseman), a hungry young trumpet player chasing his own group, flirting with Ma's girlfriend, and arguing louder and louder with the older men about God, race, and who in this country is allowed to own the music they make. By nightfall the talk turns to something far worse.

Drawn from August Wilson's play, the film lives almost entirely on dialogue and faces. It was Boseman's final role — he filmed it while gravely ill, and his monologues hit like body blows. Davis vanishes under sweat and greasepaint until she's unrecognizable. This is close-quarters, theater-rooted cinema for anyone who craves powerhouse acting and the story of American blues told from the inside. Stream Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) online on iFILM.