2020 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown, #10

“As August Wilson recalled in the play script of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, he discovered “the Mother of the Blues” and her contemporaries in a Salvation Army as a young man just starting to write. ‘Suffice it to say that it is music that breathes and touches,’ he wrote. ‘That connects. That is in itself a way of being, separate and distinct from any other. The music is called the blues.’

“The film adaptation of his 1984 play, shepherded to the screen by the carefully selected team of producer Denzel Washington, writer Ruben Santiago-Hudson and director George C. Wolfe, does right by both Wilson and the music that inspired him.

“A literally larger than life Viola Davis opens the film, her Ma Rainey captivating audiences from the Southern tent shows to the Chicago music halls of 1927. Off stage to record an album for her white manager and a white label owner, adorned with velvet, fur, and thick makeup melting in the summer heat, she’s as sharp as a tack, honed by too much experience negotiating her value as an artist and the privilege that comes with it. She’s a diva who’d welcome the title and a fighter who refuses to accept excuses for why there’s no cold Coke for her, or for her manager’s wish to work in a new arrangement by her ambitious cornettist, Levee.

“Chadwick Boseman has a quick smile and charm to burn as Levee but the character’s bristling anger, informed by trauma and innovative talent as yet unrecognized, is never far from the surface. It’s constantly visible as a glimmer in the actor’s eyes before it finally rises up to consume him. His wildly intense performances has been mourned as a sign of what could have been were Boseman still with us, but he wouldn’t shine as brightly without the veterans who form the rest of Ma’s backup band: Colman Domingo as Cutler, Michael Potts as Slow Drag, and Glynn Turman as piano player Toledo.

“The phenomenal ensemble transforms Santiago-Hudson and Wilson’s words into something like a song that wraps you in a rhythm as it unleashes the pain and rage that gave birth to the blues.”

Melissa Starker is currently Creative Content & PR manager at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Prior to joining the Wex, Melissa wrote about the arts and film as an editor for Columbus Alive and as a freelancer for the Columbus Dispatch, among other publications. As a film programmer, she cofounded the Short North Civic Association's annual Screen on the Green outdoor movie series and she's helped produce events at venues such as the Drexel Theatre, 400 West Rich, and the Vanderelli Room. Melissa's professional experience also includes 20 years in independent film exhibition at venues such as Columbus' Studio 35 Cinema and Boston's Coolidge Corner Theatre.