(CNN)“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which represents the late “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman’s final cinematic performance, is a deft celebration of the blues that showcases the grandeur and travails of creating art as an expression of dignity in a world scarred by Jim Crow segregation.
The film adaptation of legendary Black playwright August Wilson’s play, which premiered on Netflix Friday, was inspired by the historical Ma Rainey — known as the “Mother of the Blues” — and transports contemporary viewers to the Chicago of 1927.
The film takes us back to an early 20th century moment filled with racial violence, the resurgence of White supremacy, and the promise and pitfalls of White allyship in service of amplifying Black voices. It’s presented in a manner that bears striking resemblance to our fraught yet hopeful present.
The film’s period flavor, punctuated by a generous sampling of the blues that made Rainey famous, retains a contemporary resonance in its depiction of the casual nature of racial injustice. Set in a racially segregated Chicago (whose Black population swelled as African Americans fled racial oppression in the South in pursuit of freedom dreams in far flung cities across the North, Midwest, and West Coast) “Ma Rainey”‘s depiction of the struggle for racial dignity on America will strike modern audiences as frighteningly relevant to the present day.
Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman’s performances especially resonate for their effortless ability to breathe contemporary life into historical figures usually encased in amber. Davis’ Rainey, in a towering inferno of a performance, is a transgressive figure born ahead of her time. Her queerness goes beyond her sexuality to define a woman whose artistic independence, love for other women and intelligence put her beyond the boundaries of the Black bourgeoisie’s respectability politics and the White strictures of Jim Crow.
