Chadwick Boseman’s final and best work in ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’

Posted on January 22, 2021

By MARK VIOLA

There is something inherently tragic about watching a performance from an actor who died in between him or her filming their work and the film’s eventual release. Perhaps the most well-known instances of this over the past 15 years were Paul Walker in “Furious 7” and Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight,” although Ledger’s final performance was actually in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.”

Other examples I’ve experienced as a movie reviewer were Philip Seymour Hoffman in “A Most Wanted Man” and James Gandolfini in “The Drop.”

Now I can add “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” to the list, a film featuring the final performance from the late Chadwick Boseman, best known for his portrayal of T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I first saw Boseman in the Jackie Robinson biopic “42,” and I’d later see him in between his four MCU appearances in such movies as “Marshall” and “21 Bridges.”

Boseman’s death at age 43 from colon cancer — a diagnosis he never publicly announced and one that predated his work in the MCU — seemed at first to be a cruel joke amidst all of the other tragedies that befell us in 2020. I learned about it via a text from a friend consisting of a link accompanied by a two-word phrase that is unprintable in this newspaper, but one we use when passing along bad news such as the death of celebrities we both admire. I could see Boseman’s name in the link but couldn’t wrap my head around it until I read the story.

Of course, Boseman’s death does not directly relate to “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” but it did impact me as I watched the movie. First of all, Boseman is noticeably thinner in this movie, and although I have no proof of it, I couldn’t help but think it was more likely due to his illness than some kind of Christian Bale-inspired method acting. Although filming wrapped on this movie more than a year before Boseman’s death, it was the final feature film he worked on.

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