Boseman tipped for posthumous Oscar with swansong
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Chadwick Boseman plays a cornet player in blues drama, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
PHOTO: NETFLIX/ YOUTUBE
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LOS ANGELES • Four months after his death shocked the world, trail-blazing American actor Chadwick Boseman makes his heartbreaking, hotly Oscar-tipped final film appearance in 1920s blues drama, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
The Black Panther (2018) star portrays a feisty, irreverent horn player struggling to make himself heard in a Chicago music world riddled with racism and exploitation, in the August Wilson play adaptation out tomorrow on Netflix.
Boseman's role as the piece's tragic hero takes on added poignancy by his death at age 43 in August this year from colon cancer - a diagnosis he never publicly discussed or even shared with his co-stars during production.
He had secretly battled through his cancer diagnosis to become the first black star with his own superhero epic in the record-breaking Marvel franchise.
Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and grossed more than US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion) worldwide. Last week, Disney paid tribute to Boseman by announcing that his iconic role as T'Challa will not be recast in the sequel.
In his final film, Boseman's cornet player Levee has been hired to support "Mother of the Blues" Ma Rainey, who has travelled from the Deep South to record her hit songs on a sweltering summer afternoon in a cramped back-alley studio.
As diva-esque Rainey battles duplicitous producers who want to cash in on her voice and send her packing, Levee plots his own path to solo musical glory while revealing a childhood ravaged by white brutality.
In a bravura performance, Boseman delivers searing monologues that vow to "make the white man respect me" and curse a god who "hates your black a**" - interspersed with moments of impish charisma, foot-shuffling dance moves and outrageous flirting.
American actress Viola Davis, who plays the real-life Rainey, and director George C. Wolfe have little doubt over Boseman's credentials to become the third posthumous acting Oscar winner, after Heath Ledger (2008's The Dark Knight) and Peter Finch (1976's Network.)
"Chadwick is my baby... (he) was just an artist," Davis recently told journalists.
"Chadwick put his entire being into Levee... Levee demands that because of the Herculean scale of the role," said Wolfe.
"He put every ounce of his heart and passion into it."
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
