VIOLA DAVIS
NOT JUST THE ACTOR HIDING BEHIND THE STAGE AND SCREEN PERFORMANCE MASK
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
The entire performances make absolute sense now.
The character, disguised in makeup and big floppy eyelashes to create a caricature, is underneath, actually just a really poor black girl escaping into an imaginary world in search of freedom.
Viola Davis grew up poor. And even before beginning a stage and screen career, Viola had developed a metaphysical mask to hide behind while running a crew of girls with the biggest weapon at the age of eight being the ability to call her big sister, Anita, for help.
In Solaris (2000), Davis plays a resident astronaut of a deep space, research station, just one member of a diminishing crew whose survival has become threatened by a remarkable alien presence.
Director Steven Soderbergh sends in George Clooney, as psychologist Kelvin, to investigate and assess, but soon after his arrival, Kelvin begins to experience himself what has been troubling the astronauts.
Davis plays astronaut Gordon who has been able to remove an alien presence visiting her crew cabin in the middle of the night. Gordon speaks from that knowing authority earned from direct experience when trying to hurry Kelvin into figuring out what is going on.
Gordon eventually finds the struggle to survive too futile and, as a result, leaves the research station in an escape pod. The decision to return home for Gordon crystalizes when Kelvin begins to find comfort in the alien presence.
The extraterrestrial visitors are something worse than evil spirits and ghosts, creating a presence by grafting on to the psychological weaknesses of the astronauts.
The hunger in the stomach of an 8 year old motivated the child to shoplift at a grocery store in Central Falls, Rhode Island. But the schoolyard bullying that began in Grade 3 eventually shaped the performing artist’s ability to simultaneously hide inside her characters and escape into the storyboards of film productions.
Davis has one of those amendable physical presences that can be altered by the hair and makeup and wardrobe departments, and the director’s lens, from time to time, for various supporting and lead character roles.
In Fences (2017) Davis shifts down from scientific astronaut to scientific housewife in a reprisal of her Broadway stage role opposite Denzel Washington. Washington stars in and directs the film about a working-class African American family struggling with fragmentation and dysfunction in a poor section of a white person dominated society.
Washington plays Troy Maxson ranting a bit too much, on an ongoing basis, behind the workload of a garbage truck, opposite Stephen McKinley Henderson as Jim Bono. Davis stars as the family matriarch Rose Maxson.
Davis won an Oscar for the Supporting Actor role of this African American woman keeping the household and everyone involved from falling apart.
The Maxsons are a bit better off than Davis was as a child, but the characters still find the greatest of entertainment in telling and listening to stories.
In Widows (2018) Veronica Rawlings has reason to hide after her thieving husband dies in the getaway van. Harry, played by Liam Neeson, has left too much debt behind to the criminal underworld, who come to collect, soon after his death.
Davis leads a crew of widows who decide to take on the underworld crime figures by stealing the money for themselves that their husbands allegedly owe. Veronica brings the crew together by instilling discipline and focus for an unexpected conclusion in an action packed thriller.
This determined to succeed persona also appears in the episodic television series, How to Get Away with Murder (SERIES 2014 – 2020). Davis won an Emmy for the role as a driven to succeed law school professor still practicing criminal defense.
The series entraps the law students as much as the professor and her supports in forensic investigations. Annalise Keating has that alpha personality for driven, meteoric success. But that same motivational drive that compels the scenes also leads everyone into a lot of trouble.
From law school to the roots in Africa, Davis plays Nanisca in the story of tribalism and gender equality in The Woman King (2022).
Nanisca brings the young women together by teaching them the rules and the necessary skills needed to survive in the life and death struggle of daily life.
In Air (2023), the story of Michael Jordan reveals a strong African American matriarch behind the success of the professional basketball superstar. Davis shows how Deloris Jordan advised her son toward one of the most lucrative professional sports endorsement deals.
The greatest secret may be that Viola uses her childhood struggle for survival, as a poor black girl from a poor neighbourhood, to slam dunk entertainment success for herself, and for the others that have watched her stories on the intimate Broadway stage and the big Hollywood screen.
Finding Me, by Viola Davis, New York, Harper Collins Publishers, 2022.