This could be the one Netflix has been waiting for. The streaming service has been salivating for that Best Picture Oscar with award-contenders “Roma” and “The Irishman” thrown into consideration for top awards for their respective release years (“Roma” went on to win Best Director, Cinematography and Foreign Language Film) but nothing has grabbed the coveted top award. Well, that might finally change this year with the adaptation of August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which is nearly as perfect as you can get with jaw-dropping performances, a gorgeously relevant storyline and lush visuals.

In two short scenes at the beginning of the film, we are introduced to blues legend Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) as she starts in humble environs with a simple piano backing her sultry tones. She’s then skyrocketed to the vaudeville stage with showgirls and a four-piece band accompanying her. Among the latter is trumpet player Levee (Chadwick Boseman), who tries — and fails — to upstage her, setting up both characters perfectly without a single line of dialogue.

We then spend the rest of the film in a Chicago recording studio as the band gathers to rehearse for an upcoming recording session with Ma. Three of the players, Slow Drag, Toledo and Cutler (Michael Potts, Glynn Turman and Colman Domingo) are of the mind that whatever Ma says, goes. They’re not there to rock the boat, just to play and get paid. But Levee is different, he’s a young upstart, driven toward a new kind of sound that he can’t wait to showcase in his own band. With the studio producer interested in a new song he’s written, he’s full of hope for the future, but his drive clashes with Ma’s no-nonsense, take-no-crap attitude.

When Ma finally arrives an hour late, she makes diva-like demands of her producer, Irvin (Jeremy Shamos), including putting her stuttering nephew on the record.

The session drags on and tensions flare as Levee continuously attempts to make his mark until everything comes crashing down around him.

There is only one quibble with the production, which otherwise does such a beautiful job of making the play fit within the confines of a movie. With long scenes full of rich dialogue where the actors can really sink their teeth into their roles, it’s easy to become completely immersed in the story. However, one monster monologue delivered by Boseman sticks out as incredibly “play-like.” It’s the only real point where the story’s theater roots and the adaptation clash. Regardless, Boseman’s performance saves it from marring the moment as he handles the ebbs and flows of the emotional speech expertly.

Theater director (and Tony-winner) George C. Wolfe steps into the director’s chair here navigating the difficult waters between honoring Wilson’s original story and making Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s screen adaptation sing. Weaving not only the quietly hostile relationship between Ma and Levee but the larger issue of Black artists struggling to make their art or keep their relevance in a world that would cast them aside in a moment if given the opportunity is profound even today.

But where the film shines brightest is with Boseman and Davis’s performances.

Boseman floats onto the screen full of a kind of joie de vivre that masks deeper trauma and conflict within himself. It is devastating to see the actor in his final role knowing how much he still had to give to his craft. The performance caps off his stunning career and will most likely garner him an Academy Award nomination, if not the Oscar itself.

He finds the moments of sheer optimism in Levee and adds glimmers of the realism that ground him further and further until the end.

Davis also brings a commanding performance as Ma, firmly knowing who and what she is to the people she works with. She has no doubt that she is the most important person in the room at any given time, and she will let you know it.

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” honors its source material and author beautifully. August Wilson is one of the greatest American playwrights of all time, and with this entry into his Pittsburgh Cycle/Century Cycle, which is slowly being brought to the screen due in part to producer Denzel Washington (2018’s “Fences” was the first entry in the film adaptations), audiences from around the globe can realize through beautiful filmmaking and performances just why Wilson’s voice is vital.

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”

94 minutes

Rating: R for language, some sexual content and brief violence.

4 stars