Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Director: Lee Daniels
Quick Impressions:
I’m relieved that I’ve finally seen Andra Day’s Oscar nominated performance as Billie Holiday because I hate finding myself in the awkward position of unintentionally rooting against an actor just because I haven’t seen her performance yet. For weeks now, I’ve been meditating on the superb performances of Carey Mulligan and Viola Davis and noticing that if Frances McDormand wins another Oscar, she’ll be tied with Meryl Streep (in wins. She would actually be ahead in Best Actress Oscars since one of Streep’s wins is in Supporting). It’s quite a year for Best Actress.
I’ll confess that when I watched The Golden Globes, I was far more excited by Rosamond Pike winning Best Actress in a Comedy than by Day’s Drama win (simply because I hadn’t seen Day’s performance). To be honest, I found Vanessa Kirby’s work in Pieces of a Woman a bit overrated, so I kept hoping that Pike might steal her spot with her splashy turn in everybody’s favorite demoralizing comedy I Care A Lot. (I’m not even sure I liked that movie, but I like Pike, and I love surprises. Kirby has the nomination, after all, though, and that’s probably fair.)
To be honest, I haven’t been thinking much about Day. Now that I have seen her lauded work as the legendary Billie Holiday, however, I’m pleased to announce that Day is every bit as great as everyone says and would make a worthy winner of the Best Actress Oscar. (I’m rooting for Carey Mulligan for reasons I’ll explain next week in my Best Actress write-up, but Day is deserving, too. She owns this movie. It’s practically a two-hour audition for an Oscar.) (Well, that’s not fair. The film is a lot more than that, but Day’s performance is, conspicuously, the best part.)
Every time I write a movie review these days, I feel the weight of my ignorance. I have to admit in print that before watching xyz new movie, I knew almost nothing about the Chicago 7, Sam Cooke, Fred Hampton…The list goes on and on!
I have, of course, heard Billie Holiday sing. I grew up very close to my mother’s parents, both born in 1918 and fans of just the type of songs Holiday performed. So I do recognize her distinctive vocal style, and I think Day does a superb job imitating her.
But as for Holiday’s life beyond the stage, I knew almost nothing before this film. I knew she was called Lady Day. And I knew Diana Ross famously starred in the story of her life, Lady Sings the Blues, but I’ve never seen the film. My most vivid impression of Holiday came from a biography of Marilyn Monroe (my middle school obsession). Apparently Monroe was a fan and came to one of Holiday’s shows. Afterwards, she eagerly went back to Holiday’s dressing room where Holiday was glad to receive her…
Until Marilyn gushed excitedly that she had heard Holiday had a copy of her nude calendar, Golden Dreams, hanging in her dressing room and eagerly asked to see it. Apparently, Holiday called her a c*** and threw her out of her dressing room. That’s not much to know about Billie Holiday, but it’s the kind of anecdote that makes a vivid impression on an eleven-year-old reader. (After seeing this film, their awkward meeting makes me sort of sad because I think the two of them had a lot in common and probably could have become good friends had their first encounter gone more smoothly.)
Not until graduate school did I learn about the momentous Holiday song “Strange Fruit.” I had heard the title before, of course, listed among her catalogue, but I had never heard the song. When you listen to her sing it, or even when you just read the lyrics, there’s absolutely no misunderstanding what the song is about. So when Lee Daniels decides to open his movie with mention of this song, the audience has no trouble understanding why the United States might have it in for Billie Holiday.
The Good:
J. Edgar Hoover is the villain in every movie lately. It’s pretty clear why he didn’t want Holiday performing “Strange Fruit.” If you don’t know the song, I suggest searching for the lyrics. I’m not sure I can repost them here since they’re protected by copyright. They’re all over the internet, though. A simple search will bring them up in full in seconds. The words paint a vivid picture of the bloodied bodies of lynching victims hanging from the trees in the South. That is the entire song, a word-picture of the sensory experience of coming upon a tree with a lynching victim still hanging in it. (The fact that the song’s lyrics do not mention the word lynching but instead describe the images and smells in such a lovely and poetic way makes the effect of listening even more eerie.)
Director Lee Daniels makes sure that we know even before the opening scene that the subtext of Holiday’s protracted fight with the government is her stand against lynching. The pointed contextualization is helpful because the feds, who don’t want Holiday singing about lynching, also avoid talking about lynching themselves as much as possible. According to them, the big story is that Holiday is a regular heroin user. Why a musician’s habitual drug use necessitates a multi-year, multi-state investigation is not something the government ever articulates clearly. But viewers get it right away because Daniels makes a point of telling us again and again. This movie isn’t about Holiday’s heroin problem. It’s about the government’s problem with Holiday persisting in singing a provocative song about lynching. The war on drugs is just a cover, a convenient way to take down enemies of J. Edgar Hoover’s agenda (like how they got Capone on income tax evasion).
This results in a thought-provoking story. Holiday wants to sing the truth about what is happening to black Americans in the South. She wants to talk about black people being tortured and murdered while their white neighbors shrug and look away (after having tortured and murdered them).
After the movie, my husband kept saying, “How can you see that and not be moved? How can you see that as a human being and not feel pity and horror?” It’s cognitive dissonance, I guess. Serious amounts of denial. It’s bad enough that people see others in their town hanging from trees and just look away. It’s much worse when you consider that those black neighbors they’re trying so hard not to look at didn’t lynch themselves. So the government wants to punish Holiday for telling the truth about people in pain.
When she refuses to cooperate, their next move is to punish her for being in pain herself. (Well, I mean, ostensibly they’re punishing her for using illegal drugs, but I’ve long been highly critical of criminalizing addiction. People don’t take up heroin use on a whim just because they love a wicked thrill. If those cracking down on drug abuse actually wanted to stop it, they’d focus on the root of the problem. (For instance, maybe it’s not a good idea to arbitrarily murder people in gruesome ways and then act like it’s not happening.)
The government’s position seems to be that those who are in pain are the ones causing the problem. Their take is that it’s very distressing of black Southerners not to want to be butchered. And Billie Holiday is a dangerous criminal for undergoing years of abuse and then turning to drugs to “take the edge off” her misery.
Granted, director Daniels lays it on a bit thick. At one point, a character accuses a federal agent of hating Holiday because she is black and came from nothing but has still made something of herself. The idea that the government might legitimately want to crack down on drug trafficking is dismissed. The government just wants to torture Holiday, to break her because she dared sing a song about lynching. But I mean what can you say in defense of a government that’s response to lynching is to tell the victims, “Please don’t talk about this. We find your complaints unpleasant”? In the period depicted, lynchings are going on unchecked in the South, and the government’s response is not to stop the lynchings but instead to stop Billie Holiday from mentioning them.
Even if the connection made by the film is slightly exaggerated, even if the FBI really is going after Holiday for heroin use because it is concerned about her heroin use (which I doubt), why throw her in prison instead of sending her to rehab? Why dog her steps waiting for the evidence to charge her with a major crime? Why arrest her on her death bed? It’s not like Holiday was going out to elementary schools selling cheap heroin to children. The FBI’s unrelenting interest in her amounts to persecution, no matter what their motivations. (Since I was thinking about Marilyn Monroe earlier, I almost pointed out that she abused drugs, too, and yet the FBI didn’t hound her to death. Then I remembered that near the end of her life, they actually were tapping her phone. Hoover’s bureau was obviously out of control.)
So this movie is not simply about Holiday. As the title suggests, it focuses on her protracted troubles with the United States government.
I had heard going into this movie that Day’s performance is better than the film surrounding it, and that’s true. But in a way, that works in the film’s advantage. It helps to sell Day as a star. One of the frustrating things about the movie Judy was that Renée Zellweger (as good and as deserving as her performance was) just cannot sing like Judy Garland. She sings well. She acts marvelously. But she doesn’t sing like Garland, and she does not have the star presence of Garland herself. (To be clear, I’m not insulting Zellweger or her fine performance. It’s not an insult to suggest that someone is not the same as a dead superstar. These stars wouldn’t be regarded so highly if nothing about them were special and unique.) The movie Judy delays our opportunity to hear Garland sing for some time, but the big reveal of her voice is anti-climactic because Zellweger just isn’t Garland. I’m sure Andra Day is no Billie Holiday either (though she does copy her style beautifully). But the general sloppiness of the rest of this film works to Day’s great advantage. She’s so much better than the rest of the film that we feel such energy every time she’s on screen. We long for her to be on screen. For us, she is the star. We want to see her; we love to watch her. And ultimately, if the star’s performance as Billie Holiday works, the film works, too, despite its flaws.
We watch because Day is amazing in the role, providing the fire and energy to keep us engaged in the film. The rest of the cast isn’t bad, but no other character gets even close to the same kind of focus and development. Trevante Rhodes is okay as the conflicted Jimmy. He has a better part here than he did in Bird Box (the last film in which I saw him). As the villainous FBI man Harry Anslinger, Garrett Hedlund is sufficiently creepy (though he had a better part in Mudbound, the last film in which I saw him. As I watched, I thought, “Netflix must use a lot of the same actors in their projects.” Then I remembered that this film is streaming on Hulu. There are so many ways to watch new movies at home now!) Da’Vine Joy Randolph (whom I remember favorably from Dolemite is My Name) makes a sympathetic Roslyn. As Miss Freddy, Miss Lawrence is also sympathetic. And I love Leslie Jordan. I wondered why he was presenting at the Critics Choice Awards. He’s actually quite good as Reginald Lord Devine.
Mainly what this film does well is give Day a vehicle in which to channel Billie Holiday. Overall, I liked the movie because it shines a light on lynching and Holiday’s unassuming activism by choosing to sing “Strange Fruit” even when warned. We get a nice history lesson (and further reasons to look with scrutiny at J. Edgar Hoover). We also get a taste of Holiday’s life and struggles—her tortured past, her inner demons, her struggle with addiction, her loyal friends, her loves, her lows, and her triumphs. And we get to hear her sing. The film is quite honestly titled.
Best Scene:
My favorite scene is also the one I consider most problematic because it’s presented in an even more slippery fashion than the rest of the movie. At first, I thought it might be a dream sequence because of the unusual fluidity of its progression. Themes and moments drive it forward rather than the constraints of linear time with its expected pacing. While on tour, Holiday witnesses something horrible, then decides to perform about it.
Best Scene Visually:
This film should get extra points for sensuality. As I watched, I realized how few Oscar contenders this season contain scenes of intimacy. This movie has far more sex scenes than most films I’ve seen recently, and they’re all so sensual. There’s a huge emphasis on Billie’s body which makes me look favorably on the writer (Suzan-Lori Parks) and director Lee Daniels. (These scenes might be present in the source material by Johann Hari, too. I’m not sure.)
Holiday’s naked body gets quite a bit of focus. All told, I think the film has a number of problems, but this is one of the things that works. After all, what the FBI seems to want is for people to look away from the bodies in the trees, to ignore lynching, to act like it isn’t a problem and isn’t happening. So it would be strange if we did look away from bodies. Instead, we’re encouraged to look at Holiday.
In one fairly early scene, she defiantly strips naked to shame the officer arresting her (which turns out to be very effective). Later we see sex scenes in bad relationships. We see physical abuse. And then we get a much more loving sex scene which looks very different (even before her partner makes a pointed change to behave in a way he considers more tender).
At the end of Holiday’s life, she is a physical wreck. FBI agents arrest her as she lies dying in her hospital bed. They are, no doubt, doing her a great wrong, but they are forced to look at her as they do it.
The film offers us the thought-provoking juxtaposition of the gradual destruction of Holiday’s own body with the bodies of the lynching victims she sings about. To me, outside of Day’s excellent performance, this is the one thing the movie does exceptionally well, and this makes the whole film worthwhile because even though the storytelling of the movie often feels a little off, it is impossible not to come away with a strong impression of what the film is trying to say.
Best Action Sequence:
The fight between Holliday and one club owner/love interest is horrifying to watch. I also like the way the confrontation at the elevator plays out. Day plays that moment really well.
Most Oscar-Worthy Sequence, Andra Day:
I love watching Day perform Holiday’s big numbers. There’s something mesmerizing about her blood red lipstick and all those white flowers in her hair. She’s fantastic in the late performance of “Strange Fruit,” (delayed to build our curiosity), and I also like watching her perform the song the movie has her sing most often “All of Me.” (I love that song, anyway, because it reminds me of how often I used to watch the 1980s comedy of that name starring Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin as a child. My sister and I would dance around to the credits.) (When you’re a kid living in a hotel, you have to hope HBO is showing something that will appeal to you.)
Day is also quite compelling in her final moment of defiance to Anslinger.
The Negatives:
Andra Day owns this film as Billie Holiday, but the movie around her is a bit of a mess. I will say up front, though, that it’s not as bad as I had heard. I’ve seen worse movies actually nominated for Best Picture. But it does feel a bit jumbled.
My husband noted after the film, “That had a frame, and then it didn’t stay in the frame.” I agree with him that the device of the interview is confusing. It’s not unusual for a film to have a seeming frame story and then go beyond it once the plot catches up. But this one feels a bit confusing because of the way the movie jumps from scene to scene. It’s not like Holiday gets up and leaves the interview and continues doing stuff, and we follow her. We just jump to another scene, the way we always have before during her narration. Structurally, it’s a bit unusual. It isn’t “wrong.” It just feels sloppy.
I think the main problem with the movie is that we don’t feel like we’re being led anywhere. That interview begins, and we expect to be led by the hand through the events of the story. But that doesn’t really happen. Sometimes, the person leading us just lets go of our hand, and we find ourselves wandering around listening for a song to follow. (I often wondered if this effect is intended because Daniels is trying to let us experience Holiday’s regular heroin use. But I don’t know.)
Early on, there’s a giant plot twist that feels particularly unsettling. I remember thinking, “Wait! I thought we were going point by point through the story. We can’t trust this movie. There’s not just an unreliable narrator. There’s no narrator!” That’s what it is. In the beginning, we’re given the impression that someone who knows is going to tell us all about Holiday’s life and her problems with the government, but instead we’re just wandering around by ourselves, being tricked and misled by everyone.
Maybe this is done intentionally to mimic Holiday’s own experiences and her perspective as a regular heroin user. It seems impressionistic, like a painting that hints at shapes and gives us feelings. But the film opens with that decisive historical statement about lynching, suggesting that we’re about to be shown a film kind of like Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, something that feels journalistic in the telling, a historical exposé. That’s not what we get.
Then there are also strange tonal shifts. The scene featuring the dog funeral plays like comedy and is almost weird. (I would suggest that if someone is bereaved enough to have a mock Roman Catholic funeral for a dog, then staggers weeping out of the church, that is not funny at all and shouldn’t be presented in that way.) Whose perspective are we seeing that from? Not Holiday’s! We seem to be getting Jimmy’s perspective. But that’s weird because we certainly didn’t get things from his perspective at the beginning of the story.
Fairly late in the movie, there’s a scene (leading up to the performance of “Strange Fruit” that we’ve been waiting and waiting for) that seems boundless and surreal. We also get a number of moments in which film from the actual time appears to be spliced in. (I don’t know if it is, or if it’s just made to appear that way.) Sorkin does this in The Trial of the Chicago 7, too. But it works better there. Here, I didn’t always understand why certain moments were chosen. This added to my growing feeling that the storytelling was a little weird, a little off. I just never felt entirely safe in this story. Now, on the other hand, maybe that’s the point. I’ll grant that.
The other big problem with the film (and, in fact, the much bigger problem) is that nobody else is even remotely as fascinating and complex as Holiday. She feels like an amazing, larger-than-life star, but no other character even feels well-rounded and real. The character who should feel real and complex is Trevante Rhodes as Jimmy Fletcher. In some ways, Jimmy is just as important to this story as Holiday, and Jimmy’s story is just as interesting and important. But we need to be getting more from him. I don’t know if I should fault the performance or the material. Jimmy just doesn’t feel as exciting as Holiday, even though we actually get more of his story than hers. The person in the Jimmy role should also deserve an Oscar nomination, given the story, but Rhodes does not. I also think Natasha Lyonne’s Tallulah Bankhead gets picked up and dropped too many times. Why mention her at all?
Overall:
This movie isn’t perfect, but it does raise awareness of Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit,” the fact that she sang it, what it meant, and what the refusal to stop singing it meant to her. Whether you follow the Oscars or not, The United States vs. Billie Holiday is worth seeing for Andra Day’s Best Actress nominated lead performance. Day carries the movie and would be a worthy Oscar winner.