The United States vs. Billie Holiday
HULU
In 1937, Jewish-American teacher Abel Meeropol wrote the poem “Bitter Fruit”, a powerful and essential piece of writing in which the writer expresses his horror on lynchings. Essential since it was published right after Senate did not pass a bill against the lynching of African-Americans. Powerful because of the strong words and message the writer wanted to spread. The poem was then set to music by Meeropol himself, changing the title into “Strange Fruit”. A few years later, Billie Holiday was approached to this song and, in a short time, she made it hers. The lyrics had a great impact on Holiday’s personal experience, and the singer was well aware of the importance of the words she was singing. “Strange Fruit”, however, represented a double-edged sword for Billie Holiday, as the song rose her to fame but, at the same time, it brought the singer a lot of problems with the FBI, who persecuted her for years since they thought the song was encouraging protests and riots.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday follows the last twelve years of the singer’s life, focusing on the aforementioned persecution. Given the subject matter and the fascinating central figure of the titular singer (played by Andra Day), one would expect a great movie or at least an interesting one, but unfortunately the direction of the project ended up to Lee Daniels – a director whose latest projects have heavily suffered from his over-direction, one that tries to implement a peculiar aesthetic that distracts more than adding anything to the story. A vision that fails to find a coherence between his direction of actors, the abysmal script and some questionable technical aspects. The editing overall is messy as it tries to create something ambitious, when instead Daniels should have focused more on Day’s performance. The final result is just mediocre with bad editing choices, such as the inclusion of an intrusive score in probably the best scene of the movie – the first meeting between Holiday and Jimmy Fletcher – or the editing itself of Holiday’s stage performances with unnecessary cuts and overlapping sequences. But the most head-scratching thing about this style has to be the overuse of that strange glossy sheen Daniels implements in a given scene just to give it more importance, but it is a forced one that does not come off as natural as the director may have wanted.
The movie has a flashback structure and opens with a 1957 interview in which Holiday recounts the problems caused by “Strange Fruit” to journalist Reginald Lord Devine (played by a campy and distracting Leslie Jordan). In these flashbacks, Lee Daniels explores the lowest points of Holiday’s life, such as her time in jail after getting arrested for a performance, her heroine addiction and the toxic environment around her. A big portion of these scenes are focused around the relationship with Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), an FBI agent who was tasked with tracking her. The movie also tries to create a compelling portrait of the struggles of the iconic singer, but the script is lacking in every regard, with an unfocused narrative, poorly written characters and cringe-inducing dialogue.
Acting is often the best aspect of Lee Daniels's movies, or at least that was the case in Precious, where Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique delivered two excellent performances. In The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Andra Day does a remarkable job as the titular singer and has to be given credit for her performance despite the terrible movie the actress is in. Day’s voice work is quite impressive as she tries to recreate the voice of Holiday and she’s totally convincing in doing so. Her character goes through every sort of emotional low points and Day does a terrific job in portraying both the physical and psychological degradation/exasperation of Billie Holiday. The actress excels in each singing performance as she embodies all the passion and charismatic presence of Holiday, such as the “All of Me” performance at the beginning of the movie or the “Strange Fruit” one towards the ending. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t give Day anything interesting to work with as it gets quite repetitive in its abused/repressed artist approach.
Andra Day also shares good chemistry with Trevante Rhodes, the latter always brings a charming presence. However, the actor is stuck in a limited and problematic role: the script poorly develops Jimmy Fletcher and his crisis of conscience never reaches the emotional impact that has been found recently in a similar role in Judas and the Black Messiah. While Rhodes does his best with the given role, the same cannot be said for Garret Hedlund, whose performance is quite terrible. The script does him no favours as another underwritten character, but there’s something really strange in the actor’s line delivery that over-vilifies his character in an unnecessary way. The rest of the cast is wasted, especially Natasha Lyonne’s Tallulah Bankhead, whose character is in the movie for a couple of brief scenes and each of them could have been cut easily since the relationship between the two has no impact in the movie.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a huge disappointment and the iconic singer deserved a better film. Despite the good effort from Andra Day, Lee Daniels fails to impress and crafts another underwhelming movie which reminds of those basic and uninspired biopics from the early 00s.