A very casual jazz/blues fan, I was familiar with the name Billie Holiday, but unfamiliar with her life or songs. I’ll say this at least for Lee Daniels’s latest film: I certainly want to know more details about this amazing woman and the roller coaster of her stardom. The movie is a “Re” movie: it gives you enough to entice you, but leaves you wanting for something bigger and more befitting the transcendent star at the movie’s center. A remix. A redo. A reimagination. Whatever Hollywood wants to call it, Billie Holiday’s story needs to be done right so we can do right by this amazing black woman.
Billie Holiday (Andra Day) lived multiple lifetimes in her short existence, all of them meaningful. The movie, sort of told as a retrospective, accounts her time as she’s about to release “Strange Fruit,” a song about the horrors of lynching. Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund) of the FBI believes this song will elicit civil unrest, so he sends African-American agent Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes) to find some way to arrest Holiday before that song can enter the mainstream. So in addition to dealing with attention from lecherous men, drug temptations, and a horrific past, Holiday also has an entire government working to bring her down as well. And yet, Holliday persists, like all great heroes do, and sings her songs because they matter.
Lee Daniels biggest mistake has nothing to do with the movie, which is fine/servicable. The mistake is in the fact that this is a movie in the first place. Billie Holiday’s story should be competing for Emmys, not Oscars. Her experiences were so eventful and complex that I don’t think you can make a great movie about her entire life: you need 8-12 episodes of a TV show instead. The movie version basically gives you the highlights package, cramming in Holday’s performances, drug addiction, government discrimination, and toxc relationship history in just over 2 hours. Yikes! The movie is so intent on giving us everything we’re exhausted jumping from point a to b to c, and eventually I just started tuning out the movie, because it had little interest in much character development in favor of getting through plot twists and turns. That means the bad guys are almost irrefutably bad, and other, interesting characters are sidelined due to time constraints, turning what should be multiple fascinating characters into nothing but symbols of racism, or misogyny, or love.
Characters aside, Lee Daniels clearly has affection for this story, and does the best he can to hook the audience into loving his film. It’s cast really well first and foremost: Andra Day is exceptional as the larger than life woman. She handles the jarring tonal shifts and constant plot with class and grace, equally comfortable on a big stage singing and dying of cirrhosis: should they TVify the movie like I want, I see no reason to not cast Day again. Trevante Rhodes is also solid as the conflicted FBI agent slowly realizing he’s on the wrong side of the fight. Rob Morgan, Tyler James Williams, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Evan Ross use their talents to give what they can to their underserviced parts. Daniels also makes the costume design look lovely: I’m jealous of Holiday’s amazing wardrobe, which fits nicely with the musical elegance of Holiday’s music. We get a lot of those montages set to the sound of Billie Holiday, beautiful and relaxing, but with a purpose, helping ease the movie along in between tumult.
In the verdict of United States vs. Billie Holiday, Billie Holiday does win. That’s because her life is worth looking into, carrying significance and import beyond her time on Earth. Despite the most powerful military apparatus on Earth trying to keep her voice down, Holiday fought back and held her own as long as she could. And with so many personal demons! Perhaps I misjudged the depths of jazz music…