‘THE UNITED STATES vs BILLIE HOLIDAY’ —UNEVEN BUT WORTH SEEING, THANK YOU LEE DANIELS
By Lapacazo Sandoval, Contributing Writer
Published March 5, 2021
Andra Day stars in THE UNITED STATES VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY from Paramount Pictures. Photo Credit: Takashi Seida.
Director Lee Daniels (“Precious”) has taken the audience into his imagined world of the late, great, and deeply complicated Billie Holiday aka Lady Day, in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” with a screenplay written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Suzan-Lori Parks (“Topdog/Underdog”).
Stepping into the role of Billie is Andra Day who delivers a performance filled with power and dignity. From the start of the movie, with Holiday being slapped by her spouse (Rob Morgan)) for speaking her mind, you understand this movie is going to be raw, and perhaps hard to watch. “You can’t arrest a Nigger for singing,” says one of the White politicians who were deciding her fate, for singing “Strange Fruit,” a song about the lynching of African-Amerian women and men, in the deep, racist and dangerous south.