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Despite “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” chronicling the last few years of the legendary jazz singer’s life, as well as her battle with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and with substance use disorder, the film seems to have little empathy for Holiday as a human.
Biographical films usually offer the chance for audiences to get closer to larger-than-life historical figures. It allows us to see their humanity, if only through imagined and fictionalized conversations and interactions.
However, director Lee Daniels and Suzan-Lori Parks, the film’s screenwriter and a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, focus so much on Holiday’s encounters with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics that they don’t leave enough room to really grapple with the emotional and physical toll that the bureau’s persecution took on the musician.
Andra Day in “The United States vs.Billie Holiday.” (Takashi Seida/Hulu)
As the telling of the story goes in the sometimes overwrought but searing and memorably impactful “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” the government didn’t really care about the troubled singer with the voice of an angel shooting heroin as she toured the country.
The drug abuse – that was simply the means of getting to Holiday. That was the rationale for devoting an inordinate amount of time and manpower to harassing her, infiltrating her inner circle, arresting her, sending her off to prison when a rehabilitation facility would have been more beneficial, attempting to plant evidence on her, hounding her every move literally to the day she died. What the feds really wanted to do was get her to stop singing that damn song: the haunting and scathing mood piece “Strange Fruit,” which told the story of the obscene epidemic of lynchings in the South and served as a wake-up call every time Holida
‘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
ThyBlackMan.com) It’s a major showcase. Viewers can watch the brilliant
musical talent Andra Day take center stage as she crosses over into the world of film acting. With the bright lights on her, she summons up an astonishing, all-in, Oscar-caliber portrayal of Billie Holiday. A feat achieved by Diana Ross five decades ago. Same role, similar story. But Day’s interpretation of “Lady Day” is decidedly more raw.
Director/producer Lee Daniels has been building up to this moment. Producing strong women’s stories (
Precious), casting actors in career-changing, award-winning roles (Halle Berry,
Monster’s Ball) and chronicling African American history (