The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021) Movie Review
To say I was excited for this movie would be an understatement. I love Billie Holiday. You can recognize her voice anywhere. My favorite song of hers is I’ll Be Seeing You. If you haven’t ever listened to any of Holiday’s music, this is an excellent one to start with. It’s a beautiful song tinged with a heavy sadness that is representative of much of her music.
Anyways, back to the movie. Director Lee Daniels takes a stab at a biopic of Billie Holiday’s life and unfortunately falls prey to a common mistake. He tries to incorporate her whole life into two hours, which is pretty much impossible. On top of this, it’s never really clear what year we are in. There is much hopping back and forth between past, present, and future with no clear delineation of what era we have been dropped into. I’m wondering when filmmakers will figure out that movies about famous people work so much better if you pick one era of their life to showcase instead of trying to stuff in so much information it’s unwatchable.
The focus of the story is less about Holiday as a gifted singer and artist and more about Holiday being an addict who was hounded by the FBI. Screen time is split between Holiday and a junior FBI Agent Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes). Fletcher works undercover to nail Holiday for her drug use. This cat and mouse game lasts throughout the whole movie with Fletcher regretting his role in getting Billie locked up. The real ball buster from the FBI is Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund) who has a fascination with busting Holiday for drugs, even going so far as to plant some on her to arrest her. This goes on throughout the entire movie, which would be fine except that Anslinger is the most one-dimensional character I’ve ever seen and I lost interest in this part of the story within minutes.
Other parts of Holiday’s life are briefly touched upon, like her well-known affair with Tallulah Bankhead (Natasha Lyonne), her upbringing with her mother who was a prostitute for a time, and her battle to keep singing the song Strange Fruit. But we only get pieces of these moments and it isn’t enough to give us any context about who Billie was or how these moments influenced her work or her life. What Daniels seems to really want to highlight here is Holiday’s heroin use. We see countless (and I stress the word countless) scenes of Holiday shooting up either alone or with bandmates. The other pieces of her life we get glimpses of, lead us to the conclusion that she had a horrible childhood and her adult life wasn’t much improved. Hence the drug use.
The movie is only somewhat watchable because of the glorious Andra Day. The rest of the movie is an amalgam of bits and pieces that don’t make much sense and characters who flit in and out without us even knowing who they are. But Day is the shining beacon at the center. She puts in an absolutely powerhouse performance, embodying Holiday in a way I hadn’t expected. She won a Golden Globe for this performance and it is well earned. She is phenomenal. But I sat throughout the whole movie scratching my head as to the structure and the overall tone. Daniels botched this one royally, turning Holiday’s life into nothing more than misery on drugs. It’s a shame because I think there could have been something beautiful pulled out of Holiday’s life. Even her music takes a bit of a back seat during the two hour runtime.
I wish Andra Day had been given a better script for her fiery performance. And I wish Holiday’s life had been represented better on screen. She was a remarkable singer who overcame so much and continued to bring her artistry to the world, making political statements while she did so. I can only hope that I’ll Be Seeing You, Billie, in another biopic that does your story justice.
Movie or Film: Movie
You’ll like this movie if:
1. You love Billie Holiday
2. You want to watch something bordering on poverty porn
3. You want to see an outstanding acting performance from Andra Day