The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Directed by: Lee Daniels
Written by: Suzan-Lori Parks - Based on the book "Chasing the Scream" by Johann Hari
Starring: Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Miss Lawrence, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Rob Morgan, Garrett Hedlund, Tyler James Williams, Melvin Gregg, Erik LaRay Harvey, Evan Ross, Natasha Lyonne, Leslie Jordan, Adriane Lenox, Al Goulem, Dusan Dukic
Biography/Drama/Music - 130 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 25 Feb 2021
Written by: Suzan-Lori Parks - Based on the book "Chasing the Scream" by Johann Hari
Starring: Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Miss Lawrence, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Rob Morgan, Garrett Hedlund, Tyler James Williams, Melvin Gregg, Erik LaRay Harvey, Evan Ross, Natasha Lyonne, Leslie Jordan, Adriane Lenox, Al Goulem, Dusan Dukic
Biography/Drama/Music - 130 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 25 Feb 2021
1972’s Lady Sings the Blues follows the biopic formula. There, Billie Holiday is as a girl in Baltimore, she grows up into Diana Ross, discovers Billy Dee Williams, heroin, and then a jail cell. The 2021 version stiff arms chronological order and the five W’s to make a song the film’s fulcrum. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics avowed it was the drugs and their valiant attempts to find Holiday’s suppliers as to why they hounded her across the country and back. In fact, that harassment was due to the song “Strange Fruit,” an anti-lynching anthem. The Bureau felt such songs stirred up trouble and even worse, made whitey look bad. Therefore, Billie’s life could never really be about the music. It was about the Feds, her inner demons, her poor choices, her head-shaking self-destructive tendencies, and an enormous sense of wonderment how such a conflicted and complex woman remains so notorious to this day, far longer and stronger than any of her pursuers.
Bureau Chief Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund, Unbroken) tasked one of the Bureau’s few African-American agents, Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes, Moonlight), to infiltrate Holiday’s crew, gain her trust, and steer her toward a compromising position for a very public arrest. Even though all the African-American agents are segregated into the basement, they believe a successful sting operation like this, especially against one of their own, will be their ticket to more responsibility, and perhaps even respectability. However, they are unaware of Anslinger’s motivations. The means are the drugs, but the ends are to erase the song “Strange Fruit” from Holiday’s set list. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lord Parks, based on the chapter “The Black Hand” on Billie Holiday in Johann Hari’s 2015 book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Day of the War on Drugs, The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a sort of correct the record film, telling the real story where Lady Sings the Blues altered the facts.
Bureau Chief Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund, Unbroken) tasked one of the Bureau’s few African-American agents, Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes, Moonlight), to infiltrate Holiday’s crew, gain her trust, and steer her toward a compromising position for a very public arrest. Even though all the African-American agents are segregated into the basement, they believe a successful sting operation like this, especially against one of their own, will be their ticket to more responsibility, and perhaps even respectability. However, they are unaware of Anslinger’s motivations. The means are the drugs, but the ends are to erase the song “Strange Fruit” from Holiday’s set list. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lord Parks, based on the chapter “The Black Hand” on Billie Holiday in Johann Hari’s 2015 book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Day of the War on Drugs, The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a sort of correct the record film, telling the real story where Lady Sings the Blues altered the facts.
Diana Ross acted for the first time as Billie Holiday in 1972 and even earned herself an Oscar nomination in the process. Director Lee Daniels (Monster’s Ball, Precious) also cast a singer as a first-time actress. Grammy-nominated Andra Day does not lip sync Billie’s songs. That is really her belting out “All of Me,” “Solitude,” and the centerpiece showcase “Strange Fruit”. Daniels latches onto the opportunity a song with that imagery offers. He doesn’t lace it on top of the end credits or have Billie belt it out at her sold out Carnegie Hall show after she left prison; no, after Billie witnesses a lynching, a woman swinging from a tree, her husband trying to get her down, and her two little girls screaming their heads off…then Daniels goes all montage and lets “Strange Fruit” do its work.
Daniels bookends the film with words about Congress’s failures to pass anti-lynching legislation. It’s not too shocking to learn it didn’t pass back in the 1930s, but it also didn’t pass last year either. The House of Representatives passed it 410-4. Senator Rand Paul personally filibustered it. That’s why Billie Holiday kept putting a federal bullseye on her back. She could have taken the song off her set list, enjoyed her heroin, and rode off into the sunset. Instead, she had to keep on singing, calling attention to it, to make the world look at the Senator Pauls of the world in disgust. Apparently, Holiday, on her death bed, looked at Harry Anslinger and told him, “Your grandkids will be singing ‘Strange Fruit’.” Anslinger’s grandkids most likely came of age with Tupac and Nas. That must be one of history’s best zingers.
The rest of the film is more What’s Love Got to Do with It as a procession of pimps, cads, and exploitative men take advantage of Billie, beat her, and help frame her for the boys in blue. Agent Fletcher ends up falling in love with Billie, tries to protect her, and offers a glimpse of what a normal relationship would look like. But Billie has scars. She was raped at 10 and sex trafficked in a brothel as a teenager. Her third husband, Louis McKay (Rob Morgan), written as a sympathetic savior in 1972 played by Billy Dee Williams, is portrayed far more accurately here. The real McKay was a technical advisor on the first film - no wonder he comes off as an angelic victim to Billie’s troubles. This McKay is as much a low-life as all the others.
Daniels made an outrage biopic. He focuses on the last 10 years or so of Billie’s life and hits the major mile markers, but it’s the attention paid to “Strange Fruit” and both the passion and venom it provokes which gives his film the power it has to piss off the audience. Day’s performance is phenomenal and this first-time actor seems born for the role; hopefully, this will garner the levels of attention she deserves. However, Daniels wants attention to fall on the federal government and how it did one private citizen, a female singer, wrong. He hopes it makes Senator Paul defend his stance on lynching again. He hopes it introduces Billie Holiday’s music to a new generation. He hopes the film will help Billie’s legacy transcend jazz singer and junkie and shine a light on someone who was so much more.
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