PAGE 18 • GO! MAGAZINE
Thursday, March 4, 2021 • ThE BuLLETIN
MOVIES & SHOWTIMES
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‘The United States vs. Billie Holiday’
falls flat despite stellar performance
BY MAKENZIE WHITTLE
The Bulletin
G
reat movies can often save a poor
lead performance, at least to an ex-
tent. But the reverse, a great perfor-
mance in a bad film can’t save the whole
thing from being a waste of two hours.
Unfortunately, the latter is true for Lee
Daniels’ “The United States vs. Billie Holi-
day.”
With a subject as interesting as the jazz
and swing songstress, you would think it
would be a gold mine for storytelling, espe-
cially one penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning
playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, but it falls
short in everything but its lead performer,
Andra Day as the legendary Lady Day.
Focused specifically on the period of Hol-
iday’s career stemming from her first arrest
for narcotics in 1947 to her death in 1959,
the film weaves the singer’s legal issues with
the FBI, her relationship with Agent Jimmy
Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes) and her insis-
tence at singing her powerful and haunting
“Strange Fruit.”
The film opens with a graphic photo-
graph of a Black man being burned by a
white mob with a title card informing the
audience that an anti-lynching bill was con-
sidered by congress in 1935 but did not pass,
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Andra Day
stars as Bil-
lie Holiday in
“The United
States vs. Billie
Holiday” now
streaming on
Hulu.
Takashi Seida/Hulu
tying the law with the singer in the first few
moments (a similar title card is placed at the
end of the film informing viewers that con-
gress now considering the Emmett Till Ant-
ilynching Act).
We first meet Holiday when she agrees
to an interview with campy radio journalist
Reginald Lord Devine (Leslie Jordan) and
she recounts her life starting with her per-
formances at the Cafe Society in 1947 and
when she first meets Fletcher.
In the following scene, we find ourselves
in a dark FBI boardroom with Harry J. An-
slinger (Garrett Hedlund) and other agents
deciding on how best to tackle Holiday’s
singing of “Strange Fruit” and prevent her
from singing it again. They decide to take
her down for a narcotics charge since she is
a known heroin user.
Using the undercover Fletcher to get close
enough to discover the drugs, they bust her
and send her to jail for a year and a day.
When she is released, she makes a come-
back playing Carnegie Hall, all the while
Fletcher is a constant presence as he is asked
to find out who is selling Holiday the drugs.
Eventually, Fletcher is put on her tail as
she embarks on a national tour and the two
begin a relationship that is the apparent first
semi-healthy one Holiday has been in.
But nothing good lasts for Holiday.
From about the first 10 minutes of the
movie, you can tell this one is a doozy. The
script is shockingly basic from someone as
More Information
“The United States vs. Billie Holiday”
130 minutes
No MPAA rating
stellar as Parks and lacks any nuance going
forward.
Daniels makes it abundantly clear that
this is literally the United States against Hol-
iday, they want to take her down for singing
the controversial song and they’ll exploit her
addiction in order to do it and they don’t
care if it kills her.
The soggy pace is even more exacerbated
by the inconsistent style choices and so many
crossfades and mortgages with the same som-
ber underscoring that feels like a marathon.
Day’s performance is the only bright spot
in the messy world that Daniels has created.
She evokes Holiday through voice and sty-
listic choices and manages to wade through
the film wonderfully especially given that
this is the singer’s first film. Unfortunately,
the rest of the cast is one-note and wooden.
But they’re not given a whole lot to work
with as any of their depth or development
is swept aside in this overly sprawling biopic.
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0304, mwhittle@bendbulletin.com