Grabbing the spotlight
Andra Day brings life & soul to ‘Billie Holiday’
In Lee Daniels’ frequently powerful, but also at times slow and and uneven “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” the singer-songwriter of the title (a breakout Andra Day) is harassed for decades by the FBI for performing her anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit.”
After the end of Prohibition and the “war on whiskey,” FBI supervising Agent Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund) carries on the crusade against Holiday, using spies and planted evidence and claiming that it is all a part of a “war on drugs.” Anslinger’s secret weapon is Agent Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), a handsome young Black man from a well-todo family posing as a soldier and a fan and suitor of Holiday.
Among Holiday’s extended family and hangers on are saxophonist Lester
Young (a very good Tyler James Williams), an assistant named Miss Freddy (Miss Lawrence), a second assistant named Roslyn (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and several dogs.
The film, based on a book by Johann Hari, is framed by an interview conducted by the flamboyant Reginald Lord Divine (Leslie Jordan) and unfolds in a series of flashbacks.
Director Daniels (“Precious,” “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”) also uses bits of archival footage to remind us that much of this really happened, and rightfully sees Holiday as victim of institutional racism. We hear at one point how the corrupt and racist J. Edgar Hoover himself thought “Strange Fruit” was “un American.” That allowed his agents to mount a lifelong, real-life witch hunt against her, using African-American agents and making her a genuine freespeech martyr. In this regard “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” which is the name of the court case brought against her, has a lot in common with the current release “Judas and the Black Messiah.”
Holiday, who loves comic books, first performs the song at the pioneering, racially integrated West Village nightclub Cafe Society. Repressive forces condemn the song and jazz in general as a “tool of the devil.” “Strange Fruit” becomes a Holiday trademark and a sensation, and we see police in other parts of the country shut down her shows if she tries to sing it.
Backstage, Holiday has a weakness for heroin and bad men. We learn that she was raised in the brothel where her mother worked and that she was raped at age 10. One of her several lovers is undercover Agent Fletcher, whose mother (Adriane Lenox) disapproves of his contribution to what she sees as the oppression of Black people.
The film follows Holiday to Europe, where she enjoys success and more freedom of expression, and on a bus tour of the South, where she experiences the horrific and unforgettable aftermath of a lynching. Natasha Lyonne, in a role that could arguably have been easily cut, shows up as Holiday’s lover, the actress Tallulah Bankhead.
Day, who has been nominated for two Golden Globes, is the film’s strong suit, delivering both as a singer and actor. Casting a musician who could act in the tradition of Diana Ross in “Lady Sings the Blues” was a brilliant stroke.
Day’s Lady Day is as demanding as Viola Davis’ Ma Rainey and even more forthright sexually. Day’s Holiday is even more than an artist and a martyr. She’s a strong, sexually active, proud, immensely talented woman, who liked heroin too much.
She is this film’s heart and soul.
(“The United States vs. Billie Holiday” contains nudity, profanity, violence and drug use.)