‘Whitney’ sheds haunting new light on a fallen icon
Documentary explores star’s troubled career
“Whitney,” the haunting documentary about singer Whitney Houston, opens with clips of her iconic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” video, which topped the charts in 1987. It’s all tube dresses and bright eyeshadow, blond hair extensions and vocal trills. She looks gorgeous and sounds stunning.
The video is interspersed with clips symbolizing the American Dream of the late ’80s — President Ronald Reagan, soft drink ads, groups of smiling white people.
“It’s very, very white. It’s very, very superficial and poppy. And you have Whitney amongst that at her most poppy and bubblegummy,” says Kevin Macdonald, the Oscar-winning director behind “Whitney.” It opens Friday in Houston theaters.
Macdonald, who directed “One Day in September,” “King of Scotland” and “Marley,” then juxtaposes images of the purity of Houston’s voice and image with darker things going on in the world, including the 1967 Newark (N.J) race riots, which happened when Houston, a Newark native, was 3 years old.
“Her first memory is really of those riots. Suddenly, you have this clash of these two different worlds,” Macdonald says. “I’m trying to say to the audience, ‘These two things are happening at the same time. You can’t understand one without understanding the other. I wanted to use these shards of politics and social context in order to make the audience think about those bigger issues that are also going on, that are feeding into her psyche and into her performances.”
That push and pull is at the heart of “Whit-
ney,” which is driven by the performer’s contrast and conflict of emotions. Houston was one of the world’s greatest talents, possessing a voice still unrivaled in popular music. But she was just 48 years old when she died in 2012 in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub of drowning, heart disease and cocaine use. That she ultimately squandered her gift at such a young age is a tragedy of immeasurable proportions.
That point also plays into the conflict between audiences when Houston was at her peak, selling millions of albums and scoring an unprecedented seven consecutive No. 1 singles. Black fans accused her of being too white, which led to Houston being booed when her name was called at the 1989 Soul Train Awards. The experience haunted her for years and resulted in her next album, 1990’s “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” taking a decidedly more R&B turn, despite resistance from her label. It went on to earn her two more No. 1 singles.
“Whitney” goes into detail about her performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” during Super Bowl XXV in 1991 and how small changes to the arrangement turned it into a historic triumph.
We also see snippets of that infamous Diane Sawyer interview, where Houston declared, “Crack is wack” and the merciless “Saturday Night Live” and “Mad TV” impersonations it inspired.
We even watch Houston and her mother shading pop stars Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul, whose popularity were eclipsing Houston’s at the time.
Macdonald explores her complex relationship with Robyn Crawford (Houston’s best friend, assistant and, reportedly, lover), which was never fully accepted by Houston’s family; and how those around her ignored and even enabled a drug problem in order to keep the money flowing.
Though it covers some of the same material as last year’s interesting, if ultimately pedestrian, “Whitney: Can I Be Me,” the new doc benefits greatly from a stronger directorial hand, rare home movies and interviews with family and close friends. It captures themes and ideas in a way other films have not. Even the discomfort and refusal to answer certain questions from subjects reveals much about the superstar at the center of it all.
Macdonald says he conducted 76 interviews, with about 30 making the final cut. Mother Cissy Houston remains stoic throughout her time on screen. Ex-husband Bobby Brown refuses to discuss Houston’s drug use. Former personal assistant Mary Jones is the film’s emotional center. And brothers Gary and Michael Houston speak honestly about their sister’s drug addiction and its causes.
“That was one of the big challenges, and one of the things that appealed to me, was making a film that was a more intelligent, more serious film than had ever been made before. Taking someone who people don’t treat seriously and treating them seriously in a movie,” Macdonald says. “The pressure is always on to oversimplify. But her story can’t be understood that simply.”
And though Macdonald says he “wasn’t necessarily a big fan” before the film, piecing the mystery together ultimately led him to appreciate Houston in a new way. It’s a point he hopes to get across to audiences.
“I liked some of the music. I’d never seen her live. I also had this feeling that her reputation had been so sullied and damaged by the last 10 years or so of her life, that I think I felt like a lot of other people. I’m not sure I had patience for her,” he says.
“By the end of it, I felt such compassion for her and such love for her, and I think appreciated her vulnerability to such a great a degree. I think when somebody has become such an icon … people get trapped in the images that get created for them. I want Whitney to break free of that and become a human being with her own problems, her own faults, her own tragedy. And for people, with that understanding, to turn back to the music and understand the music, because there really is no point in making any film like this unless you make people want to turn back to the art and appreciate in a deeper way.”