The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)
(On Cable TV, June 2021) While I didn’t dislike The United States vs. Billie Holiday, I would probably think more of it had I not seen Lady Sing the Blues recently (even if I found the film so overfamiliar as to be unmemorable), and if I didn’t know that much of the romantic narrative of the film is fictitious. Yes, there was a Billie Holiday. Yes, she was a singer, an activist and a drug user who died relatively early after numerous run-ins with the law. Those reasonably familiar portions of Holiday’s life are also in Lady Sing the Blues. What The United States vs. Billie Holiday specifically does is to tie her problems with the systemic racism of the American government, and create a romance between Holiday and the informer that kept feeding information about her to the FBI. The systemic racism is real, although caricatured for dramatic purposes, while the romance apparently isn’t. (Considering the tumultuous history of Holiday’s real romances, maybe some romantic fantasy and streamlining were in order.) It does bother me when biographies don’t even pass the Wikipedia test (as in: read their subject’s Wikipedia and see if it contradicts the film) — this isn’t the twentieth century anymore, and audiences can fact-check those things well before the ending credits. There’s also a sense that, in between inventing a romance, dwelling on Holiday as an activist who becomes a victim of systemic racism, and focusing on drug abuse, the film doesn’t quite present a fractured portrait that ignores Holiday’s creative output to focus on her as a victim. Director Lee Daniels clearly has plenty to say, but we may have been a bit too selective along the way. Even in its examination of how 1960s activism was sabotaged by the American Government, the film is in a crowded company — even alongside other Oscar nominees! What The United States vs. Billie Holiday does have, to its advantage, is Andra Day in the title role — she doesn’t have the celebrity of Diana Ross in Holiday’s previous biopic, but her performance is better both as an actress and as a singer. The result is far from being unwatchable — its righteous indignation is effective and there are occasionally some nice set-pieces along the way. But there’s still a sense of missed opportunities in taking stock of what the film manages to accomplish… especially when Lady Sings the Blues isn’t exactly an obscure film even today.