What Happened, Miss Simone?

This is a very powerful and passionate documentary that tells the life of the legendary Nina Simone in great fashion. With a brilliant collection of stock footage that not only looks at Simone as a music icon but also a hugely significant civil rights activist and a person, this is a fascinating and engrossing documentary.

Going into this, I knew next to nothing about Nina Simone. The Civil Rights Movement has always been fascinating to me, but the musicians involved, I didn't think much.

However, this documentary makes all of that even more enthralling to learn about, and extremely accessible to non-experts. If you haven't ever heard of Nina Simone, you can easily go into this film and be engrossed by the entire story.

In terms of the way that this film tells the whole story, it's very impressive. Structurally, it's a bit of a by-the-books documentary, but if you get deeper into it, you discover that it's a very passionate and fitting tribute to Simone's life.

The first period of the film details her rise to fame in the jazz world in the 1950s from her lowly beginnings in a southern town, and shows you all sorts of fascinating clips from her childhood that show what a struggle her journey was, and from her earliest performances that gave birth to a genius in the music industry.

With interviews from both herself and her closest friends and family, you also get an extremely personal look into this story. For all of the hype surrounding her musical talent, there's still a very touching smaller story about Simone as a person. Ultimately, it's a sad story that she suffered so much from personal demons and domestic issues, however this film really allows you to empathise with a person that was, at her time, so aggressive and loud.

That's where the story about her as a civil rights activist comes in. This film thinks very highly of her role in the entire movement, rightly placing her amidst historical titans like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. It talks about how she brought attention to the movement to a different crowd, and in a different way, and despite her disagreements with King's non-violent protest tactics and her support for a more aggressive approach, her importance cannot be understated.

Overall, this is a great documentary, that not only gives you an accessible historical insight into the life of this incredible personality, but one that will both entertain and fully engross you.

www.themadmovieman.com

I've got to be up front about this...I don't remember hearing anything about Nina Simone before I watched this film. While she was a very famous jazz performer, her meteoric career all but fizzled by the time I was a very young child. I also am not a particular fan of modern jazz, either. So in some ways, I am not the ideal audience for this wonderful new documentary from Liz Garbus. However, because of my work in the mental health field, the film really resonated with me and I think you should give it a look as well. Apparently, Netflix ALSO thinks you should be watching it, as they send out a mass emailing to many people recommending you see this new film--which you now can thanks to their streaming service.

Nina was a child prodigy at the piano. However this was back in the 1930s...and she was a tiny black girl growing up in the South. Yet despite the racially charged climate, she had a spark of genius-- such that despite the times, she was helped by people to help realize her dream of being a musician. However, instead of the concert classical pianist she was trained to be, she sort of accidentally fell into the jazz industry and was soon known at least as much as her singing as her genius at the piano. This led to a lot of financial success in the 1950s and into the 60s and life was looking grand for this lady.

So how, then, at the height of her fame did Simone's career start to slip? And why did she walk away from this life? This confusing journey about mental illness, to me, is the most interesting part of this documentary. While it's not perfect (a lot of her more bizarre behaviors later in life are omitted from the story as well as her second marriage), the film is extremely rare in quality and is extremely well made. Considering that Simone died from cancer over a decade ago, this should have been a very tough film to make. Yet, fortunately, they had recordings and diaries of Simone speaking her mind and explaining her strange journey through life. Garbus also was fortunate to have Simone's daughter's cooperation as well as her first husband and friends--giving you amazing access into Simone's world as well as into her mental illness that impacted but never destroyed her career. This sort of access alone is more than enough reason to see this film.

By the way, if you like this film, also trying watching another great Garbus documentary, Bobby Fischer Against the World. The character in this film is, in many ways, much like Simone--with lots of brilliance as well as lots of personal demons.

Two of the 2015 Academy Award nominees for Best Documentary Feature dealt with artists (specifically singers) who were ultimately undone by their self-destructive tendencies. "Amy" told the sad story of Amy Winehouse, whose struggles with addiction and eating disorders cut her life and career tragically short. "What Happened, Miss Simone?" is about Nina Simone, who used her music to fuel the anger of the civil rights movement until her flame burnt out. Both women changed the nature of their art form; both women were taken from the world much too soon.

But for all the similarities, the stories of the two women are quite different. Amy Winehouse is a pathetic figure. We watch as she passively lets fame destroy her. Nina Simone, on the other hand, is full of rage, rage that vents itself through her music. If Winehouse lets strife happen to her, we get the sense that Simone brings it on herself. It's as if she can't handle the anger that a sense of injustice toward the world stokes inside her and destroys herself as a way to be rid of it.

Watching Simone sing "Mississippi Goddamn" while seeing images of the Civil Rights movement, images evocative of the recent violence toward blacks perpetrated by law enforcement officials throughout the country, brought home to me how far we still need to go in our efforts toward racial equality and why the slogan "Black Lives Matter" should be heeded by all.

Grade: A-

The telling of Nina's story through the words of her family and old footage from her as well is truly moving and unsettling. I felt the closing in of the events that lead to her fame, fall, and fatality. It seems as if everyone was affected by the power of her illness which was fueled by the times. I am not sure if one accelerated the other. Growing up in the south and traveling all over the world does something to you. You become enlightened and the junk that was going on in the US over race was ludicrous and enraging. I am not sure if I could deal with that back then either. Nina was truly ahead of her time but got stuck in time due to the violence of those times. I love the way she expressed her disdain for the instrument of her fame and I also loved the attitude she had about her own voice. I grew up listening to this strange voice and at first I could not figure out if it was a man or woman until further into the album. This documentary is a timely tribute to the singer and it also allowed us to see what she was going through and why she fell off the face of the earth for a while. I look at her from a different pair of eyes now and I am grateful to know her story.

Nina Simone was an extraordinary artist, a singer with an amazing, androgynous voice, a pianist from the age of four, a master of many styles (yet each one made distinctively her own), and a performer who put an amazing amount of herself into every song she sang. But she was also a frequently unhappy woman, a sufferer from manic depression, and while she was involved in the struggle for black civil rights in the United States, she did not allow herself the indulgence of viewing the outcome of that fight with satisfaction. 'What Happened, Miss Simone?' tells the story of her life and career with songs, comments from friends, and extensive excerpts from interviews she gave. It's fascinating, but also overlong, and while many assert the Nina was a difficult woman, few actually describe the reality of living with her in detail, which is a bit frustrating: she was a private person when not on stage, and the frailties hinted at in her public performances are never completely explained. You finish this documentary wanting to know more; but also, perhaps, feeling you could have been told what you've just learnt in a little less time.