Estados Unidos vs. Billie Holiday

This version is so much more like the way I pictured Lady Day. Miss Day did an excellent job. This was raw and much better then the sugar coated Motown version. I would have given it 10 stars but it seemed very disjointed in the beginning.

I have been a fan of Billie 'Lady Day' Holiday for the majority of my life, and I thought that this movie didn't necessarily depict her life, instead it primarily focused on the government and Billie Holiday due to her drug abuse. I thought that the film depicted her in a pretty bad light, rather than depicting the amazing impact that she had on the world during the civil rights movement in the US as well as impacting the music industry, exploring the important affects and terrible, toxic environment within the industry. However, I did think that Andra Day, who played Billie Holiday, gave an amazing performance of the artist. The performances of the actors and actresses was amazing, all of them combined as they showed the raw, intimate relations between the people. However the major problem with the movie was how they depicted her life and had it primarily surrounding her drug addiction.

Billie Holiday's voice was (and still is) unique. Her music was so sad and daunting, yet so beautiful.

UNFORTUNATELY this movie about her life is lacking brilliance. It is not a bad movie, not at all, but it never delivers any real intense drama. This movie just meanders a bit without ever really shining bright.

I would therefore not recommend this movie. Better put on an old record of Billie Holiday because her voice still is unsurpassed and magnificently chilling and SO gorgeous!

The story: Billie Holiday is a black female blues singer who is targeted by the police for daring to expose racism in her popular songs.

This movie would make a great triple feature with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Judas and the Black Messiah for showcasing racism and injustice systemic and culturally nakedly and honestly. The US vs. Billie Holiday really makes you frustrated in all the right ways and at all the right people but also inspires people like me who didn't know much about this history to learn more and educate oneself since those who don't learn from history...anyway...Andra Day gives an incredible performance and Trevante Rhodes balances the line of someone you want to smack in the face one second and kiss the next. Impeccable gowns and hairstyling add to the glamor and realism of the music being sung so beautifully by her swingin, emotional voice. Day expresses a lot in those eyes tender one minute and giving diva the next. Maybe it's not perfect from a filmmaking point of view but not in any innegligible way and the image of Andra Day screaming with joy and pride in her Golden Globe acceptance speech is enough to make me feel good inside knowing she gave this her all and that her idol would be proud.

I did actually learn some things about Billie Holiday that I didn't know, namely that her song "Strange Fruit" was an anthem for racial injustice and that the FBI used drugs as an excuse to relentlessly pursue her so that they could arrest her and keep her from performing, thereby depriving her the opportunity to incite black audiences. That is the actually very intriguing kernel around which this biopic is structured, but it's diluted by the hot mess of this film's screenplay, that spends far too much time on Holiday's tumultuous relationships with various men in her life.

One of those men is FBI agent Jimmy Fletcher, who's assigned the task of following Holiday around and catching her out. He's black himself, and is subjected to the racial hierarchy within the department, so over time his allegiances switch to Holiday and he becomes her ally. Again, this is actually an interesting parallel story. But again, it's also diluted by everything else going on in this muddled movie.

Why, for example, is the character of Talullah Bankhead and the possible lesbian relationship she had with Holiday even in the film? That story is introduced and literally goes nowhere, as if whole sections of the movie were edited out at the last minute. And why do all the white FBI agents have to be played as caricature villains, as if we won't sympathize enough with the black people unless the white people are as cartoonishly awful as possible. And why does the screenplay feel the need to have characters just tell us what the movie's themes are without allowing us to come to conclusions ourselves? At one point, a black character tells the worst of the FBI agents that the department hates Holiday because she's black and beautiful and threatening (or words to that affect), to which my response was, "well duh."

And there are ridiculous sex scenes and lots of scenes of people using drugs and getting beat up and yelling and fighting. None of this bothered me because of the content, but rather because it all just becomes monotonous and traffics in the most tired of biopic tropes.

Andra Day gives an impressive performance that stands as probably the film's biggest asset. The Academy got it right when they nominated her for an Oscar but chose not to reward anything else about the movie.

Grade: B-