When celebrities are on the cover of newspapers and magazines, it can be hard to remember that they, too, are human. This is the central thesis of Lee Daniel’s biopic, The United States vs. Billie Holiday.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday positions the song as a cultural touchstone in the fight for equality—a fight that rages on.
Arriving on the heels of MLK/FBI and Judas and the Black Messiah, Daniel’s film examines how the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under Director J. Edgar Hoover, cruelly and recklessly tried to take down the activists of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s—including Billie Holiday.
The Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated director has crafted an increasingly layered film, dense with information and revelation not only about Holiday, played by Andra Day, but about an almost obsessive campaign led by the FBI to discredit her. Lee uses old newspaper articles, as well as Johann Hari’s book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, as the basis for the screenplay, which is a deep-dive into the singer’s life and her performances of the anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit.”
In 1947, Holiday received requests to perform “Strange Fruit” at various gigs, but police demanded that she not sing it. She sang it anyway, but Treasury Department Narcotics Bureau chief Harry Anslinger, played by Garrett Hedlund, who wants to take down Holiday, can only charge her for “inciting a riot,” so he uses her drug habit against her, too.
When Jimmy Fletcher, played by Trevante Rhodes, arrives on the scene, he is an undercover agent for Anslinger, much like Lakieth Stanfield’s undercover informant character in Judas and the Black Messiah. His job is to seduce Holiday and inform Anslinger when Holiday is using heroin. There’s just one problem: he really likes her.
This leads to a couple of problems in the script—namely, the amount of time spent with Fletcher himself. You wouldn’t go to a Billie Holiday concert to hear another person sing, the same way you don’t tune in to a Billie Holiday biopic to hear another person talk. But nearly thirty minutes are spent with Fletcher, following him around as he runs errands for Anslinger, or as he discusses the atrocities of his job with other Black agents.
Fittingly, the movie is best when it follows Holiday. The backstage sequences show a more human side of the singer, who is exploited by the press for her heroin use.
Holiday deserves the biopic treatment, especially for younger generations to discover her work, but the details of her life and career are far more interesting and nuanced than the film makes them out to be—glossed over in montage, bogged down by subplots.
Nevertheless, Day is utterly sensational every moment she’s on screen. She slips into the singer’s high heels and raspy voice, lean frame and long dress, and her rendition of “Strange Fruit” is the stuff of legends.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday positions the song as a cultural touchstone in the fight for equality—a fight that rages on. As Holiday performs the song one last time, its resonance is overwhelming. For all of the film’s flaws, it is deeply important to witness the impact of “Strange Fruit” as an enduring, heartbreaking cry for freedom and change.
This film is available for streaming on Hulu starting February 26. Go here for more on Billie Holiday’s life and legacy.