“The United States vs. Billie Holiday” is one of the most stylistically chaotic features I’ve seen in a long time that wasn’t classified as “avant garde” or “experimental.” 🥴 🥴

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I loved Andra Day’s performance as Billie Holiday.

She was good.

Good’t even.

Nailed the cadence of Holiday’s speech.

Every time Andra wasn’t on screen, I was awaiting her return.

 

 

This film serves as the second narrative feature I’ve screened this year that highlights J. Edgar Hoover’s unrelenting racist obsession with taking out Black leaders for his fantasy of how Black folks’ collective progress damaged America’s whiteness during his FBI tenure. Ugh. Complete and utter trash. 😖 😖 The other film was “Judas and the Black Messiah.”

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The screenplay was wonky. 🥴🥴🥴 For example, during the scene that introduces Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund) walking into the Senate Chamber to discuss the takedown of Holiday, the tone of the writing felt off and unnatural. Far be it from me to know or predict what a group of powerful white men who operationalized the takedown of an entertainer would say, especially with the likes of Roy Cohn and Joseph McCarthy in the room. But the overall flow of the roundtable, where almost every character used a slur over a two-minute span, hit the ear weirdly.

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Directing:

Bruh, this film was LOOOOOOOOOONG.

Exhaustingly long.

And I attribute it to Daniels’ directing style.

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Perspectives unsystematically shifted too many times in short spans within the same scenes.

I totally forgot the film was introduced as an interview between Holiday and Reginald Love Devine (Leslie Jordan) as a career retrospective. Honestly, a bit of voice-over narration could have helped this because the interview serving as a medium by which the audience explores Holiday’s budding career, then legal troubles, was missed until it flashed back to Devine and Holiday discussing her relationship with Tallulah Bankhead (Natasha Lyonne).

And, bruuuuuuuuhhhhh…I’m sorry, but that dog funeral lost me—wholly unnecessary. That could’ve been two lines of text in someone’s script after Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes) asked why Billie cancelled a show.

Speaking of Fletcher, Lee definitely added unnecessary eye candy shots of Fletcher after Holiday was busted. (I ain’t mad, but it’s another example of how so many shots in this film did not actually serve the narrative.)

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Also, apropos of nothing, Miss Freddy’s (Miss Lawrence) wigs were distracting.

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“The United States vs. Billie Holiday” is a film of a few elements excelling among the rest.

The Good’t:

🔥 Performances

🔥 Costuming

🔥 Production design

The Lawdhamercy:

🥴 Directing

🥴 Inconsistent cinematography

🥴 Writing

🥴 Hairstyling (only Miss Lawrence’s wigs)

🥴 Editing