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Rating: Recently, I argued that advertising aimed at promoting a soon-to-be-released work (films and such) can be misleading. The viewer forms certain expectations, only to find a cultural product that is not entirely satisfying. But it can also happen that you come across a film, like the one I am about to review, that is not heavily advertised but noteworthy. This is the case of "The United States vs. Billie Holiday," directed by Lee Daniels and inspired by the book "Chasing the Scream" by Johann Hari, published in 2015. And I don't know if the name Billie Holiday might sound unfamiliar to some young members of the "millennial" generation, but certainly the existential struggles of one of the greatest African American vocalists of the last century deserve to be recalled precisely because racism, both in the USA and elsewhere, has not exactly disappeared.
Already half a century ago, in 1972, a film dedicated to Holiday titled "Lady Sings the Blues" was released, with the masterful Diana Ross playing the role of Billie. This time, however, it is the singer Andra Day who excellently embodies (though not matching Diana Ross) the divine vocalist who, at the start of the storyline towards the end of the 1940s, is already famous in Harlem nightclubs as an excellent interpreter of blues and jazz. She could very well, with her deep and abrasive voice, hold her own against the great Ella Fitzgerald and have a clear path to deserved commercial success. But the problem is that in her vast repertoire, there is a song titled "Strange Fruit," composed in 1939 to denounce the cruel practice of lynching against unfortunate African Americans in the deep South of the States. The lyrics are too explicit and likely to provoke turbulence in certain audiences, but obviously, you can't arrest a singer for what she performs at her concerts. And so, Hoover's FBI concocts the strategy of targeting Billie for her vices, namely her propensity for using not only alcohol but also, and especially, heavy substances like heroin. This leads to surveillance, arrests, trials followed by imprisonment, which the protagonist endures with the utmost dignity and without backing down from her rightful determination to continue performing "Strange Fruit" live. And so it will be until, hospitalized for liver cirrhosis, she dies in 1959 at just 44, not without suffering the disgrace of being arrested by the FBI on her deathbed for "possession of narcotics." As they say: being a victim of a sadistic, obtuse, and reactionary system.
The film, technically flawless despite having some clunky moments in some parts of the story, relies on the excellent performance of Andra Day (awarded the Golden Globe in 2021 as best actress, just as Diana Ross had been for the same role in 1973) who is very skillful in embodying the legendary Billie. She emerges as a singer both admirable and a woman unhappy and fragile (she had also suffered a rape at the age of just 10) who sought solace in drugs to gain ephemeral relief from her existential pains, while the men she associated with (musicians, impresarios, dealers, undercover federal agents) were certainly not worthy of standing by her side.
Fortunately, she has left us a vast musical repertoire, among which "Strange Fruit" stands out, defined by critics in 1978 as the "song of the twentieth century." And if in 1937 the bill introduced in the United States Senate to penalize lynching was not approved, a new proposal on the same subject reached the Yankee Parliament in 2020. Who knows if this is the right time (assuming and not conceding that Trumpian senators do not obstruct the passage of a just law of civilization..).
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