Like the larger-than-life character it portrays, Lee Daniels’s new movie is multifaceted. It’s a history of the vicious racism that for centuries destroyed a segment of America’s population, a truth embodied in the jazz singer’s “Strange Fruit,” the eerie song about a lynching that slithers like a snake through the film. It’s a comment on the cruel irony of the U.S. government trying to bring down a national hero, in the vein of Sam Pollard’s recent MLK/FBI. And it pulls a stellar performance from the pop and soul singer Andra Day, who manages to capture the many selves of Billie Holiday: her traumatic upbringing, the drug use that would kill her at just 44, and the impossible duality of bitter and sweet that existed in her enduring voice. —J.V.
The Arts Intel Report
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Where
Streaming on Hulu
Etc
Andra Day in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” Photo courtesy of Hulu.