A Tent-Pole Performance Holding up a Fraying Marquee
3/5
Spoilers
This week we settled on a brief subscription to NOW TV. They have two Oscar nominated films available to watch and, whilst we're streaming, have Justice League and the mighty Scoob available too. In a busy film month the latter two may be pushing it a bit, timewise, but I would very much like to try to fit the important one in if possible. After all, it features all of you favourite characters coming together in one place to fight a bad guy. And, apparently, Jason Isaacs voices Dick Dastardly, so that's a bonus. Yikes!
But first up were the two definites. On Friday we began with the brilliant Promising Young Woman, a powerful and often darkly comic take on rape-culture and the patriarchal freedoms awarded to nice, white men. Emerald Fennell delivered and directed a knock out script, giving Carey Mulligan's excellent star-turn a suitable setting. Yesterday we moved onto The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Although we were given another great performance, rightly nominated for Best Actress, the directing and script provided more of a hinderance than a help.
The film is two hours, but feels a lot longer. Obviously, watching anything at home can have that impact on a movie - we paused to get drinks, pop to the toilet, move a car, re-explain something one of us missed. But it really did feel like we had sat through the Snyder cut of the movie, an exhausting marathon that makes you regret your decision to ever take up running. A large part of that was down to a clunky script. Scenes appeared, especially in the first half of the film, with a sole purpose of answering a question. "Why do you take drugs, Billie?" "Where have you been, Jimmy?" "What is Strange Fruit about?" Rather than let the dialogue introduce these elements carefully and skilfully weave in the answers, they just asked them at the head of the scene with no set-up. If a question was not posed, several scenes just launched abruptly into a mini-monologue or big statement moment, apropos of nothing. The secret to a powerful script is often in the subtly of its dialogue.
The bigger of the two evils, though, was the direction. If I didn't know better, I would have assumed that Lee Daniels was not an Oscar nominated director but a movie-debutant creating his first post-college movie. The word I kept coming back to when thinking about the c
hoices made was 'cheesy'; not a word you want to associate with a film dealing with such weighty issues. Lucas-esque text sweeps across the screen with wanton abandon. Every time the scene moves to the FBI offices, music best originating from a late 80s Harrison Ford thriller cuts in, doors swing wide open with dramatic thrust, and the mood is suddenly very tense. We get endless montages, presumably as the writer had run out of plausible dialogue. And a incredibly 'windows movie maker' obsession with wandering in and out of black and white footage at really random moments or just changing the colour filter with seemingly no purpose.
Coupled with this was a bizarre framing device with Leslie Jordan, set in 1957, interviewing Holiday. Although this was forgotten for most of the movie, Daniels did remember again towards then end of the film. Then, following the last scene of that frame, continued to tell more story, the frame discarded.
As I stated towards the top of this review, Andra Day's performance is brilliant. I had never connected much with Holiday as a jazz performer before but found something in this very human performance that made the almost-mythical Holiday real. Day brings singing, voice, and deep characterisation. It is this which holds the whole film up. Whilst the direction and writing seem to struggle knowing whether this is a movie about Strange Fruit and lynching, about the F.B.I.'s hounding of the African American community, about drug abuse, or simply a biopic, whether it is a drama, a tragedy, or even a black comedy, Day brings some humanity and realism to the proceedings.
There are many other films to catch this awards season that do a better job than this. Watch One Night in Miami for the use of a song in discussing
the African-American experience. Watch Ma Rainy's Black Bottom to see a specific performer used as a prism to view black lives in the United States. Watch Judas and the Black Messiah to get a real understanding of the F.B.I. attacking the civil rights movement. But for a defining performance of Lady Day, watch this.
Director: Lee Daniels
Writer: Suzan-Lori Parks
Composer: Kris Bowers
Starring: Audra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Rob Morgan, Garrett Hedlund, & Da'Vine Joy Randolph
Available to stream on Sky Cinema / NOW TV
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