Flawed Love By Bella Jewel.Epub Movie In A

And it tends to skimp on the context, never truly addressing the complex dynamic of Black artists getting rich by bending to the will of white power brokers; theres only a tossed-off line about how Billie should be more like Ella Fitzgerald in the way she manages herself.

Billie Holiday on Hulu, a Flawed Biopic With a Stunning Performance By Andra Day.

It snagged a couple of Golden Globe nods, including one for breakout star Andra Day, but the credibility of such a claim continues to dwindle.

Director Lee Daniels hasnt seen any Oscar love since Precious, and there seems to be a fair amount of biopic fatigue among Academy voters and audiences alike.

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So maybe its best if we watch this movie in a vacuum, and see it if turns up some solid drama and insight into the irrepressible Ms.

Holiday.

You get the feeling youre about to see exactly what its like to be a colored woman in mid-century America: Flashback 10 years.

Billies being targeted by the FBI because she keeps singing Strange Fruit, the harrowing song about the lynching of Black people in the South.

It made her a star in the late 30s, and now, in the post-war States, shes a jazz icon.

Anslinger (Garret Hedlund) drops the N-word in a meeting with other Caucasian male law-enforcement honchos; he explains that jazz is the product of the devil, and says he plans to bust Billie Holiday because he knows shes a drug user.

Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes) wiggles backstage in his military uniform and pals up with her but its a front.

She takes the stage in Philadelphia, sees a line of cops standing in the back of the room patting their billy clubs and goes fully defiant, launching a cappella into Strange Fruit.

Shes arrested. Between inciting a riot and drug possession, shes sent to jail for a year.

Jimmy feels twinges of guilt; hes one of the first Black men working for the FBI, but hes also just a pawn for Anslinger, a racist POS.

She books a tour and hits the road, and Jimmys tasked with following her.

In a keep-your-friends-close-but-your-enemies-closer move, she treats him like another member of the tour crew.

She kicked the drugs while in prison, but is back on the shit to the point where the band gripes that shes blowing her dough on blow instead of paying them.

The Jimmy thing becomes irresistible, forming a very pointy triangle with her abusive husband, Louis McKay (Rob Morgan).

She sure seems to be on a road to ruin, and the FBIs insistence on making an example out of her only makes her go that much faster.

Shes hard and angry and confident and talented and smart and more than a little bit broken.

Billie Holiday is in many ways a typical melodrama-biopic along the lines of middling stuff like Get On Up or Bohemian Rhapsody.

The 2020 documentary Billie also on Hulu might offer more insight.

Thinly rendered supporting characters flit in and out of the story.

The Jimmy character is wan and underdeveloped, in spite of Rhodes easy charisma.

It never fully cultivates the tragedies of Billies life, the things that made her the troubled adult she was, into the subtext.