IR Film Review: BILLIE [Greenwich]

The essence of Billie Holiday's story as told through the new documentary "Billie" is both indicative and reflective in its perspective. Billie Holiday was a hard partier and seemed to pursue a life of drama and conflict. As always there is so much to explain below the surface. However in the telling of the story, the texture of her childhood, her survival and defense instincts, her methods of coping and her texture of perception and ambition were all instrumental in her lifestyle, choice of men (and women) but, most specifically, her ability to convey that aspect of the blues while also being a voice for her generations' problems even before it was considered remotely safe to do so.

The structure of the doc is through the eyes of a woman in the 70s who herself was enamored of Holiday's story which had happened over a generation before her. She began doing interviews down the rabbit hole wth everyone from a pimp in Baltimore from Holiday's beginnings to Count Basie. These conversations are all captured on audio and used as the framing mechanism (as in 99% of the interviews) to show the progression of her life. It is undeniably balanced with some of her musical performances and photographs but one gets a sense of her self destructive qualities but also the aspect of angling the situation to her doing (even if it always didn't work out well for her). Of course all of the conversations are circumspect to what she is actually thinking.

There is one specific radio interview included that Holiday did around the time (or close to) her final performance at Carnegie Hall. However the texture of the FBI following her with the aspect of making a name shows that (like MLK down the line), her lifestyle gave them a window in order to try to discredit her. But her voice always came through, despite any willful destruction in her life. One specific song speaks to the perspective of the slave rather obliquely but shows the polar opposite she could inhabit from deep soul songs to playing with big bands like she did with Basie. Some interesting anecdotes especially with how she toured with Artie Shaw in the South does speak to the intensive problems of the day (which still resonate today) but also the late nights in New York which also spoke to the abandonment of the time and the proliferation of drugs and other vices that would never have been heard anywhere near mainstream media.

This of course is the reality of any time period, it jut depends on who is there to tell it. That is why one interview with one of her drummers is so specifically raw because he isn't afraid to speak his mind on what really happened (while also challenging the white privilege of the woman interviewing him). The parallel storyline with the interviewer and what eventually happened to her of course opens up more questions but this reviewer won't spoil it. Nonetheless, the journey of Billie Holiday was both vivacious and telling but also a dark path that not only showed great talent and insight but also great suffering, both at her hands and the hands of others. A-

By Tim Wassberg