The film I am going to review is about one of those strange cases, in which a singer was imprisoned and spent the rest of her life being watched by a security agency of her country, because one of the songs she sang was considered by the people in power as a dangerous song, when in fact, it only reflected a reality that was lived at that time.

Lee Daniels is the filmmaker in charge of directing the movie. He was the producer of that shocking film that won Halley Berry an Oscar: Monster Ball. His name became more popular when he directed the film Precious, which got six Oscar nominations, winning for Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actress. I liked that movie, very raw and painful. It is a devastating film.

The Paperboy and The Butler were the director's next films, perhaps less successful than Precious, but maintaining the director's quality and style. Although in my opinion, I found The Butler a bit soft. It was a very condescending film when it came to portraying the life of the butler and his work in the White House. In recent years Lee Daniels has focused on his television success, the Empire series and the Star series. I have not seen either. I can't comment on that, but according to the specialized critics, Empire is the one that has obtained more success and recognition.

With his new film, the filmmaker returns to a subject that is still current: racial discrimination, the struggle for civil rights and the prevailing racism in society. He does so through the biopic of a great singer: Billie Holiday and her stormy life, full of problems with the law, for singing the song Stranger Fruit.

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Billie Holiday is a successful singer, she performs in the best theaters, the public loves her. At concerts, people want her to sing the song Strenger Fruit, but in doing so she gets into trouble. Hoover is the head of the FBI and they launch a surveillance on the singer. The song refers to the lynching of African-Americans in the United States and they consider it an anti-American song, it was the era of McCarthyism. But they couldn't jail her for singing, so they assigned FBI agent Harry Anslinger to lead the investigation. The singer was a drug addict and they used that perfect excuse to arrest her. One of the first African-American FBI agents, Jimmy Fletcher, would infiltrate the artist's entourage to catch her. But after being sentenced to prison for a while, the agent's point of view will change and he will start a love affair with Holiday. We will also discover the origins of the artist, her toxic relationships with the different men in her life and her fatal drug addiction.

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Professional critics have had several negative reactions to the film. I can't deny that the film presents some errors in the way the director wanted to tell the story, which has a duration of just over two hours, but the flaws in the rhythm, make it too long.

The story begins in the 50's, with Holiday giving an interview to an important celebrity journalist, through flashbacks we travel to the past, ten years ago, when the artist was a successful star, but she was already in the crosshairs of the FBI, who watched her at all times, especially during her performances.

Agent Fletcher appears as a fanatical soldier of the singer, who tries by all means to infiltrate her environment to collect evidence and get her arrested for drug possession and consumption. The FBI's goal was to neutralize her completely, using any kind of trickery, if possible by planting evidence or putting pressure on friends of the artist's entourage, such as actress Tallulah Banhead, who was white and successful, but was rumored to be a lesbian and had a relationship with Holiday.

**But the main problem with the film is that its pacing is too uneven. At times the story flows, is interesting and shows things about the artist that, as a viewer, I want to see. Suddenly, all that adrenaline and good rhythm decays, gets lodged, wasting time with scenes that could easily be summarized or lengthen some scenes in the relationship that is forming between Holiday and agent Fletcher. There are moments when the story has an exciting thrust, only to fall into a ponderous narrative. This occurs throughout the film.

The director adds some black and white sequences, which I felt added nothing, either aesthetically or narratively. I didn't find any sense in those brief scenes. We already know that it covers the forties and fifties, they are unnecessary scenes to use in black and white, from my point of view.

The musical scenes are excellent, but poorly distributed. That's why this biopic of the singer doesn't quite work. But it's not a bad movie, it has some attributes that strongly caught my attention.

The film is held up by the great performance of the lead actress, who plays Billie Holiday. She makes all the difference, doing an extraordinary job. That's why she has been nominated for a Golden Globe, the actress deserves that nomination. Although she is the weakest of the group of nominees, she has a hard time winning. The scenes in which she sings, are another plus for the film, because her music is intense, and is performed with the same passion and strength as the original artist.

The racism of the time is also well portrayed, there is a scene in which Holiday, despite being a recognized star, is prevented from getting into the main elevator of a prestigious hotel. The most painful thing is that the one who prevents him is the African-American boy who works as an elevator operator, and he is the only black who can be inside the elevator. He prevents him from entering, because otherwise he would be fired, and the boy urges him to please use the service elevator.

The final strength of the film is that Lee Daniels, in this case, is not shy or soft when it comes to showing the artist's frenetic life. This is not a biopic in which the unpleasantness is hidden and only the good side is shown. No. The filmmaker, in the style of his successful Precious, is going to show us the raw and ugly side. I like that. I'm tired of music biopics that only show a positive aspect, for example the movie about Mercury, I find it one of the worst music biopics, because they hid many negative aspects.

Daniels shows us Holiday's drug addiction, especially heroin injection, in all its crudeness. A part of her childhood, with a mother dedicated to prostitution who forced her to do the same when she was still a child. Toxic relationships with violent men, who abused her, took advantage of her and even beat her. In addition to nudity and sex scenes that I had not seen in a Hollywood movie for a long time.

It seems incredible that in the 21st century I am surprised with sex scenes, but lately Hollywood movies are too conservative and sex seems to be a taboo subject. Hollywood seems to have gone back in time and we are living another era full of censorship. That's why I defend the filmmaker's courage to include shocking and raw scenes. Showing things as they are, without concessions.

Billie Holiday's life was hard.She was raped as a child, worked as a prostitute for a while, before she started singing in the clubs of New York during the 30's. Until she was discovered by a producer, who saw the talent this African-American woman had for jazz music. But the traumas of her childhood, rape, poverty and prostitution, would influence the type of relationships she would have with men, mostly toxic relationships.

Becoming famous and singing in clubs would lead her to a constant abuse of alcohol and drugs, it was at this stage, in the late thirties and early forties, when it seems that she became addicted to heroin. She could not give up drugs, the addiction was stronger than her, but at the same time it was the only escape she had, because of all the experiences she had lived through. From my point of view, she was sick, she was addicted, but she didn't get the right help, she ended up getting cirrhosis and the FBI wanted to use drugs to shut her up, to lock her up, to prevent her from singing Stranger Fruit.

If you want to know everything about the life of this artist you can read all her biography in this link

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It took fifty years after Holiday first performed the song for Time magazine to name it the best song of the 20th century. The song was written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish-born composer and poet, who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Allan. The poet was a member of the communist party at the time.

According to reports on the song, Abel Meeropol was inspired by a photograph showing two young black men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, hanging from a tree, full of blood, after being lynched by the Ku Klux Kan in 1939. It was that same year, at the Cafè Society, that Billie Holiday performed it for the first time in front of an audience.

The fact that the artist sang that song in her performances and was applauded for it, was considered extremely dangerous by the FBI. For them it was an anti-American action intended to disrupt the order. A song that only expressed a tragic reality experienced by the African-American population in several regions of the country, lynching.

The song has regained importance in recent years, during the problems and demonstrations against racism that have occurred in the United States. Strenger Fruits has become an anthem in the fight for civil rights and equality.

If you want to research more about this song, you can read the following report: Link

You can enjoy the song, performed by the real artist, in the following Youtube video, which was uploaded by Reelin'in the Years Productions and is part of their archives and they have made it freely available to documentarians.

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