Whitney is a documentary about the life of iconic pop star, singer and actor, Whitney Houston. Kevin MacDonald directed it, and he is best known for Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland, The Eagle and How I Live Now, which is a fairly diverse mix of documentary, drama and action. If you are someone who does not normally watch documentaries, but love Whitney Houston’s music, you should definitely check it out in theaters.
Since Houston’s death, this documentary may be the closest that you can get to feeling chills when you hear her voice at full blast in a movie theater. Even without the extensive interviews with her family, friends and work associates, it would be worth seeing two hours of watching her do what she did best and looking gorgeous while doing it. While more rigorous and substantial than the average television tell all gossip serial, Whitney basically follows the same trajectory by chronicling her life while unevenly providing socioeconomic, political and historical context to compare and contrast Houston’s life with the average American, particularly in terms of her hometown, Newark, NJ, and her ability to make the American National Anthem appealing to everyone, which considering the controversy of its origins and praise of slavery and the current nonviolent protest of kneeling to protest the legacy of that national original sin, was quite an accomplishment. The documentary shows her descent into oblivion then backtracks by trying to determine who inflicted the pain that she tried to erase by self-medicating.
One of her brothers, I believe that it was Gary Garland, sagely says, “If you don’t resolve, if you don’t deal with things,” he then whispers, “they never go away.” Before watching Whitney, I actually did not know who lit the match that eventually turned Houston’s life into ashes, but my subconscious must have recognized that person because I cackled in derision when this person briefly appears early in the documentary because to my untrained, untalented eye, this person did not belong in the same pantheon as the rest of Houston’s talented clan. One of these things is not like the other. The problem with having people watch out for Houston is that the film implicitly suggests that they suffered similar abuse so if they could not protect themselves, they would not be able to protect her. A patient can’t be their own doctor or help others if the patient is in dire need of treatment too.
I never thought it was possible that a documentary could inadvertently rehabilitate Bobby Brown, who clearly plays a role in her demise, but in Whitney, her family throws themselves under the bus whether it is her brothers admitting that they introduced her to drugs and Brown was actually a light weight, or the afterthought reveal that her father pioneered what later happened to Amy Whinehouse and her dad by telling Houston that she did not have to go to rehab. I will never understand why people don’t get the concept of you can’t kill the golden goose either with neglect or actual harmful acts. No one seemed to understand the definition of how to protect someone. It also psychologically explains why Houston would find Brown appealing based on all the behaviors modeled in her family.
Whitney is startling because it reveals that even with hindsight, several people in her family were more alarmed by a lesbian friend than their vampiric treatment of the person whom they allegedly claimed to love. Robyn Crawford does not speak in this documentary, and while granting access is not necessarily an indication that someone isn’t genuine in their feelings, Crawford’s silence speaks volumes. She wanted the best for Houston and proved it by her actions when she stages an ultimatum intervention to save her friend, who did not want to be saved, then follows through. Whereas others are relieved by Crawford’s departure, it is the true nail in the coffin.
Whitney shows a lot of archival footage and home videos of Houston, and what struck me about her interactions with people was how she was a mirror and talented emotional mimic of whoever was in the room with her. She would perhaps commence with her own thoughts about how she felt, but often when the other person, whether it was her mother or Brown, lightened the tone by mocking people, she would swiftly switch gears and take it to the next level even when she initially expressed shock at the shit talking. She was good at reading a room and then running with it to recapture the spotlight, but whether or not it is problematic depends on whom she decides to keep around her. The spirit of her blowing off steam becomes more mean spirited and less frank.
Whitney is not a perfect documentary. It is a too long and can be repetitive at times. While I appreciated the peek into the logistics of producing musical hits, I was frustrated that this aspect of her life was not more consistently examined. For example, one album was very expensive to record and took four years to make. It is possible that I missed it, but which album was it? I could possibly figure out if I looked at the name of the interviewee and the time period, but I should not have to do that if the documentary is going to cover that moment. The best part of the documentary is when Rickey Minor explains the switch from a waltz tempo to a tempo that was characteristic of black music to fit Houston’s vocal strengths in performing the National Anthem in a single take. I don’t know anything about music, and while I have a prurient curiosity about the dishy aspects of her life, I wanted more about what her intellectual genius that made her so different from every other singer. Yes, she was beautiful and talented, but it also takes technical savvy to mold those raw gifts into something marketable and artistically innovative, but she is depicted as a creation and as simply existing in a state of perfection.
Whitney only briefly provides a single detail about Houston’s relationship with Michael Jackson. When I was a kid, if I was given the power to be a matchmaker, I would have paired them off so I really wanted more about what their hanging out actually looked like, especially given Jackson’s own history of surviving abuse and drug use. Were they actually friends who confided in each other about the similarities of their life or two work colleagues who grew close over the years and could hang after work to extend the talk around the water cooler to a looser locale away from the office? Someone needs to get on this story.
I highly recommend that Houston fans rush to the theater to see Whitney because of the theatrical surround sound system, but if you decide to see it at home, while the sound may not be as good in quality as a movie theater, you will basically get the same experience. My friend cried through the entire movie, and she was not even as eager to watch it as I was. My eyes stayed dry, but my arms were covered with goose bumps at the chance to experience Houston’s talent once more.