WHITNEY: Portrait Of Popstar Is Vivid, Shocking & Essential

There’s no one else in music history quite like Whitney Houston. Her achievements were (and still are) colossal. Her unparalleled ascent in the music industry and tragic fall from grace are obviously of considerable interest to a lot of filmmakers. Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney is the second documentary about the legend to arrive on screens within the past year.

The Houston family speak

The first was Nick Broomfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me. Broomfield’s film wasn’t particularly revelatory nor did it get the viewpoints of those closest to her, but it worked as both an effective cautionary tale and a moving tribute to the artist. On the other hand, Macdonald gains unprecedented access into the pop star’s family for his film and creates a much more powerful, vivid and shocking portrait.

The documentary world is brimming with filmmakers making terrific biographical docs on celebrities (Asif Kapadia, Brett Morgen, Liz Garbus, etc) and Kevin Macdonald has proven his worth as a documentarian. His comprehensive Bob Marley biopic from 2012 is arguably the best example in considering why he’s suitable to take on Whitney Houston’s life for cinema.

Perhaps it’s his success in the field that convinced Whitney’s next of kin to come on board or perhaps it was simply the vision he pitched to them. Their approval insinuates an imbalanced representation, a potentially cushioned version of the icon, but brothers Michael and Gary Houston are the best contributors one could have for this story.

Whilst Broomfield couldn’t reach the Houston household, Macdonald makes them his primary talking heads. Their unrestrained account of Whitney’s life details her childhood, her explosion in popularity and the bigger bang that followed the release of The Bodyguard (we’re also treated to Kevin Costner reminiscing over the film). The brothers speak of introducing drugs to their sister and, most significantly, they share an astonishing secret. The appalling new information that comes to light is something that even the greatest Whitney Houston fans won’t have known until seeing this documentary.

Intimate home videos show the real Whitney

Neither filmmakers are able to draw out Whitney’s old friend Robyn Crawford for a sit-down but Macdonald has the next best thing, and that’s the considerable amount of behind-the-public footage shot by Robyn. She captures the many facets of her best friend and rumoured lover – Whitney is entertaining, stressed, funny, outraged and embarrassed in these clips.

Their juxtaposition alone could paint a compelling up close and personal portrait of Whitney. Furthermore, none of the talking heads mince words when speaking of their feelings for Robyn, who had too much influence in Whitney’s life for them, and we also learn of the formerly inseparable pair’s savage final interaction.

Sometimes, biographical docs tend to have someone lending themselves to be the villain of the story due to their role in the central character’s life, or their words and their actions/inactions. Think of freelance journalist Nick Pisa in the Amanda Knox documentary, for example, or Mitch Winehouse in Amy (who voiced disapproval and claimed to be making a doc of the “real” story of his daughter). If there’s anyone who comes across as unlikeable in Whitney, it’s Bobby Brown.

He gives the greenlight to be interviewed but refuses to talk about the drug habits of Whitney, which he’s widely believed to have perpetuated, and some others significant in Whitney’s life speak of the outward jealousy that grew within Bobby once his wife reached superstardom and his own musical career sagged behind.

Conventional narrative structure aided by inspired edits

The access to family, close friends and collaborators is chiefly what makes Whitney the definitive cinematic biography of Nippy, as she was called by her loved ones. Close family friend Aunt Bae is an important inclusion for her role in raising offspring Bobbi Kristina Brown. The matriarch Cissy Houston has a grand aura on camera. We first see her sitting in a church she used to perform in, as the camera tracks down the room and turns to face her. The audio of her old performance and the rapturous reception plays non-diegetically, creating an audio-visual anamnesis that serves as an indelible introduction.

The filmmaker has more tricks of awesomely mixing audio and image up his sleeve – the signature hit “I Wanna Be With Somebody” is accompanied by a cool montage of the world when the song took over global airwaves, and the music video of “How Will I Know” scarily breaks down into news clippings of the Newark race riots, which was the catalyst in the family’s relocation when the singer was still a child.

Whitney was so popular in her heyday that, naturally, despite the key structuring of her story through personal testimonies and anecdotes, the media can’t be ignored. Macdonald and his archive team use plenty of material from tabloid journalism and paparazzi to establish the media as a character itself. Where some of the individuals speaking directly to the director may sound like they’re protecting the image of Whitney, the news clippings speak for themselves.

One of the most excruciating extracts is a fan’s recording of the musician’s disastrous performance during her comeback tour in 2010. The infamous Diane Sawyer interview is effectively used for this purpose too, with Whitney declaring that it was herself who was the devil in her life, when others blame Robyn, Bobby or any other entity.

Whitney: Conclusion

There really is no one else in music history quite like Whitney Houston. Her monumental accomplishments as a recording artist and harrowing personal problems are sensitively detailed in Kevin Macdonald’s terrific biography. Her life story is adeptly assembled through expressive editing and a multitude of necessary perspectives which add new layers to her character, some delightful and others truly startling. The larger-than-life figure is ripe for more than one documentary, but this is the essential one.

What did you think of Whitney? Let us know in the comments below!

Whitney is out now in UK and US cinemas. To see the release dates for other countries, click here.