The exceptional and the conventional do battle in What Happened, Miss Simone?, a thoughtful, admiring look at the gigantically talented singer and artist Nina Simone. Directed by veteran documentarian Liz Garbus (Oscar-nominated for co-directing The Farm: Angola, USA), the film seeks to showcase Simone in all her complexity—civil rights icon, trailblazing jazz musician, a victim of mental illness—and there’s no questioning the love that flows through every frame. And yet, Miss Simone? is disappointingly safe in its approach. Oddly, the reverence Garbus shows Simone does her subject a disservice: The straightforward structure diminishes the singer’s rebellious genius.
Miss Simone? begins intriguingly, showing footage of Simone in concert in 1976, her attitude almost antagonistic as she approaches the piano to start the show. That iron will, that dedication to her art above all else, is an important jumping-off point for the film, which soon goes back to her early days. Born in 1933 as Eunice Waymon in North Carolina, Simone soon becomes entranced by music, whether at church or in her classical piano lessons as she learns about figures like Bach. Working from archival photos and Simone’s own interviews, Miss Simone? gives us the sense of a young woman finding herself through song, digging into blues and jazz and harnessing a voice that’s astoundingly expressive, suggesting vulnerability and rugged toughness with equal skill.
But because of Simone’s race, her career was never going to be easy. Garbus illustrates how the singer’s ascension collided with the civil rights era of the 1960s, a movement she embraced. Closer in temperament to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King Jr.—although she respected both men’s message—Simone welcomed her image as a firebrand, covering the anti-racism classic “Strange Fruit” and writing “Mississippi Goddam,” a song protesting (in part) the 1964 Birmingham church bombing that left four girls dead.
Without dime-store psychoanalyzing Simone’s inner drive, Garbus does hint that perhaps Simone’s resilience in the face of criticism—her skyrocketing career suffered because of her ’60s political stances—came from an early age, when she would be ridiculed for her wide nose and large lips. Miss Simone? makes the case that Simone would have spoken her mind no matter what era, but that the African-American struggle for equality was a particularly fertile catalyst for her talent and her outspokenness.