{"id":3974,"date":"2016-10-25T18:33:52","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T22:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=3974"},"modified":"2026-10-16T16:35:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T20:35:29","slug":"what-happened-miss-simone-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=3974","title":{"rendered":"What Happened, Miss Simone?-2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Happened, Miss Simone? -2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director Liz Garbus<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starring Nina Simone<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scott’s Review #499<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"70308063\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reviewed October 25, 2016<\/p>\n

Grade: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nina Simone, who died in 2003 at seventy, was an iconic singer and pianist with a musical style all her own.<\/p>\n

As important as her soulful musical creativity, Simone was also a civil rights activist during the restless 1960s and spoke out about Black Power and racial discrimination.<\/p>\n

This led to much controversy.<\/p>\n

What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) tells her story in a thorough, rich fashion.<\/p>\n

Executive produced by her daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, who is interviewed throughout the documentary, the piece is standard fare, using interviews and performances by Simone.<\/p>\n

We experience her upbringing in North Carolina, her acceptance into the prestigious Juilliard, her family’s reliance on her for money, and her years of struggle performing in dingy nightclubs.<\/p>\n

I loved seeing the old clips of her performances. They are raw, gritty, and full of something special, almost poetic.<\/p>\n

Simone struggled to relax; she gave every ounce of energy in her shows and knew no other way to be.<\/p>\n

Simone is like no other, and the documentary doesn’t need to explain it. Her performances tell it all. Not one to phone in performance and arguably not really “performing” at all, Simone was as real as they come.<\/p>\n

She immersed herself in her music – and seemed to drift off into another reality.<\/p>\n

As an activist, Nina Simone is shown to be controversial, not against supporting violence by blacks against whites in the name of freedom.<\/p>\n

Simone had tumultuous relationships with both her husband and daughter and has claimed to have been beaten repeatedly and forced to work.<\/p>\n

The text draws clear comparisons to other singers, such as Aretha Franklin. There is an element to Simone that other singers of that day did not have. She had a style all her own and did not “play the game” to achieve her success.<\/p>\n

Instead, she chose to only be true to herself.<\/p>\n

This is not a slight against Franklin, but the documentary states that if Simone had been happier, she might have had more commercial appeal, but would she have been satisfied with that?<\/p>\n

I doubt it, as she was an intense soul.<\/p>\n

Shocking to me are claims of physical abuse vocalized by her daughter, but this is explained away as a result of her mental illness and not herself at times.<\/p>\n

Prescription drugs and diagnoses weren’t what they are now.<\/p>\n

From a critical perspective, the documentary delivers what it should: an overview of this amazing talent, warts and all.<\/p>\n

We see her from childhood until retirement, and cannot help but pity her in a way because of her apparent mental illness, which caused her not always to be the charming celebrity we would want her to be.<\/p>\n

What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) helped me learn something fresh about an artist I wasn’t familiar with. That is what a documentary should do.<\/p>\n

Oscar Nominations:\u00a0<\/strong>Best Documentary Feature<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Happened, Miss Simone? -2015 Director Liz Garbus Starring Nina Simone Scott’s Review #499 Reviewed October 25, 2016 Grade: B+ Nina Simone, who died in 2003 at seventy, was an iconic singer and pianist with a musical style all her own. As important as her soulful musical creativity, Simone was also a civil rights activist … Continue reading What Happened, Miss Simone?-2015<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[240,158,46],"tags":[5101,5102],"class_list":["post-3974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-movie-reviews","category-bios","category-documentaries","tag-liz-garbus","tag-nina-simone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3974"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24840,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974\/revisions\/24840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}