Worth: $19.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown
Intro:
Whitney: Can I Be Me is a harrowing, uncompromising, beautifully crafted portrait of the deeply flawed pop princess.
British documentarian Nick Broomfield has built an impressive career on lifting up rocks and shining a light on the ugly creatures that live underneath them, essaying Kurt Cobain in Kurt & Courtney by examining the human detritus that bobbed around him, and proving the world of hip hop in Biggie & Tupac to be an even seamier and more dangerous one than anyone would have initially thought. With his run-and-gun style and tacit placement of himself at his films’ centre, Broomfield is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining doco makers to ever wield a camera, and his filmography is dotted with minor classics, from Aileen Wuornos: The Selling Of A Serial Killer and Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam to Tattooed Tears and Chicken Ranch.
With Whitney: Can I Be Me, however, Broomfield radically switches gears, delivering the kind of standard, after-the-fact, talking heads-style documentary that he has usually avoided. But despite the more formal stylistic approach (video clip maestro, Rudi Dolezal, is listed as co-director), Broomfield’s willingness to dig deep and expose the dark stuff remains front-and-centre. He quickly establishes pop and R’n’B superstar, Whitney Houston, as supremely damaged goods, never shying away from her flaws, but doing so with enormous sympathy and sorrow. A kid from the ghetto introduced to drugs by her own wayward brothers at a disturbingly early age, Broomfield paints Houston as someone who never really had a chance.
Her incredible talents were first exploited by parents that lived through her vicariously, and then bent out of shape by a record company that pushed her firmly into the pop arena, wrenching her away from disapproving black audiences. Houston’s infamously toxic relationship with equally damaged hip hop bad boy, Bobby Brown (largely viewed by the media as the beginning of her end), is seen by Broomfield more as a symptom than a cause, with the filmmaker tracing the singer’s problems way further back than that.
It’s a dark, brooding portrait that will ironically appeal least to Whitney Houston’s fans. Yes, it showcases her amazing vocal skills and powerful charisma, but Whitney: Can I Be Me is much more than a simple music biography. It’s a broad, brave treatise on race relations in America; the crippling lure of drugs; and the venality and cold, unfeeling nature of the music industry. Harrowing and beautifully crafted, Whitney: Can I Be Me is scathing and scarring in equal measure.
