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What Happened opens in 1976 with Simone’s performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, a brittle, brutal hour-long set that’s indelible for all the right reasons—and all the wrong ones. Simone takes the stage looking weary and resigned, a harbinger of her prickly stage demeanor. She pauses between songs to banter with the audience, flitting in and out of coherence so rapidly, her prestissimo piano solos seem sluggish by comparison. She snaps at the audience when they don’t applaud enough and accosts a woman for having the temerity to get out of her seat. But the music is no worse for the wear, a classic example of a stage performance that is both energized and enervated by the performer’s emotional turmoil. Simone had grown to hate her life’s work, and Garbus flashes back to Simone’s early years to examine the path that led to her professional nadir.