Music biopics are Hollywood’s present pot of gold. With movies like Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis making absurd quantities of cash and Oscars, film producers are going to drink this effectively dry till it shrivels up and dies of dehydration. And Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black is the dry, shallow product of a subgenre that has misplaced its that means. The creatively (and morally) bankrupt and downright offensive biopic glosses over Amy Winehouse’s sophisticated, and in the end, tragic life to shine a extra flattering gentle on her father and ex-husband, distorting the actual-life occasions in her life to inform its personal narrative.

Whether you’re desirous about seeing this movie or not, I implore you to watch Asif Kapadia’s 2015 Oscar-winning documentary, Amy, which is as beautiful as it’s devastating. Seeing Back to Black solely will increase your appreciation of the documentary and exhibits that there are filmmakers on the market who give their topics the empathy they deserve. It’s essential when watching Back to Black to take into account the truth that the Amy Winehouse property co-produced the movie. Unlike the documentary, the folks concerned in Back to Black are additionally those concerned within the story being advised, leading to a film that jumps over the nuances of Amy’s life to twist the reality to make these nonetheless alive look higher. In brief, Back to Black is a reminder of the risks of dramatizing actual-life occasions, of how the reality can get misplaced when folks’s reputations are at stake and the particular person on the heart of all of it is not right here to defend themselves.

What Is ‘Back to Black’ About?

In phrases of narrative construction, Back to Black is about as fundamental as you will get. Matt Greenhalgh‘s contrived script begins with Amy as a shiny-eyed London teenager who spends her days writing songs, getting tattoos with associates, and performing small gigs within the London suburb of Camden. She adores her paternal grandmother, Cynthia (Lesley Manville), and vies for extra consideration from her father, Mitch (Eddie Marsan), who not lives at house. When she’s approached by a administration company, she instantly rejects their supply as a result of in addition they managed the Spice Girls, and as Amy tells them, “I ain’t no Spice Girl.” However, she is ultimately swayed and indicators on to report her debut album, Frank. It’s successful, however the report firm doesn’t assume it’ll do as effectively in America.

Amy units out to have extra life experiences to encourage her songwriting, and that is after we meet Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell), a captivating (a minimum of in her eyes), outgoing capital-L Lad who loves the three Ps: pubs, pool, and pints. Amy, regardless of being lovely, good, and one of the vital gifted folks on earth, is instantly attracted to the random man who gained’t shut up about racehorses, and the 2 fall in love quick. From there, we get snippets of their damaging and poisonous relationship which ends with him abruptly leaving her for his ex. When the movie feels prefer it, it exhibits Amy, you understand, writing her report-breaking sophomore album that’s thought-about one of many best of all time and is the namesake of the movie. Ultimately, the movie is extra desirous about turning a drug-fueled, poisonous relationship right into a Notting Hill-like love story.

The Amy Winehouse Movie Was Doomed From the Start

Back to Black’s brazen disinterest in bringing any nuance to Amy Winehouse’s story is baffling. When the primary photographs had been launched of Marisa Abela, Eddie Marsan, and Jack O’Connell filming the film, it lit the web alive with many followers begging for a solution to the identical query “Who asked for this?” The reply is straightforward: nobody besides the individuals who stand to revenue from it. The dying of Amy Winehouse continues to be recent within the public consciousness; in fact, the singer shouldn’t be solely outlined by her early dying however she does signify the necessity for extra empathy and understanding for ladies within the highlight.

Again and once more, in each decade, the press and public repeatedly tear down girls who expertise sudden success and who battle with fame. Amy Winehouse was continuously ridiculed, having her expertise dismissed as a result of she was an addict. The movie doesn’t present it, however when she was introduced to have been nominated for a staggering six Grammys at simply 24 years outdated, comic George Lopez cracked a joke that somebody ought to inform her when she wakes up at 6 pm and referred to her as “drunk ass.” Having her largest profession achievement ruined by public ridicule was simply one of many numerous instances her abilities had been diluted by the general public’s obsession along with her private life. The movie barely touches on how exploited she was, it’s solely desirous about Amy’s damaging conduct. And but, her consuming dysfunction, dependancy, and psychological sickness are trivialized to make means for a “love story.” The solely factor that might’ve justified this film being made is that if it spoke to this appalling remedy of girls within the highlight, however Back to Black solely appears to need to level the finger at Amy herself.

‘Back To Black’ Is Also Appalling to Look At

Taking a break from the ethics of all of it, Back to Black can also be an eyesore from begin to finish. It’s superb how Sam Taylor-Johnson can take a reasonably normal set — an residence, the streets of London, a resort bar — and make it look so digital and so pretend that it feels such as you’re watching The Sims: The Amy Winehouse Story: The Movie. Not many celebrities are as synonymous with a spot as Amy Winehouse is with London. Iconic settings are seen all through the movie — Camden, Primrose Hill, Hampstead Heath — and none of it’s captured with any sense of cinematic finesse. The streets seem like the background of a 2000s online game, each scene extra bleak and gray than the final. A selected scene when Abela’s Amy is being interviewed by Jonathan Ross is simply snigger-out-snigger dangerous. It’s a stark reminder to the viewers of absolutely the pointlessness of watching one thing so unwell-made when all it’s attempting to do is lazily recreate one thing that didn’t occur all that way back. These shoddy backdrops and grainy, gray units additional take away the viewers from the story being advised. While Bohemian Rhapsody has its many detractors, the hassle put in to recreate Queen’s iconic Live Aid efficiency places it miles forward of Back of Black.

‘Back to Black’ Distorts the Truth

The movie’s best sin (of which there are many) is that it utterly absolves Mitch Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil of any wrongdoing in Amy’s life. Fielder-Civil has admitted to introducing the singer to arduous medication, together with heroin, however the movie exhibits her first taking them once they’re on a break from their relationship. Their marriage ends when Blake, sober and measured whereas in jail, politely and calmly tells her that they’re in a poisonous marriage and it’s greatest for each of them to finish it. In actual life, Fielder-Civil gave an interview for the TV present, Amy Winehouse: The Untold Story (of which footage is proven in Kapadia’s documentary), when he bought out of jail, and Amy had been seen with one other man. In the interview, he speaks about how good-looking he’s, his gymnasium habits, and his good fashion “So what the fuck am I doing wasting my time with her,” all delivered with an harmless, content material, virtually proud smile.

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This isn’t to say that the movie ought to’ve spent its complete runtime bashing these two males — effectively, her father a minimum of. At the tip of the day, a person misplaced a daughter he adored. Actor Eddie Marsan has repeatedly defended Mitch in interviews, saying that he wouldn’t have performed the movie if it had painted Mitch as a villain and that Mitch was a standard father who made errors. Exploring their sophisticated relationship, how Mitch mishandled the facility he had over Amy, not sending her to rehab when she clearly wanted assist, would’ve given the movie some substance. Mitch typically simply stands within the background, providing opinions nobody requested for, and cradling Amy as if she merely has a abdomen ache and never that her complete life is spinning uncontrolled. The complexities of their relationship are barely touched upon, and Mitch is painted out to be a protecting, doting father — nothing extra. In actual life, Mitch was recognized to be disapproving of Amy and Blake’s relationship, calling him “manipulative” and banning him from Amy’s funeral. In the movie, that dynamic is squashed down to one second that’s virtually performed for laughs when Amy rings her father to inform her that she and Blake have eloped.

Again, he didn’t have to be an out-and-out villain, however his function in Amy’s life is performed down to a conventionally inconsequential stage. What the movie doesn’t present however the documentary (which Mitch publicly denounced) does is Mitch following Amy, at one of many lowest factors in her life, to St. Lucia as she tries to recuperate from her divorce and drug dependancy. He brings alongside a digital camera crew to report a actuality present, shoving extra cameras in her face when she had traveled internationally to escape simply that. I’m in no place to level fingers, however between the documentary and the movie, the nuances and inconvenient truths get misplaced to depict a extra flawed Amy and a much less flawed father and husband.

Marisa Abela Gives a Committed Performance as Amy Winehouse

There is one redeeming high quality of the movie: Abela is on the market attempting her greatest. It’s positively a dedicated efficiency, however it’s one weighed down by the whole lot round it not doing its job effectively. It doesn’t essentially really feel like an imitation and Abela captures Winehouse’s irreverent appeal and charisma. The film’s greatest scenes are undoubtedly those between her and Manville. Both of them soften in collectively to forge the one plausible relationship within the movie. Manville’s Cynthia is the calm respite for Amy, and the deep love they’ve for one another is the one supply of emotional heft in the complete movie. 10 seconds between them is value greater than complete scenes between Amy and Blake. However, maybe the movie’s largest atrocity is having Abela sing herself. While she has a beautiful voice, not utilizing Amy’s exhibits a blatant lack of respect for her as an artist. Amy Winehouse turned who she was as a result of folks hadn’t heard a voice like that in…ever… and nobody has ever heard it since. To take away her most valued asset and put up Abela to attempt to recreate one of many best and most original singing voices within the historical past of music is unfair to each Winehouse and Abela.

‘Back to Black’ Reduces Amy Winehouse to Her Male Relationships

A alternative that greatest highlights how a lot the movie dismisses the angle of Amy in favor of specializing in the lads surrounding her issues Amy’s music icon: Tony Bennett. Even from simply watching her face as she realizes he is among the presenters saying the winner of her class on the Grammys, you understand that he’s the whole lot to her. In actual life, a 12 months earlier than Amy handed away, she bought to report a duet with Bennett, one thing the documentary exhibits prolonged footage of, as we see a skittish Amy pressured by the prospect of not succeeding on this dream second. The film doesn’t present any of this, as a substitute together with a unnecessary dialog between Amy and her Dad about them recording a duet cowl of a Tony Bennett music on her subsequent album — one that may by no means be made.

Back to Black ought to have showcased Amy’s achievements extra, how gifted she was, and the way devoted she was to her music and extra particularly, her style. The movie has an agenda, to lionize these closest to her whereas specializing in her failures however nonetheless not attempting to perceive her. Her drug use, bulimia, psychological well being struggles — none of it’s given any nuance. Instead, they’re simply prepare stations because the movie shortly and impatiently runs by way of her life till it provides one of the vital tone-deaf finales in current cinema.

‘Back to Black’ Finishes With a Low Blow

Back to Black‘s ending couldn’t have been extra mishandled. While the one contact of classiness of the movie is available in the truth that it doesn’t present her dying, it virtually tries to make it out that Winehouse’s story has a contented ending. After listening to about her ex-husband shifting on and having a toddler with one other lady, she sings “Tears Dry on Their Own” as she ascends the steps in her new London mansion, up the place white sheets dangle in a metaphor for heaven as refined as if God himself got here down by way of the roof and snatched Amy up in his large hand like that troll in Harry Potter. It’s the cinematic model of the “Girl Who Is Going to Be OK” meme.

But, she isn’t okay. As everyone knows, Amy succumbs to years of consuming problems, dangerous well being, and drug dependancy and dies on the age of 27. We’re solely advised this through pre-credit playing cards. We do not see the aftermath, how this information shocked the world and devastated her followers (who the movie utterly ignores). Amy Winehouse’s dying ought to enrage folks — it was one thing that ought to have been averted. Asif Kapadia summed up the singer in his transient Oscar acceptance speech higher than the practically two-hour movie, saying that she was “someone special, someone who needed looking after.” Instead, she was repeatedly handled like a present pony, belittled and attacked by the press, treating as a joke as a substitute of a younger lady who was in determined want of assist earlier than it was too late. The movie acts like it’s a peaceable, inevitable destiny. It boils down the complete movie to be about your ex shifting on with one other lady and reduces Amy herself down to her relationships with males. If you need to attempt to higher perceive one of the vital gifted musicians who ever lived, watching Back to Black can be as useful as watching Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs to examine the results of local weather change.

Amy Winehouse Deserves Better Than This

As the credit rolled, my eyes had been burning, and my mouth was nonetheless hanging open in disgusted bewilderment. I ran outdoors to re-enter the actual world, to attempt make to sense of the truth that this movie was made. When the nausea stopped, I put in my Airpods and turned on my private favourite Winehouse music, “Tears Dry on Their Own,” and walked down the streets of London. I, like so many different followers, attain for this music after I require reassurance that I can deal with the trials and tribulations of contemporary life. “He takes the day, but I’m grown“ has become something of a mantra to people when a Hinge date goes wrong, a job rejection email comes in, or a landlord ups the rent. It’s also a sweet reminder of a big reason music is so important in our lives — to make ourselves feel better. Amy Winehouse meant so much to so many people. Her death was such a tragedy that it deserves to be considered the same way Buddy Holly’s is — “The day the music died.” She will endlessly be remembered for being one of many best musicians of all time. But, sadly, Back to Black reiterates that she is going to at all times be one of the vital grossly mistreated and misunderstood folks in popular culture historical past — each in her life and dying.

REVIEW

Back to Black

Back to Black is a hole, ugly, and inaccurate biopic of Amy Winehouse that favors the angle of the lads in her life.

Pros

• Lead actress Marisa Abela provides a devoted efficiency as Amy Winehouse, with a powerful efficiency from Lesley Manville as effectively.

Cons

• Back to Black reduces Amy Winehouse to her relationships along with her father and husband.
• The movie undercuts Winehouse’s abilities by not utilizing her actual singing voice and specializing in her private life relatively than her skilled achievements.
• Sam Taylor-Johnson’s unimaginative route makes Back to Black a boring, muted, and bleak movie to watch.

Back to Black is now accessible to stream on VOD within the U.S.

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