Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Writer: Matt Greenhalgh
Stars: Marisa Abela, Eddie Marsan, Jack O’Connell
Synopsis: The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.
When one watches Sam Taylor-Johnson’s acutely misguided biopic Back to Black, based on the life of Amy Winehouse, the temptation to hiss at the screen and Matt Greenhalgh’s script is almost too difficult to resist. The team behind Back to Black decided they would not look into “anyone’s particular version” of Winehouse’s story, but instead be guided by Amy’s lyrics. The claim becomes that the film is Amy’s version of Amy. If that is the case, why is it that almost everyone who actually cared about her is almost erased from the narrative and people who abused her, including her father Mitchell Winehouse (Eddie Marsan) and her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell) come off as near saints?
The film begins with a voiceover of Amy (Marisa Abela) reading her application to a performing arts school. “I just want to be remembered as a singer.” Amy is running through the streets. Is she free or being chased? Neither Taylor-Johnson nor the script seem to care. It is a bookend for rubbish. The scene shifts to Amy speaking with her beloved grandmother, Cynthia (the always excellent Lesley Manville) encouraging her to do what she loves. Cynthia’s memory box, which includes photographs of her with Ronnie Scott, is the touchstone we are given for Amy’s deep and abiding love of jazz. The focus moves to Mitch singing the standard “Fly Me to The Moon.” It’s supposed to be some kind of establishing scene for who Amy is, but it comes off more as Mitch’s “I coulda been a contender” moment.
Mitch makes money as a cabbie and when he’s driving Amy home to Janis’ (Juliet Cowan) house, old resentments bubble up. Amy is lamenting that people just don’t care about great jazz artists in the contemporary world and being pissed about Mitch’s infidelity and abandonment of her mother and his children when she was only nine. Mitch doesn’t want to argue and points out that she almost lost Cynthia’s precious memory box within hours of being given it. Amy is already a “problem child,” and neither of her parents are willing to deal with her.
Janis stares absently at her daughter and notes that one of her boyfriends has called. Promiscuity and drunkenness are at the foreground. Amy takes off her shoes and immediately goes to write “What is it About Men” before engaging with what she views as unsatisfactory sex with her older lover Chris Taylor (Ryan O’Doherty).
Going quickly through the motions to show that Amy “Ain’t no Spice Girl,” a long-time friend introduces her to Nick Shamansky (Sam Buchanan) at a gig where she sings “Stronger than Me.” Amy doesn’t shy away from the fact she’s written it about Chris, and they laugh at his humiliation. Before you can blink, Amy is inking a contract with Simon Fuller’s 19 Management in 2002.
There are lots of “I can’t believe you are only eighteen and writing such worldly songs” moments. Plus a few “Amy really is only eighteen and she still wants to hang out with her friends” moments. Her childhood friend Juliette Ashby (Harley Bird) is there as a cheerleader, but later becomes almost antagonistic when they share a flat together. Amy’s drinking and bulimia is interrupting her sleep. For someone who was there at pivotal times in Amy’s life and did what she could to help her friend, she, like others, are relegated to the background.
It’s made clear that Amy is happiest when she is singing in small jazz clubs. Her raw authenticity isn’t shaped by record company demands. Mouthy and rebellious, Amy is not going to go gently into being a product defined by a label. What she is doing is because she loves Sarah Vaughan, The Specials, and Lauryn Hill. Her teachers were the music of Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Tony Bennett, and Billie Holiday.
Cue the meteoric rise of her first album “Frank” and her move to Camden. Her heavy drinking to deal with nerves, and then just her heavy drinking. Despite the success of “Frank” the A&R people want her to be less Amy Winehouse. Ditch the guitar, be less “trashy” and come up with something new they can sell overseas.
The film is designed to concentrate on her relationship with basic white boy and Pete Doherty hanger on Blake Fielder-Civil and their on again, off again relationship. She’s playing pool learning about “life,” in a pub when she comes across him. The script dares to suggest that it was Blake who introduced her to The Shangri-las. There are lines which are so cringeworthy most screenwriters would blush at putting them into a character’s mouth. “My favorite writer is Bukowski,” Amy tells Blake, a man who looks like he’s never opened a book in his life.
Amy’s adoration for Blake and their clearly co-dependent relationship is juxtaposed with her adoration for Cynthia. Cynthia is her inspiration; the woman who styles her hair, the person who gave her leeway to follow her dreams. Other than Nick Shamansky, she’s the only person who seems to give an unselfish damn about what is happening to the increasingly tragic songbird.
Cynthia quietly reminds Amy about Charlie Parker and his death. She’s clued in on what everyone else wants to ignore. Amy is not just a chain smoking, weed smoking, hard drinking, working class diva, but due to Blake’s influence an addict succumbing to crack, heroin, self-harm, and annihilation.
Few managed biopics will directly attack the people who make them possible. Hence, Mitch comes off as a parent who just wants what is best for Amy. Completely ignoring his complicity in forcing his child to tour to the point of exhaustion. The film doesn’t want to investigate how her promoter Ray (Ansu Kabia) becoming her manager doesn’t provide her with any kind of safety net. The script also pretends that Amy found crack all by herself and that Blake was dealing with “Crazy Amy,” instead of feeding off her. It isn’t Blake who decides to get in touch with Amy again once “Back to Black” is a world-wide phenomenon, but his dealer.
Marisa Abela does a passable impersonation of Winehouse, but she is a cheap karaoke version of her when it comes to busting out the music which made Winehouse a phenomenon. One doesn’t even need to be a fan to understand how intuitively she understood music and her vocal genius.
What Sam Taylor-Johnson has put together is both sanitized and profoundly ugly. The compositions are amateurish which is a shame because Polly Morgan is not an untalented cinematographer. The only scene which fundamentally works is the remote acceptance of the Grammy awards. Abela’s awe at seeing Tony Bennett and Natalie Cole award “Rehab” goes beyond the impression of Amy she was doing for most of the film and has the ring of truth other aspects of the film avoided.
The question with biopics scraping into the lives of those who died too soon is what are they trying to tell the audience about the subject? For every Lady Sings the Blues there is a The United States vs. Billie Holiday. For every Spencer there is a Seberg. Anton Corbijn’s Control written by Matt Greenhalgh had the benefit of Anton’s personal experience as a photographer for Joy Division. Despite its flaws, at least Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis captured why Presley was irresistible. Whereas films like Bohemian Rhapsody and Judy are Oscar bait for their stars. Then there are the abject failures such as I Wanna Dance with Somebody, and One Love. Marisa Abela is talented, so too are Andra Day, Naomie Ackie, and Kingsley Ben-Adir but nothing they can do will make a bad film good.
Back to Black is not only a terrible film; it is muddled and exploitative. Andrew Dominik’s Blonde has competition for the worst way to depict someone who was a victim of celebrity. Amy Winehouse not only deserved better from the people who were supposed to help her navigate her psychological and physical well being, she deserves not to be trauma entertainment.
