‘Back To Black’ movie review: A disinterested insult to the life of Amy Winehouse
For a film about the life of a person full of curiosity, humour and supreme talent, Sam Taylor-Johnson manages a depiction of Amy Winehouse that is shockingly apathetic about the subject at hand in her latest biopic, Back to Black. More akin to an episode of Horrible Histories than a nuanced take on one of Britain’s most iconic musicians of the 21st century, the film might just be one of the worst biopics of modern times.
Winehouse’s life has been explored and exploited in-depth, over and over. While alive, she had her every movement across the front page. Since her death, her story has been mined for every detail. The 2015 documentary Amy did it well, honouring the artist while daring to delicately consider how she might have been failed by those purporting to be protecting her. Naturally, that didn’t go down well with the individuals depicted, so, in an insulting attempt to sterilise Winehouse’s life, the new feature film feels free of any sort of real conflict.
Not bothering to dig any deeper into Winehouse’s life beyond the low-hanging fruit of her personal struggles regarding addiction, Back to Black is almost entirely surface-level, charting the rise of the singer from her burgeoning youth to her Grammy-winning album, with Marisa Abela doing her best to cosplay an untouchable icon. Alongside her, a well-cast but poorly integrated Jack O’Connell cracks jokes as Blake, Winehouse’s longtime lover, while the film plods along, seemingly baffled at its own existence.
Despite setting it up as a movie about the singer, opening and closing with quotes like “I want people to hear my voice” or “I want to be remembered for me”, Taylor-Johnson regularly chooses to ignore essential moments in Winehouse’s journey to get to the ‘romance’ or her tragic downfall faster. Most glaringly, there is a vast black hole where the height of her success is. Seeing only a snippet of her recording of the track ‘Back To Black’, the entirety of her musical career and artistic process is omitted, with her achievements being relegated to unimportant footnotes.
From a lazy start to a lethargic finish, there is a distinct disinterest in the subject at hand. Taylor-Johnson simply doesn’t seem to care about what made Winehouse tick, focusing solely on the sadness of her personal life without even having the bravery to explore that with appropriate depth, either.
Such extends to the handling of Mitch Winehouse, especially with the controversial figure being painted out as a strange hero of the tale. In the film’s refusal to dig any deeper into the causes behind Winehouse’s struggles or to even suggest any failed responsibility, equally Blake Fielder-Civil comes off as a saintly voice of reason despite admitting “full accountability” for introducing the singer to heroin. The result is a film that paints Winehouse out to be utterly pathetic, laying all the blame at her own feet instead of exploring the intricacies of her self-destructive origins.
As for the press that hounded the star, their role is as equally limp and unexplored. It’s ironic, really, as Taylor-Johnson really only adds to the stack of material that shines a glaring light on Winehouse’s struggles without any care to be curious beyond that she doesn’t seem to realise that she’s part of the problem, too.
Even if you could ignore that Back To Black is a genuine story about real life, the film itself feels amateurish in every way. Rather than using Winehouse’s own voice, Marisa Abela’s impressionistic attempt worsens with each song, with the performances feeling increasingly like mockery, as if the audience was being forced to watch a poor pub karaoke cover of the star.
With so many issues, so many negatives, and so many blank spots, Back To Black simply shouldn’t have been made. There is already the argument that Winehouse’s tragic death was too recent to be dramatised. But, as Sam Taylor-Johnson handles it with laziness and disinterest, simply rehashing the bad without adding anything of value to the conversation – this film is an insult to the subject it claims to herald.
