Film Review - Back to Black
Marisa Abela is excellent in Sam Taylor-Johnson's heartfelt biopic of Amy Winehouse
Sam Taylor-Johnson has had an uneven directorial career to date. Some of her films I like a great deal; Nowhere Boy (2009), for instance. Others I’m considerably less inclined towards, such as the lamentable Fifty Shades of Grey (2015). However, her new film Back to Black, a biopic of the late, much-lamented Amy Winehouse, I enjoyed a great deal. I confess I’m a little bemused by some of the snootier reviews the film has received.
The main selling point of the drama is Marisa Abela. Her outstanding central performance as the stunningly talented soul singer fully convinces, both on and off the stage. Taking its cue from the likes of Walk the Line (2005), in which Joaquin Phoenix sang the Johnny Cash songs rather than having them dubbed, Abela’s performance is doubly excellent, given her vocal impersonations. She also captures Winehouse’s volatile, addictive, obsessive persona with regard to booze, drugs, and eating disorders, but most emphatically concerning her blinkered love for drug-addicted Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell), who inspired her classic album, the titular Back to Black.
As such, the film plays like a fairy-tale tragic romance, and works rather well. I certainly found it emotionally absorbing, even though some have taken issue with the film’s much kinder view of Blake and Amy’s father Mitch (Eddie Marsan). Then again, when Amy (2015) hit cinemas — Senna (2010) director Asif Kapadia’s outstanding documentary, which covers much the same events as Back to Black — Mitch Winehouse was outraged at how he was portrayed. Mitch doesn’t come out of that film well at all.
My response to all this is to shrug. I wasn’t there. I don’t know the facts, nor can I tell whether Kapadia played certain footage out of context. But I do know regardless of the truth, this is a well-acted, well-directed drama that works as a fine companion piece to the Kapadia documentary. It isn’t unflawed — there are too many montages, narrative leaps, and omissions (plus Taylor-Johnson leaves out You Know That I’m No Good, one of my favourite Winehouse songs) — but Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay captures the essence of Winehouse’s story to good effect, without excessive or exploitative misery porn.
I particularly liked the focus on Amy’s relationship with her grandmother (poignantly played by Leslie Manville), and the recreation of key media moments. For instance, during a Jonathan Ross TV interview, in which he rather crassly asks if Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller had tried to “mould” her, she grins, replying: “One of them tried to mould me into a big triangle shape, and I went ‘nooo!’” Moments where Amy speaks of wanting to be a mother with lots of children are also heartbreaking, and the final scene is nothing less than devastating. If this film blames anyone for Amy’s death, it’s the paparazzi (Kapadia pointed the finger in several other directions as well).
In closing, I would add Back to Black gets considerable bonus points from yours truly for not including the interminably clichéd, here’s-the-real-person photographs or footage seen at the back end of so many biopics today. Instead, it has the courage to let the excellent Marisa Abela bring back those memories in her own way, via her outstanding performance of a phenomenal one-off talent tormented by the many demons that eventually claimed her.
(Originally published at Medium.)
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She was not unlike Billie Holiday: beautiful music emerging from a crummy life...
Saw this yesterday. Pretty much agree with everything you said and of course, banging tunes best heard at cinema volume. Got the documentary lined up ready to watch. I took the same approach (movie then doc) with Bob Marley and that worked well for me.