Back to Black
Sam Taylor-Johnson turns a tragic talent into a generic Sid and Nancy tale in this underwhelming cash grab.
Marisa Abela and Eddie Marsan should have said “No, no, no” to Sam Taylor-Johnson’s hackneyed biopic.
Like many great jazz singers before her, Amy Winehouse’s (Marisa Abela) emotional authenticity made her a star. The raw despair and longing in her music were pulled from her life and audiences connected with that honesty. Like her idols Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, Amy was fated to die young and leave some incredible art in her wake.
It’s a shame, then, that such a mediocre biopic is offered up to capture her life. Back to Black is a jumbled mix of common biopic tropes, outright falsehoods, and clunky writing that utterly let down its subject. Viewers unfamiliar with Winehouse will be forgiven for thinking that the singer was a childish, catty abuser. Those familiar with Winehouse’s story will be wondering who this movie is about and just how much influence her father had over the film to earn such a sympathetic portrayal.
Many of these baffling choices come directly from director Sam Taylor-Johnson, who bills herself as a “close friend” of Amy Winehouse while doing press for the film. Though they may have been friends, this whole film feels like someone glanced at a Wikipedia entry on Winehouse’s life and tried to sum it up in three sentences. Friends appear and disappear. Her relationship with her mother is fraught, and then never mentioned again. She records two albums, but we see no relationship between her and her collaborators. The timeline is a wreck, and though it only covers about 9 years of the superstar’s life, it’s hard to know what’s happening and when.
Because the film feels like an afterthought, it’s hard not to see it as a cash grab. This makes it especially egregious since Winehouse’s life was filled with people only interested in how much they could exploit her. Taylor-Johnson and the production seem to be continuing that tradition.
The film centers on the two relationships most important to Amy: the love she has for her Nan (Lesley Manville) and the toxic love between Winehouse and her muse/husband Blake (Jack O'Connell). Manville offers up a lovely, nurturing performance. Nan was an icon to Amy, and influenced everything from her style to the music she listened to. Blake was…every bad decision an 18-year-old girl could make stuffed into a stupid fedora. And while Amy certainly pulled some of her best songs from the tumult of that relationship, Taylor-Johnson makes the result an uninteresting take on Sid and Nancy. The actors do have genuine chemistry, but even natural chemistry fizzles when mixed with dismal writing and confusing direction.
Back to Black is the definition of “telling instead of showing” with screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh giving characters the most unwieldy dialogue so that the audience can understand what’s happening. “I’ve stopped cutting myself,” says one character who we’ve never seen self-harm. During an argument, Blake lists off all the awards Amy has won because…we didn’t see her win them, so how else would we know?
The movie also glances over aspects of Winehouse’s life that would give context as to her art and choices. Amy Winehouse was an alcoholic. She became a drug addict and bulimic. She had bouts of self-harm and likely some untreated mental illness. Instead of getting her help for any of those problems, those she trusted used her and the press hounded her relentlessly. It’s admirable that Taylor-Johnson decided not to exploit Winehouse’s addiction issues, but this avoidance makes it hard to understand Amy or her art. She seemingly decides to go from a hardline anti-drug stance to smoking heroin on a whim. She is suddenly missing a tooth, we don’t know how or why it’s happened. Then the tooth is fixed and never brought up again.
The result is confusing. Taylor-Johnson is seemingly more interested in comparing Amy to various animals (a fox in the park, a bird in a cage, a lion calling for her mate) than explaining who Amy was as a person. The movie also doesn’t delve into what her own music did to her. In the A24-produced documentary, Amy, the film notes that her most successful album was filled with songs about her life at its lowest point. Even when she herself had moved past the hurt, she’d have to perform the songs, which would in turn drag her…back to black.
Possibly most unforgivable to fans familiar with the story is Taylor-Johnson’s whitewashing of Amy’s father, Mitch (Eddie Marsan). In the film, he’s a poor put-upon dad, who only wants to see his daughter’s dreams come true. His complicity in her addiction and using her for wealth is barely hinted at. It’s certainly a novel take, but one that feels false.
Though the film is utterly skippable, it’s not a total wash. Abela offers up a fine performance, even doing her own singing. She sounds admirably close to Amy’s unique vocal stylings, and clearly trained hard to accomplish that. She never quite disappears behind all the makeup and hair — she looks more like Jenny Slate doing a bit than Amy Winehouse. Still, Abela and O’Connell have some good chemistry. O’Connell even manages to eke out the one genuinely great line of dialogue in the film.
Still, this movie is a waste of talented performers, subject matter, and music. If you’re interested at all in Amy Winehouse, I recommend checking out the documentary Amy instead, which is available on MAX.
Verdict: You’d learn more about Winehouse by listening to her albums — and the writing would be better.
Back to Black is rated R and available in theaters May 17.
