Amy Winehouse fans weren’t exactly delighted by the news that there would be a biopic of her life. Following the singer’s tragic death in 2011 at the age of 27, her devotees have grown used to witnessing all manner of tacky and exploitative cash grabs executed in her name, from a posthumous album of questionable quality to a mercifully canceled hologram tour. Back To Black, the biographical drama directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, didn’t do much to refute fears that the entire project was a historical whitewash with more interest in selling records than commemorating Winehouse herself. The film is, of course, bad, a slapdash and overtly polished summary of her short life that seems entirely uninterested in both her creative process and difficulties with addiction. When it’s not outright changing history, Back To Black is timidly avoiding the extensively documented truth of Winehouse’s troubles, to the point where you can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers even knew who Winehouse was. More pointedly, you can’t avoid the question of why this film exists at all when there’s an excellent Oscar-winning documentary that did it all better nine years earlier.
- Off
- English
Asif Kapadia’s Amy is everything Back To Black isn’t: compassionate, artfully crafted, intimate, and truly interested in the life, death, and troubles of its central subject. Taking advantage of some truly beautiful archival footage of Winehouse’s childhood and early years in the music industry, Amy focuses on her as friends, family, and admirers offer their memories via voiceover.
Related Content
Back To Black trailer teases the triumph and tragedy of Amy WinehouseMarisa Abela debuts her Amy Winehouse (speaking) voice in first Back To Black teaser- Off
- English
A lot of Amy feels like a standard musician documentary, the typical from-cradle-to-grave formula that is so commonplace in this genre. There are adorable videos of her childhood, stories of her rise to fame, the painfully detailed downfall, and lots of amazing footage of her best songs. But it’s in the details where Kapadia’s work soars. It’s like a peek into Winehouse’s diary, with all the candor and prickliness that entails, contextualized with how the rest of the world reacted to her brief career.
Amy walks a thin tightrope, unflinching in its depiction of Winehouse’s tumultuous life yet empathetic enough to never sacrifice heart in favor of gawking. Her prodigious talent is shown when she sings a Marilyn Monroe-esque version of “Happy Birthday” as a child, but so are selfies of her when she was at her thinnest and most ravaged by heroin addiction. For every moment we see of Amy’s humor or self-deprecating charm, there’s a contrasting one showing the ramifications of her trauma. Watching her now-legendary performances when she was in her prime are simultaneously heartening and upsetting. Those zeniths of her talent can’t be enjoyed without knowing what came next, and Kapadia doesn’t shy away from the shaky footage of Winehouse barely able to stand on stage as thousands of people boo in fury.
The most heart-wrenching moment in Amy comes during one of her critical high points: the night Winehouse won five Grammy Awards and accepted the award via satellite from London, with her idol Tony Bennett doing the honors. Winehouse, who had gotten sober for the occasion and was unable to make the event in Los Angeles, is shown in good spirits, joking with her band and being in genuine awe at Bennett reading her name aloud. After winning Record of the Year, her friends and family in her home city rejoice. Then, in voiceover, we hear one of her friends recall how Amy, in the midst of this elated moment, told her, “This is so boring without drugs.” The thrall of addiction and its total rewrite of Winehouse’s life left her unable to take pleasure in her professional peak. In Back To Black, that line doesn’t exist. That’s insulting enough, but the film also removes all of Winehouse’s jokes and fangirl reverence for Bennett. In Taylor-Johnson’s hands, she’s just a puppet going through the biopic motions, punctuating the predictable beats with another musical number.
Back To Black exists not only in the shadow of Amy’s life but the media manipulations of her father Mitch, who has long been a villainous figure to her fans. He loves the spotlight and was keen on a biopic that would tell what he saw as the “true story” of her life. Apparently, that means we get a version of Amy’s career where her dad is a saintly guide. As played by Eddie Marsan (with a truly terrible gray dye-job), Mitch is always right, forever concerned about poor Amy, and the go-to man for career and personal advice. Taylor-Johnson is at least restrained enough not to turn Mitch into a literal angel, but this version of Amy’s life—one that positions him as the moral center of her very being—really drives home why Back To Black was made. It’s all about Mitch, not Amy.
Would Back To Black be here if Amy didn’t resolutely portray Mitch as selfish, spotlight-seeking, and endlessly pushing his daughter to perform when she was clearly unable to do so? It seems unlikely. We all know that he told Amy she didn’t need to go to rehab since she wrote a beloved song about that experience, but Mitch’s continued insistence in the documentary that she didn’t need intervention at that time, despite everyone else’s opposition, still feels like a slap in the face. Later in the documentary, he brings a camera crew to St. Lucia, where Amy is recovering after she actually went to rehab, and she seems truly heartbroken that her dad would treat her like a spectacle.
He’s hardly the only person to emerge from Amy with the stench of guilt surrounding him. Her infamous ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil is remarkably candid in admitting he was the one to introduce her to hard drugs. The biopic changes this entirely, curiously turning him into a passive onlooker in his own marriage (as played by the muscular Jack O’Connell, he’s also the world’s healthiest crack addict). After being a tabloid magnet for many years, we’re shown Amy being sent on stage in Belgrade in 2011, clearly intoxicated and bedraggled, and all you can ask is, “Why the hell did her manager Raye Cosbert allow this?” It takes a lot of culpability for someone to fail on such a worldwide level.
Mitch Winehouse claimed that Amy portrays his daughter “in not a very good light.” It’s understandable why he wouldn’t feel comfortable letting the world relive a disturbing downfall that was treated like a comedy by the press, but he confuses honesty with disdain (which is probably why he’s also mad at how he’s depicted, despite all the testimonies of Amy’s friends and colleagues backing it up). Yes, Amy is tough to watch at times, but it should be. We should be embarrassed to recall how we watched an addict with an eating disorder and mental health issues be trotted out on stage to stumble and be jeered—all while audiences goaded her into falling further down the rabbit hole. (Back To Black doesn’t show any of these performances, meaning it’s hard for them to fully convey the public tragedy she became in only a few short years.) Clips of comedians like Frankie Boyle and George Lopez mocking Winehouse, the latter doing so while announcing her as a Grammy nominee, sting in hindsight. Didn’t we all laugh at them at the time? It’s far less funny when punctuated with images of Winehouse’s dangerously skinny body, covered in bruises and dirt, being trailed through Camden by dozens of photographers.
But Amy is far more than a collation of the near-past and our societal failures. It’s a beautiful document of a once-in-a-generation singer who brought jazz pop to the masses and revered her genre predecessors. The documentary offers a far denser exploration of her creative process than the biopic, which steers towards A-to-B connections for narrative ease. When she finally gets to record a duet with Bennett, it’s a thrill to watch a master and his protegee at work. Amy may not have much empathy for the people who hurt her, but it clearly respects its subject.
Most musician biopics are rubbish because they’re too wrapped up in appeasing record labels and estates’ demands. That usually means erasing a few problematic facts from the timeline, greatly simplifying the near-mystical process of creating art, and sidestepping any detail that could harm the valuable IP. It’s how we ended up with a Queen biopic where Freddie Mercury is treated as a pesky gay troublemaker hurting the future of the band and its real stars, the ones who just so happen to be alive and in control of the band’s brand. Back To Black isn’t quite as morally repugnant as Bohemian Rhapsody, but its intent is the same. Therein lies the unavoidable issue: A truthful biopic of Amy Winehouse wouldn’t make for pleasurable viewing, nor would it encourage viewers to download her albums. It would force too many people—audiences, critics, family, friends, managers—to confront their own actions. A hell of a lot of people would rather Amy shut up and play the hits than remind you of her pain.