Movie Review ~ Back to Black

The 2016 Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature was Asif Kapadia’s heart-breaking Amy, an intimate portrait of Grammy-winning singer Amy Winehouse, who died at 27.  While Winehouse had led a very public life and struggled with addiction and other health issues, few understood who the gifted artist was outside of the spotlight or what setbacks fueled her darkest moments.  More than merely retracing Winehouse’s spectacular rise and tragic fall, Kapadia’s excellently constructed piece was a reminder of how seductively destructive fame can be, not just for the individual adored by the masses.

It was likely inevitable that a full-blown biopic of Winehouse would be made, and I wouldn’t argue that there would be space for that film to exist somewhere in our cinematic universe.  After all, several music biopics have been released that struck a chord with audiences and critics for their emotional honesty and the way they weaved in an artist’s bountiful playlist.  Films like 2005’s Walk the Line, and 2019’s Rocketman took different approaches to their subjects but they didn’t flinch from the harsher realities they experienced.  Conversely, 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody sought to rewrite history based on the surviving (and still-touring) band members’ desire to preserve their reputation.  

It’s hard not to see red after watching Back to Black, an appallingly lousy biopic on the turbulent life and untimely demise of Winehouse.  Not only is it directed without an ounce of style by director Sam Taylor-Johnson, but Matt Greenhalgh’s fourth-grade book report of a script goes a step further and seeks to absolve family and friends of the late-singer who stood idly by while Winehouse spiraled downward. Those of us who saw the home movies and archival footage in the documentary remember the part they played, but here it’s Winehouse who’s ludicrously summarized as being the solitary reason for her demise. 

The familiar plot follows the singer born in Southgate, London, from the days before her meteoric ascent in the music realm to the devastating decline that led to her untimely death alone in her Camden Town flat. While the narrative scaffolding Greenhalgh erects follows familiar beats of rise and fall, intermingled with the tumult of fame, it regrettably skims over the emotional depths and environmental textures that could have lent honesty and a bitter tenderness to this tragic saga.  

Opportunities to take a Behind the Music approach are also ignored, with the majority of her first album omitted and the creation of the earth-shattering follow-up lightly touched on.  Even small events, like how Winehouse lost one of her teeth, are never explained.  One moment, she has a large gap in her mouth, and a few scenes later, it’s just fixed.  These details are important to touch on if you are attempting to create a complete picture of a person and what sacrifices they made to their body to survive.  Taylor-Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) and Greenhalgh don’t understand that.

Unfortunately, because of the failings of these creative collaborators, the strong performance of Marisa Abela (Barbie) as Winehouse becomes collateral damage.  Often tasked with playing Winehouse as far more in control of her live persona than readily available video proves, Abela seems to want to probe the uncomfortable corners the singer would retreat into, but she’s consistently undermined by Taylor-Johnson, who pulls her away into scenes that feel unnaturally buoyant or broadly dramatic.  Abela is an actress with clear potential and has found a way to harness some of the essence of Winehouse. It’s a shame that all that work isn’t in a better film.

In a particularly puzzling casting choice, Lesley Manville (Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris) plays the mother of Mitch Winehouse.  Mitch is played by another strong actor, Eddie Marsan (Atomic Blonde).  I spent most of the film thinking Manville was playing Marsan’s wife and Amy’s stepmother, only to find out she was her grandmother.  This casting defies chronological logic visually based on the actor’s ages but is another detail the movie drops the ball on defining for the viewer.  Similarly, as Winehouse’s infamous partner Blake Fielder-Civil, Jack O’Connell (Unbroken) brings a semblance of intensity to the screen but is often hindered by a script that paints him as a good guy and family man who got mixed up with the wrong musician.  

Reducing the rest of the characters that drifted through Winehouse’s orbit to caricatures, Greenhalgh (Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool) flattens all complexities with a script that favors generalities over introspection.  Taking an ultra-absorbent Clorox wipe to the ensemble of family, friends, and hangers-on who stood by and collected paychecks instead of getting Winehouse the help she needed, Greenhalgh pardons these guilty parties through his screenplay in a way that feels disrespectful and wrong.  Along with Taylor-Johnson providing no connectivity between scenes or life events, Back to Black gives no sense of time or place and no idea that Winehouse existed in a world we would legitimately recognize. 

Perhaps the worst part of Back to Black comes near the end as the filmmakers not so subtly suggest Winehouse might have killed herself because she was unhappy to see others in her life doing well.  This lamentable misstep lacks ethics and respect and crosses lines no mainstream filmmaker has the right to approach.  Instead of being artistically ambitious, it is pointed in its absurd overview of Winehouse and her final days.  I feel bad for the good actors in this attempt to tell a story honestly, and, regrettably, Abela’s hard work is for naught.  Back to Black is just squandered potential rendered lifeless by a lack of vision, nuance, and soul.